Twitter on the other hand has become something I’m digging into deeper these days. I guess I go in cycles with that.
Tag: work
Weigh-In Wednesday – It’s Only 10:00AM?
If your car is dark gray, and mostly covered in snow, congratulations! Your car is perfectly camouflaged for the environment you’re driving in, and could be nearly invisible to other drivers! Please turn on your lights. You’re not doing yourself any favors driving in stealth mode.
Weigh-In Wednesday – Unrefined
I’ve discovered I can save some time and effort writing using Google Voice in a Google Document and then copying it over. I might need some lessons on how to use Google Voice, because it doesn’t really follow my commands the way I’d like it to. and I am discovering 95% accuracy isn’t quite good enough.
Weigh-In Wednesday – Russian Meddling Free Edition
Can’t be down for too long; when the tide rises you end up underneath it if you’re not willing to stand tall before it reaches you.
Weigh-In Wednesday – The Weird World
How can I critique what I did? Or how can I even enjoy my work after the fact if I never get to see it?
Lighting Test
Yeah, she’s in her hoodie, and her hair is up. So what? Even at the end of the day, she’s amazing.
Friday Writing Challenge, Again
There’s no such thing as an undamaged person, but to understand someone else’s damage, to understand what they need, and to understand who you need to be in order to not add to that damage takes effort. A lot of effort. Effort that very few people are willing to put into a relationship.
This is really complicated. But it isn’t about who is damaging who, or what damage we all have. We have to start putting more effort into understanding ourselves, having patience with each other, and recognizing the things that truly matter in our world. There’s no one right answer, or easy answer, or magic pill.
Personal Politics In Business
Randal: All those innocent contractors hired to do the job were killed! Casualties of a war they had nothing to do with. All right, look, you’re a roofer, and some juicy government contract comes your way; you got a wife and kids and the two-story in suburbia – this is a government contract, which means all sorts of benefits. All of a sudden these left-wing militants blast you with lasers and wipe out everyone within a three-mile radius. You didn’t ask for that. You have no personal politics. You’re just trying to scrape out a living.
Roofer: Well, I’m a contractor myself. I’m a roofer—Dunn and Ready Home Improvements—and speaking as a roofer, I can tell you, a roofer’s personal politics comes into play heavily when choosing jobs.
Smoke Breaks
Half of the people in my office go out for smoke breaks.
I've never found it to be fair that employers make accommodations for employees who are addicted to tobacco products, and it is widely accepted in our culture that these people get special treatment. Most other addicts wouldn't even be hired if it was known, except for coffee addicts, but you can have a coffee at your desk while working without polluting your work environment.
So, I have again began my practice of taking smoke breaks.
In my case, they involve walking around the parking lot briskly, mostly while talking to myself, or singing a song, but I think that can be accommodated.
Even if people look at me like I'm crazy.
Slow Down
I feel like everyone in Information Technologies should take a crash course in customer service. It's one thing to be a good technician. It is a completely different thing to provide good service.
Slow down. Talk to people like they matter. Talk to people like they are important. Talk to people like you want to help them.
As I listen to most technicians assigned to customer support, they fail to do these things. They speak on the phone as if they're in a hurry to be done with whatever they're doing. They don't take time to build rapport, or gain the user's trust, and confidence.
I've always said, technology is 10% fixing technology, and 90% understanding there is someone who depends on this technology who might be feeling frustrated, disregarded, angry, or simply inconvenienced by a problem. Understanding how to alleviate those feelings, and help them understand that you are there to assist them goes a lot further than just quickly fixing their problem, and then abandoning them again. Or acting like you know everything, and they know nothing. Or complaining to them about how tough your job is, and how dumb other people are, when they were probably just thinking the same about their job, and the IT department that you work for.
Maybe businesses should put more effort into having classes for emotional intelligence...