Oh My, I Hate My Job

Welcome to the second episode of ihatemyjob.com.  Rants and words from the Web.

Wisdom gleaned from Twitter 2

Love or hate your boss, they can be the muse for some interesting discussions. Here’s my off the cuff thoughts…

larryr488: To make a long story short, there’s nothing like having a boss walk in.

Don’t you love it when a metaphor from particle physics shows up in the office. What I mean is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. A quick and dirty way of explaining it is when you are observing something , say an electron, in order to see it you have to bounce something off of it, say a photon (a particle of light). Well if you bounce something off of it, you change either it’s direction or it’s velocity (physics people – I KNOW this is not completely accurate, it’s an office metaphor, an ounce of grace please). In short, when you observe something, you change its behavior. Hence the long story being cut short. Okay, maybe that didn’t work so well, but I’m patting myself on the back for a physics metaphor related to the office. There will be more, count of that.

LordGersh: Quote that sums up the week: “Off and running, in the right direction, if we’re lucky.” – My Boss

We’d like to believe our ideas and effort in business have more control and predictability than this…but does it really? The good thing about being off and running at least is if you’re observant enough to see you’re going in the wrong direction it’s relatively easy to change direction. It’s harder to change direction when you’re sitting on you duff. Remember children, kinetic friction isn’t as strong as static friction. Yes, another physics example! Okay, I’m done.

Leadershipfreak: By working faithfully 8 hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work 12 hours a day. #quote – Robert Frost

You’d think the more “power” you get the more freedom you get. And one way to measure freedom is being in better control of your time. But that’s rarely so unless you’ve got at least two things in your favor. A system and trust. As a boss if you have a system together then people know what they’re doing and don’t need to report in and have you make all these decisions. And if you have trust, well then you can let people work the system. Well, maybe one more thing. You have to have the ability to see when the system’s not working, needs alteration or scrapping altogether. You get those 3 three things and you can probably work less.

DylynnDeSaint: Boss day quote: “Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties.” Doug Larson

Unless of course you make a great case why you accomplishing the impossible can be a more common event if you’re given the responsibility and the compensation commensurate with the increased value. And/or you can show what the result of you not doing the impossible would have cost in lost time, lost money, and increased aggravation.

gabehabe: LOL boss just instructed me to, and I quote: “go and do things.”

You know it’s an interesting thing about human nature I’ve observed. The need for constant action. Perhaps it relates to the static friction – kinetic friction thing. If something is moving it’s a lot easier to change its direction. So it’s a lot easier to get people to work on something valuable if they are at least working. But of course there might be this as well. Hope. The hope that if people are doing something, anything, somehow value will come from their efforts. Value worth more than you’re compensating them for their time.