Topics at Work

As you may or may not know, Krista is my work buddy.  I wonder if everyone has those work buddies…those people that you talk to ten times a day, go to break and lunch with, etc.  The great thing that comes of our meetings are our radical ideas for the office.  Here’s some thoughts over the past few weeks…feel free to skip these if you have lunch with us each day considering you’ve undoubtedly heard about them.

Our summer student film crew – In thoughts of resurrecting the Morning Show, we talked about how we usually have some interesting conversations and that our lives (in our minds) are pretty exciting to the outside world.  So then we thought that we need a film crew and what better way to get one, but to apply for a grant from the Federal Government for some summer students!  Note the pluralized version because we would need two cameras…one to follow myself and one to follow Krista.  Considering we need 22 minutes of footage to make up your regular 30 minute sitcom, we feel that we can definitely gather enough daily material to get this done considering we spend a minimum of 1.5 hours together.

Survivor in The WorkPlace – We’ve all had bosses who just don’t make the cut.  Of course, we can talk about those who do make the cut (Hello Catherine!) but let’s focus on the negative for a moment.  There’s always some managers who just don’t seem to grasp reality and you wonder what plane of existence they are on and whether or not (probably not) they are sharing the same plane that you are working in.  A prime example is from our good friend Mike who comments how after every team meeting, someone goes to a ‘higher-up’ meeting, but when they are sharing the information, they say something like “Well, they talked about Topic X, but I don’t know much about that.” and then some team member has to fill them in.  I will excuse ignorance only to a certain point…if you’ve been around the block for two years…not so much.

So, we recommend that a Survivor-type probation period be in effect.  USUALLY there is some form of formal competition process to get a promotion which is fine and dandy if the person who wins is great, but sometimes it doesn’t work that way.  There should be a six month probation period for the manager and then you go to Tribal Council.  Your team decides whether or not you stay on or off the island.  Now, the manager can do whatever they want to ensure they remain there…bribes, beer, women, whatever.  Heck, this is what a good manager should provide anyhow!  But this way ensures that if you’re good enough, you will obtain the respect of your team and if not, well you weren’t cut out to lead that particular team anyhow.

Ratings – What employees need are ratings to show them how they are doing around the block.  Let’s say you just came out of a meeting and someone pissed you off by hogging all the talk-time by focussing on their issues.  That’s just plain rude.  We should be able to go back to our office, and indicate that this person should have a decrease in their ratings due to their rudeness.  While this method hasn’t been ironed out yet (and we would hope it doesn’t affect your rates of pay!), we feel that if we saw that our rating was low, we would definitely be calling up Trish ASAP to make us some cookies that we could give to co-workers to win them over (however we would never tell her this.  We would tell her it’s for some firemen.)

There you have it.  What goes through my mind in a given day.  Don’t even get me started on how I think we should hold a raffle to get rid of Benoit’s 50″ television (which he can’t seem to sell for $400 anyhow, if anyone’s interested).