Pages

Monday, December 11, 2006

Hi ho hi ho its off to work we go

I love many things about technology, the Internet which allows you to read my version of the New York Times. Albeit tp gal is much less widely read and a little less well written but none the less important to our way of life. It also enables the wonderful tool e-mail, which none of us could ever pass the buck without. "What do you mean you didn't finish re-writing the Merger proposal, I sent you an e-mail?" E-mail also fills our work day with endless interruptions and is impossible to ignore thanks to the pop up window that appears at the bottom of my screen anytime someone has something to say. I love that e-mail is an easy way to keep in contact w/ friends (work and 'real') and responding looks like work. Sometimes the giggling gives it away that I'm goofing around, but the minions know a happy TPgal is a good TPgal. Cranky TPgal is no fun at all!

I know the "minions" reference is wrong. I am a hateful and ungrateful girl. In reality in the off-line world I am humbled to be able to work with such a hard working team. There's a lot of CRAP (crazy-repetitive-administrative-processes) that managers here (and everywhere I think) have to endure, and I'm hopeful that if I do my job well that the folks that work in my area aren't burdened with it and whether they know it or not I'm trying to make their lives easier.

The minion-hood grew by two last week. I gave birth (ick) to two project managers so now life will truly never be the same. I don't get to start making them wash my car and clean my catbox until January, but I've got a project plan for them. Oooh, a new kitchen!

So, the lead story in the mornings "MegaBank Today" splash page on our web site was all about the oh-so-exciting e-cards that the company lets us use to send SPAM to people we think are going a bang up job. (Bank Up Job?) Here's how it works Bob kills himself to get something done that Joe should have done last week and to thank him, Joe sends Bob a pretty e-card (basically a form letter) and Bob's manager gets a copy and all of a sudden Joe is relieved of any obligation to Bob.

Seriously, it's just noise and while I do pay attention to the e-cards my team receives from their customers I rarely (once) send them. When someone seriously knocks it out of the park for me I write a note to their manager and make sure to follow up at review time to remind them that they have been a credit to that team.

One last "work" story and then I'd better get right to it.

So, you may have noticed that I don't use the name of my company when I blog. If you're able to put your pants on by yourself you can totally figure it out, but I am technically toeing the company line when I don't identify myself as an employee of MegaBank. I have plenty of nice things to say about the company. I believe that the CRAP is the same stuff I would find at MegaSoft across the lake or any other big company; it's just branded as Quirky here. I know there are plenty of ex-co workers that don't share my opinion, but I've generally been pretty happy.

So, the rule is don't talk shit about your company in public even if it's "good" because the minute Dilbert Bank Teller stands up in front of the nightly news and says "I love the way MegaBank encourages us to donate 5% of our salary to United Way each year. It's so good for the community, and they are totally aggressive about the encouragement so they get like 99% participation!" The evil Media will miss his well intentioned point and pick up on the fact that MB practically beats the money out of its employees.

This has been the rule for ages and ages, but the internal communications department thinks we're missing out on lots of positive free advertising by not letting the employees post how excited they are about the MB on their mySpace sites.

Uh hello do Internal Communications and Public Relations not even speak anymore? I thought the guiding principal of communications was CONTROL THE MESSAGE. I'm not overly worried about folks posting how awesome they think their work life is, and really when they post how suck ass things are we generally have some recourse when they are malicious and inaccurate but what happens when they post something ugly that's totally true?

Anyway, we're getting the lawyers, public relations and the internal communications folks together to talk about it. The unhelpful bitter part of me wants to tell internal communications that the Internet is EXTERNAL and they need to get their nose out of it but I probably won't. I like being able to pay my mortgage.

So, get back to your regularly scheduled life.

No comments: