Enjoy your Mondays, hate your Fridays

I find when people tell me how much they hate Mondays and how much they love Fridays, I get annoyed. Thanks, Captain Obvious, for pointing out that the last day of work before free time is better than the first day back to work from free time.

What I really can't stand is that people act like the hatred of Mondays is somehow ground-breaking. Oh you hate Mondays? Garfield hates Mondays! And.... Everybody else who works an office job.

Exactly. What really gets me are Tuesdays.

It's Tuesdays you have to watch out for.

I don't have anything against Mondays, I just hate the productivity spikes on Mondays and Fridays. Everyone starts sending requests and meeting invites on Monday as if they just learned how to use Outlook. Then, nothing really happens from Tuesday to Thursday (which makes the week long and boring). You spend all week putting back together the pieces of fragmented information co-workers threw at you on Monday. Finally, on Friday, everyone tries to finish everything they ever started so they can "enjoy the weekend". This is followed by them throwing more requests at you along with highly unrealistic deadlines.

Aside from the productivity spikes, I find it bizarre that we're so unable to connect with our co-workers that all we can talk about is how much we hate Mondays, how we can't wait for Fridays, and every little change in the weather. We've all suddenly become meteorologists in our efforts to avoid communicating with each other.

Enjoy the Mondays, maybe play a little "drinking game" with popcorn instead of alcohol. Annoy the staff by popping popcorn in the shared microwave and then eat a kernel each time you overhear some ridiculous comment about Monday or something about the weather.

Instead, choose to hate the Fridays, because that's the day people throw everything at you with no realistic timeline to accomplish it because they procrastinated. 

Everyone has a background in Marketing. Try again.

Not only is everyone a critic these days, but everyone has marketing skills. I hear a lot of boasting about being an "ideas person" more so than an administrative person. Hmmm...

Translation:

I'm happy to sit around and think up some ideas, but I'll be damned if I am doing any work!

If you aren't calculating statistical models predicting the impact of your ideas, you aren't an "ideas person". You are a lazy person. Wow, you thought of making the flyer blue? You're A-MAZ-ING. How the hell were you able to come up with that?

Highly paid children with crayons, I say.

Seriously, everyone wants to market something - it's like art class for grown-ups. No one really wants to do the heavy lifting, they just want to daydream and get paid for it. They want to feel like they can be a hero for sticking a stock photo of a koala bear on the packaging and creating a slogan including the "koala-ty" product. (This ACTUALLY happened in my presence. I struggled hard not to burst out laughing.)

The real shocker is how much people get paid to sit around and think about cool ideas. Those people are always making a killing. The people doing the legwork and paperwork? They make close to minimum wage and are treated like garbage. 

Being an ideas person isn't a special skill. Everyone has ideas. You know what actually IS a special skill? Being able to come up with good ideas and put them to work. Another special skill that is lacking in "ideas" land? Math.

Some HR folk are getting the message, they are looking for people who have ideas and can do math. It's a recession you know, employers do have the upper hand these days. There are those of us dreamers who envision a world where truly productive people get the money, but until then, I'm going to keep rolling my eyes at "ideas people".

Are you REALLY a "People Person"? Really?

Ever feel like you send out your résumé all over the place and still no bites? In some cases, it could be a matter of volume. You are simply a number in a stack of many numbers. Any one of you will do, so they blindfold themselves and choose one. This means you have about 1:200 odds of getting selected*.But, there could be other reasons why your résumé or CV doesn't get selected.

Sometimes, your particular style of prose makes your cover letter scream, "douche". An example would be:

I am looking to bring my interpersonal communication skills and customer relations abilities to your financial department.

There must be a book that insists you push your "people skills" front and center. Not only that, but the book would probably also be insisting you use the largest words you can conjure up to describe the most simple attribute. So you can talk to people respectfully? Tell me more about your marvels!

Ironically, there is a negative correlation between the amount of word space people dedicate to their people skills and how much they actually have. It's like the more a job candidate works to tell you they get along with people, the harder it is for that person to get along with someone.

Here's an actual nugget of wisdom, you want to prove you are a "people person"? Put up or shut up. Link actual people experience on your résumé into your cover letter; otherwise you be discounted as someone who searches for filler.

Also, if you aren't a people person, don't lie about it. Instead, choose to admit it gracefully like so:

I work very well independently, maintaining productivity with minimal supervision. 

It screams, "leave me alone if you want to live" in a good way. We can't ALL be people lovers.

Consider this, do you want to deal with people? Yes? Then talk about how you've done it in the past. No? Then don't lie about it because you'll get stuck dealing with people.

Chicken Soup for the Cubicle Drone

I hope you aren't expecting a heart-warming story about the community spirit of co-workers. This is actually about the soul-sucking attitudes people have adopted about coming to work sick. Not only can people not distinguish when and when not to come to work, but they comically think that they can judge everyone else on this matter.


Here's an example:

Penny is an administrative assistant. She has children and no tolerance for people who bring their germs into the office. Time and time again, she mistakes your allergies as a fake excuse to come to work with a cold (the HORROR) so you can infect her precious angels with the dreaded rhino-virus. This woman feels she is the judge and jury of when you should come to work. Penny doesn't give an F if you have deadlines. Her children's lives (despite being healthy children with no immune-system issues) are at stake!

You might be asking yourself if Penny puts her pride and joy little munchkins into daycare... She totally does. Yet, Penny, in her infinite wisdom, is still more concerned about YOUR germs over the cesspool that are daycare facilities. After all, her kids are immune to those germs. Apparently, all office-worker germs are airborne and H1N1 for sure.

Granted, we all hate the a-hole who shows up to work with norovirus and has an aversion to hand washing. That person is impossible to like. However, they tend to stay home for the most part as no one really enjoys having "a little accident" in front of co-workers.

Penny will publicly call-out anyone who dares to show up with the sniffles as she is the self-appointed mucus police. The irony is that because Penny "has kids" she "must" show up to work sick. The rules don't apply to Penny, because she has children. She has to take extra sick days because of her children. So, it's okay for her to get YOU sick because SHE has children.

Cold and flu season is coming up and I have prepared a simple way to tell whether it is advisable to stay home or come to work.

1. Do you have a fever?
2. Have you vomited or had diarrhea in the past 24 hours?
3. Do you have a deep, violent cough that brings up lots of mucus?
4. Do you have pinkeye?
5. Do you have head-lice?

If you have answered yes to any of the questions above, you need to stay home and consult a physician. This isn't medical advice, it's etiquette. Don't go saying I gave you medical advice, because I didn't.

Now, if you come to work because you have a runny nose without a fever and a headache, it could be sinus pressure. Tell Penny that perhaps her and her kids would be best suited for life in a plastic bubble. If that doesn't work, encourage Penny to kindly shut the hell up and have a wonderful day.

HR Skeletons in the Age of Information

It used to be that when you worked for an organization, aside from a background check, there was no real way of knowing who you worked with. Was there a sex offender in your cubicle row? Was Brenda from accounting really a stripper on the weekends? Sadly, I have worked with both strippers and sex offenders. Why sadly for BOTH? Well, in case you weren't aware, sex offenders have committed a sexual crime.

Oh you mean the strippers? Well, I don't know if you have had the pleasure of working with a stripper before, but lets just say that the daddy issues often accompany them. They won't think twice about using their assets to score perks on the job. They were paid to do it time and again!

I'm not being judgmental. Somewhere out there, a stripper with a "heart-of-gold" is offended. I am only speaking in generalizations, hun. Keep those necklines high and your nose in your books and we're good.

Thanks to the ever-impressive (and time wasting) internets, you can Google-stalk your way around your entire office. However, the things you will see, cannot be unseen. Be prepared for the consequences of your keywords. It could be eye-opening and scary.

This is a double edged sword, you know. What you think might be hidden in your personal life, could be recreational reading to your co-workers. That weekend in Miami could be watercooler gossip if you are not careful. You think you were cool when you posted the pic of you doing shots out of your beach BFF's belly button, but I assure you, it gets less cool the older you get.