One of the funny things that tech corporations do a lot of is shuffle people from bldg to bldg.

I’ve been in tech since tech was new, so of course, I’ve done a hell of a lot of this. I’ve even done the moves myself, when I worked for a startup in this dim and distant past; being the lowest paid guy in the company (one of maybe three without a PHd behind my name), i got all those extra jobs, like building stuff, tearing stuff down, moving heavy things, and driving the company truck (because I had a truck, and no one else did, it became The Company TRuck).

The thing that seems ironic now, though, is that physical proximity to co workers matters almost not at all for most companies now. Most of us in tech – at least the engineers – get more done when we’re away from our cubicles than when we’re in them. So the push to gather a team together in one room, area or bldg is a loosing battle for a company that’s growing.

I’m lucky enough to work for such a company, so we’re doing lots of poorly-planned body shuffles.

It’s frustrating; putting us together won’t help us work, but moving us disrupts work. Our last move was dreadful, costing me vastly in terms of productivity. And it failed the goal of putting a team together, because we tried to shoehorn three teams into room for two, and thus wound up splitting all three teams worse than when we started.

Tomorrow, we go again, and it’s the same thing; three teams into one bldg, and by the time we move, space is already too short to fit everyone, even with cubes cut down to 2/3 normal size.

For what? So managers who don’t really get it can know where everyone sits.

There’s an upside though. My current bldg is absolutely horrible. Oh, it looks great, but as a working environment it’s dreadful. Every mistake you can make in terms of lighting and sound has been made. So the new bldg – literally two parking lots down the road – has to be better, if only because it can’t be worse. So if we stay there loger than a year, the productivity should be a sum gain only because the environment may be less noisy and unpleasant. BUt that’s only a win if we don’t move again in six months, because a move like that always costs weeks of disruption.

And again, why? When we could work literally anywhere, in any bldg. Moving one employee is easy; moving a bldg-full is a huge undertaking.

Corporation, I guess we could say, are stupid.

On the other hand, we get friday off. So it’s not a complete loss.

That last entry was kind of grim, huh? I know I’ve written something grim when no one comments, but but I get email from loved ones saying “are you ok” or “I’m worried about you”.

The downside of tranks (which I just adore), is that there’s a bit of a crash on the tail end. I wish I had a cut-and-pastable version of Art Pepper’s autobiography, straight life (which is fucking brilliant), because it captures the extremes of this like nothing else]. People with psychosis disorders or extremes of depression sometimes find it leaves them with, in effect, all the misery and black depression that it’s held off for ten to twelve hours, collected and concentrated and experienced all at once. I’m lucky. all I get, the rare times I take it to help me sleep, is an hour or two of grumpiness on the tail end, before my psyche self-corrects.

That’s not to say any of what I wrote yesterday was inaccurate; but the tone wound up more intensely bleak than is my usual style due to lingering effects, and oncoming trank hangover. I consider that actually a good thing, because it helped me actually get over a verbal drought and say something.

The problem I’m having, lately, is a combination of a huge hit to my productivity, and a vastly increased workload (trying to build a side business of my own, as well as my team at work having to support many, many projects at the same time).

It sounds like I’m whining when I say this. But it’s really causing me a problem. Being productive isn’t really my most consistent skill at the best of times.

Going from having an office to living it cube-land has been disastrous for me. Sure, I was a cube-dweller for the better part of two decades before I started my current job, so it’s not like I’ve never been there. But I have a huge problem with distraction. In the past, I managed that by staying incredibly busy doing fairly linear work, and by working at home when I could (in my previous job, that was almost half my time). This job’s different. Partly because my team are less staffed, partly because we’re more specialized, partly because the schedule we’re on is vastly more accelerated. And also because my current employer still functions like a pre-internet company and does things face to face, in meetings and hallway conversations. So crucial support people need to be physically in the office, and physically near the key users.

For me, this is the very worst environment for productivity. I don’t sound-screen well; I hear everyone around me having a dozen different conversations. I don’t visually screen; my peripheral vision is acute, and I track movement and changes in light constantly. In my old bldg, I had control over light (I left it off all the time, with only natural window light). I could screen sound by closing my door or playing music. I could even drop my blinds and lock my door for when distraction was at it’s worse (or, you know, so I could catch up with my favorite web cam girls).

For me, that was as ideal a situation as I could have, working in an office bldg. I was close to my user community, but I had methods to manage my environment, and my distraction level.

The bldg I’m in now is, frankly, about as badly designed as is possible for a modern office bldg. What I suspect is that it was designed by architecture students who’d never actually worked in an office, because the wrongness is so fundamentally obvious. Hard walls everywhere; offices and conference rooms walled in glass. Cube walls are half glass (thus blowing both reasons for cubes; sound screen and privacy). Celings are high, and the lighting has two options (off and as brightly glaring as a stage). Most of the flooring is hard surface, with the little carpeted area hard at leather, and black, a color that shows every bit of dust and spilled food. Instead of conference rooms, we have un-walled “soft seating” areas.

In all this noise-and-light-fest, I wound up in the worst corner in the bldg; a corner that sticks out into a major walkway, at the junction of stairs, and coffee/break area. My corner is bombarded with constant slamming doors, loud chatter, roaring coffee machines (they’re as loud as espresso machines), and traffic moving past my glass-walled cube in a never-ending stream. And of course, with no sound buffering, every person in the area is party to every phone conversation anyone has.

Use Headphones, people say. But unfortunately, my inherent jumpiness and resistance to vulnerability makes me loath headphones. I’ve never been able to work in them, and don’t even like them when I’m alone in my house. As much as I loved a doobie and dark side of the moon back in the day, I still always preferred to have the lights off and the speakers screaming than a pair of headphones.

So the last few months have been a constant struggle for me at work. And it cascades; I can’t make personal calls at work the way I used to, so I’m no longer able to use my breaks to manage personal business. I used to do my banking, make appointments, all manner of things that needed both the phone and business hours, from my desk in between tasks (because let’s face it, there are always moments of the day when we’re goofing off, and it was better than playing solitaire, checking facebook, or visiting ‘guess her muff’). Now, I can’t make my goof-off time personally productive; I’m not making appointments I need to make (dentist, chiropractor, tax guy, etc).

The sum of it all is that I feel harried all the time; I feel like I’m incredibly busy. But I’m not getting enough done. I can feel my time getting wasted. I’m not even enjoying it when I fuck off, because I know when I’m done it’ll be even worse.

I don’t have a solution for this right now. My company is in a space crunch (which is good, ultimately; we’re growing, hiring in a down economy, but it has a short term cost in terms of comfort). My building, built to house two organizations with growth room, was full before we’d even moved in. And being a key support person, no one wants me off site, not even one bldg over, because they feel my attention on them means they get better support (they’re profoundly wrong, I respond best to email, not to being accosted in the hall).

Sure, it’s easy to say i’m lucky to have a job, that if I worked in a filthy place for a shitty wage doing dangerous work, I’d dream about a job like I have now. And I know that’s true, I’ve had jobs like that. My problem is,I’m better than this. I’m capable of being not good, not competent, but truly great at my job. And right now, I’m not there. I’m struggling to maintain mediocrity, and that isn’t enough for me. I could be mediocre for a lot less stress than this.

I guess the answer is I need to make some fundamental change. I know that; two weeks ago on a whim I sent a resume to facebook (they had a job listed that was a perfect fit for me, though they were too stupid to realize that and send me a polite form blow-off letter.) I don’t think I actually wanted to work for facebook; I think something in me just knew I needed to start thinking about what I’m doing, what I want to be doing, and what the delta between these is. I don’t have an answer yet, But I guess I know that’s the question.

I’m only posting this because I’m sick of looking at those stupid fucking ferrets.

While I certainly have plenty to talk about, I’m actually way too aggravated – not to mention fatigued – to be all that eloquent.

It’s just been one of those weeks at work. The ones where everything breaks and you get caught holding the bag for crap that’s someone else’s fault. You know the kinda think I mean, you know you do.

In our case, it’s a combination of tool problems, pilot errors, and impossible expectations, coupled with new management and executive personnel who haven’t quite figure out that mean team are the Ghostbusters and Team America and Winston Wolf all rolled into one. Oh, they’re figure it out after a while, but not ’til after they try to manage us for a while (and when I say manage, I mean et in our goddamn way).

Oh, and there’s that choice to double our workload, now, with no resources and no ramp time, and no budget. Thank You Sir, May I Have Another.

But nevermind. I just want those ferrets gone.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out what to have embedded in one of these incredibly cool custom-made shift knobs for my car. I can’t decide if i should take one of my skull rings (one of the ones I like the least), or if I should get a flaming spade from my friend Carlos from Sinners in. Or maybe some kind of pin that says elvis if I can find the right one (I want something in silver script). The guy can also embed stuff like pins or badges or even something like a poker chip or a spade cutout from a playing card.

Too many choices. And I’m open to ideas. I don’t wanna spend a shit-load of money though ’cause I’m already spending too much on crap for this car (it’s that kinda car)

There. Now at least we’re somewhat ferret-free.

Y’ever try your best to help someone who just won’t be helped?

Actually I’m talking about work. We pretty much all have been there when it comes to personal life.

I’m in deadline hell; the story is complicated and even if it were worth telling, I couldn’t really tell it anyway. But to tell a short version, there are software licenses that expire at the end of this month, I have travel plans that eat half a week next week, and due to plans gone awry (I suddenly want to say it like bobby burns, Gang aft agley), and due to unexpected software bugs, I suddenly find that I need to replace infrastructure software two months sooner than expected.

Ok. I can do that. CAD tools and engineering infrastructure is what I do. Solve Problems. Only here’s the thing; sometimes one man can’t do it all.

The tool I’m replacing – a batch queueing system – is wired into every damned thing, in about twenty different ways. Which means that the things that need to change are not all under my control. But I can manage that, I’ve got plans and schedules. I don’t really need sleep, you know, and I can ignore my friends and put off things that need doing at home and at work.

Only today, one of the users I’m giving it all for came back to me with a whole new plan which consisted of, “no, I don’t know anything about what you’re doing, and don’t really understand what you’re asking, but I reject it and propose you do it all my way.”

Ten years ago, I guess I would have come back with exact details on why he’s such a fucking moron and explained to him that if he’d just try doing things the right way (ie,my way), suddenly most of the problems he’s having would go away, fucking *poof*. And then I would have stared updating my resume.

Sigh. Sometimes growing up sucks.

I managed to respond in a businesslike way, clarifying that 1) I was doing all this to support his team, 2) no, the solution he countered with was technically impossible, and 3) his fears of disaster were based on not understanding the technology. And I even said it all without using the word ‘idiot’ even once. Tomorrow, I fully expect him to re-iterate his points, adding extra emphasis, in effect saying “I don’t have time to read your email, just go make pigs fly for me, slave!”.

And I’ll brandish imaginary weapons, then I’ll go solve his problem against his will, knowing that I’ll win in the end, without him ever knowing I’ve again saved him from himself.

It’s a thankless task, but someone’s gotta do it.