{"id":2137,"date":"2011-05-26T20:10:58","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T00:10:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/?p=2137"},"modified":"2011-05-26T20:10:58","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T00:10:58","slug":"watch-the-dove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/2011\/05\/watch-the-dove\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch the dove"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been noodling with an essay about work, how the necessity of having to be at work instead of doing whatever it is you&#8217;d rather be doing can be made less onerous and about how we all have secret plans for ruling the work world.  Right now it&#8217;s about 1,100 words and, quite frankly, I haven&#8217;t even gotten to laying out my ideal workplace.  Part of the reason it&#8217;s taking so long is because I&#8217;m still trying to wrap my brain around the fact that somehow I&#8217;ve managed to land myself in the most toxic, passive-aggressive workplace I&#8217;ve ever encountered.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not quite Max Barry&#8217;s <em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Company_%28novel%29\">Company<\/a><\/em>.  No, that would require that Management have some awareness of the games they&#8217;re playing with staff.  As it is, Management not only actively participates but is the principle beneficiary of said games.<\/p>\n<p>So far I&#8217;ve spotted the:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> &#8220;conflicting instructions&#8221; game (DeputyDirector gives one instruction while UberDirector gives the complete opposite);<\/li>\n<li> &#8220;no direction&#8221; game (You&#8217;re told Management wants to have input, you ask for that input, are given none, and then held accountable when you haven&#8217;t moved the issue forward.);<\/li>\n<li> &#8220;your schedule is irrelevant&#8221; game (Manifests in two ways: Management summons you without warning for seemingly trivial matters disrupting your work flow or Management schedules meetings then reschedules them at a whim.  What these two manifestations have in common is that you have no option to refuse or control your time.);<\/li>\n<li> &#8220;endless meetings&#8221; game (Long meetings that don&#8217;t start on time the entire purpose of which is to have the group, and it&#8217;s always a group, reenforce whatever decision Management wants to make.); and, of course,<\/li>\n<li> &#8220;someone has to be a target&#8221; game (Management picks someone and decides this person can do no right.  There is no rhyme or reason to why this person becomes a target and who is the target shifts without warning.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The end result of all of these games is a staff completely constrained from any creative thinking or initiative (<acronym title=\"You've acted without getting Management's approval or input.\">a cause for reprimand<\/acronym>) which does only what it is told (also <acronym title=\"At your salary level, you're expected to use your best judgement.  That is, after all, why you were hired.\">a cause for reprimand<\/acronym>).  With the added addition of &#8220;there are spies among you&#8221; not only does Management not have to do all the work itself, the possibility of the staff banding together to manage up gets eliminated altogether.<\/p>\n<p>The sad part about this is that Management isn&#8217;t even very good at playing these games.  Usually it takes me a few months to spot that fact that this stuff is going on.  This time around, I got it in the first three weeks.  And this makes my work day in some ways very amusing and in others completely frustrating: I can see the man behind the curtain but he thinks I can&#8217;t see him.<\/p>\n<p>Now I just have to survive my year&#8217;s probationary period so I can move to another part of the giant company I happen to work for right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been noodling with an essay about work, how the necessity of having to be at work instead of doing whatever it is you&#8217;d rather be doing can be made less onerous and about how we all have secret plans for ruling the work world. Right now it&#8217;s about 1,100 words and, quite frankly, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2137","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-office-space","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2137"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2140,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137\/revisions\/2140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}