Oh, honestly...

[deird1]

The big boss has just moved out of his office, and is now sitting among us plebs. Apparently, he's been sequestered away from us for so long that he's forgotten what it's like out here. Which led to the not-so-big boss sending us a memo:

Big Boss is now sitting in the open office area and has noticed people around him spending a lot of time
1. on the internet
2. chatting loudly about non-related work topics for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours...
3. conducting other business
4. not being in the office*
5. swearing

Please keep an eye out for this and if you see it happening kindly ask those involved to stop.

*I ask that if you are going out of the office for a meeting, lunch, fresh air, smoke, coffee, run, jog, gym or home you edit your status in Sametime.

Which... just...

*facepalm*

1) The person he's noticed on the internet is probably me. Reason being, my manager was away last week and left me with no work. So, in between getting up every half an hour and walking round the building trying to find stuff to do, I checked my flist and email.

2) The people chatting about non-work topics (who are not me) are doing what people in offices do. They're still getting their work done - so what's the issue?

3) Given that the list of approved reasons to leave the office include fresh air, smoking, and coffee, what on earth would be wrong with having a mental break for a few minutes and making a personal phonecall, rather than getting up from your desk, going elsewhere, and making exactly the same personal phonecall? (Also not something I've done this week - but the people I've seen doing so have been calling people who won't be available outside of working hours. And no-one's ever had a problem with this before.)

4) "Sametime" is the office IM system. I don't use it, because having IMs (never anything important - usually just "Hey!") interrupt me actually distracts me from my work. I'm not going to log in purely so I can leave a message letting people know I won't be available to IM until I... get back to my desk and turn IM off so I can work.

5) Swearing? Seriously?
From what I've heard, the people around here are swearing, on average, to about the same extent that I do right here on my blog. THAT'S NOT MUCH.


I really wish high-up executives would calm down and get used to the real world.

Comments

[immer_am_lesen]

wow, Big Boss has been away from the real world for faaaar too long, methinks. :-/

[deird1]

Yeah, he really has...

[immer_am_lesen]

Sounds like a Boss I once had...anything not WORK-RELATED, and he would bring it up at a Team Meeting. Which he ran twice a week. For HOURS. Mainly to hear himself talk, I think.

I hope your boss doesn't do what ours did, and make half the team (including guys) cry through yelling at everyone for being non-productive. Not a good thing to do...

[deird1]

I hope your boss doesn't do what ours did, and make half the team (including guys) cry through yelling at everyone for being non-productive.

Used to, actually. And then, when he discovered that we didn't like this, complained that no-one had told him. (No - because when you spend a meeting telling us off for our manifold failings and then ask "Is everyone okay with how this meeting went?", we just might be too intimidated to answer...)

[velvetwhip]

Next thing you know, he'll follow everyone home and critique what you watch on TV and what you make for dinner!


Gabrielle

[loquat.myid.net]

Sounds like the executives at my last job at a call center - we only took inbound calls, so if people weren't calling in there wasn't anything useful for us to do, but the official rules stated we weren't supposed to bring books, crosswords, etc.

Our immediate supervisors knew perfectly well that we'd have stretches of downtime and ignored that rule, but there was one executive who'd come through on rare occasions, and he did NOT want to see anyone doing anything but taking a call or re-reading our work manuals.

[lizbee]

We occasionally get messages like that from our boss, usually when that's some large-scale tech problem going on that prevents us from working. (Hard to transcribe if every workstation on the network has lost their sound card drivers!)

We just nod and smile and ignore her until she goes away. But then, she doesn't actually sit with us...

[beer_good_foamy]

I used to have a boss who actively discouraged employees from hanging out together in their spare time, since he thought it was "unprofessional". People who'd worked together for 20 years and were godparents to each other's children had to adress each other by last name. (He'd been there for about 2 years. He wasn't popular.)

On the other hand, my current boss has a habit of avoiding swearing in the office by yelling "FISH!" and "MOTHERFISHER!" when something goes wrong. I rather prefer my current job.