The menial tasks are appreciated

Years ago at a previous job, I once had my manager say to me, “Ray, I have a job that really, really sucks, but someone has to do it, and it needs to get done. You game?”

Without getting too deeply into it (mainly because it’s sufficiently long enough ago that I don’t remember the details, anyway), the task was to clean up a conference room after we’d used it for a celebration. (I don’t remember what it was for, but I do remember that there was food involved.) I told him, “I got it. Don’t worry about it.”

So I went ahead and cleaned up the mess we’d left behind in the conference room. I didn’t fuss, and I didn’t complain. It had to be done, and someone had to take care of it. Not the greatest of tasks, but I can tell you that my coworkers appreciated my effort.

I was reminded of that recently, when I had to work on a task that involved a lot of tedious work. My coworker who assigned me the task understands just how much effort and tedium is involved. She gave me a thank-you and told me something like, “I know how crappy this is. I appreciate you taking care of it.”

The point here is that menial tasks are not sexy, glamorous, or exciting. You might not like them. But people appreciate you a lot more when you can get them done. This reflects well on you, and ultimately can even benefit you. You’re viewed positively as someone who takes care of little things without complaint (although, admittedly, I do crack some jokes about it — e.g. “what year is this? Is it still 2022?” and so on).

Menial tasks don’t necessarily add anything to your resume, but they do add style points to your personality. People will appreciate you for the extra effort. And that’s never a bad thing.

Advertisement

When is “good enough” good enough?

If there’s one thing that I struggle with (and I’ll bet the house that I am not alone), it’s determining when something I’m working on is at a point where it’s “good enough for government work” (as the saying goes). Whenever I work on anything — whether it’s a work task or an extracurricular project — I always want to put in my best effort. As my personal mantra often goes, always put in your best effort — I don’t care if you clean toilets for a living. Ideally, my goal is perfection every time.

The problem is, perfection is an unrealistic standard. I’ve written about this before, and I still believe it. We’re human, after all, and a big part of being human is that we are rarely, if ever, perfect. I’ve often said that perfection as a goal is okay, but perfection as a standard is unacceptable. Sure, every once in a while, a bowler will bowl a 300 game, or a baseball pitcher will pitch a perfect game, but neither can be expected to do so every time out. Setting perfection as a standard is impossible, and anyone who sets perfection as a standard really needs to rethink their priorities.

For me, this is a constant struggle. I want to do the best job possible every time. However, there are often factors that work against me: deadlines, schedules, task management, work load, lack of knowledge or experience, fatigue, and so on. Additionally, my work often coincides with something else; a teammate is often counting on my part in order for him or her to proceed with their task. We don’t work in a vacuum; we’re often part of a team, and we need to work together. This is true even if you’re an individual contractor; your customer often expects to see results.

So how do you measure when something is “good enough?” This is often subjective and hard to answer, but I’ll take a crack at it.

I’ll use one of my favorite (and oft used) examples: baseball. As I mentioned above, a pitcher isn’t perfect every time. He’ll often give up a few hits and walks. He might even give up home runs on occasion. But was his performance good enough for his team to win? A play-by-play announcer will sometimes say, “he didn’t have his best stuff tonight, but he kept his team in the game, and it was good enough to get his team the win.”

So with that, I’ll often use measures like these: did my team get the win? Did my teammate (or customer) get what (s)he needed from me in order to do what they needed? Did my efforts meet the requirements? Did my teammate accept my results? Did my efforts get the job done? And, most importantly to me, did I give it my best effort, given any impediments (time constraints, fatigue, degree of difficulty, experience — or lack of — with the task, etc.) that might be in my way?

If I’m able to answer yes to questions like these, then in all likelihood, I can say yes, my efforts were good enough.

I’ve landed!

After 388 days, 557 submitted resumes, and countless rejections, I’m happy to report that I have landed!

I have accepted a position for Insight Global. I will be working remotely as a technical writer for their client, PlutoTV! I start my new gig in a few weeks, depending on how long it will take for them to configure and send me my new work laptop!

I have made no secret about how stressful this job search has been, and I even talk about it in my job hunt presentation. Indeed, an entire calendar year is a long time to be without gainful employment, and it is the longest that I have ever gone without regular work. But I persevered and survived it, and I’m very much looking forward to this new opportunity!

Thanks to all of you who have followed my exploits and supported me!

The #Coronavirus chronicles, part 4: Getting accustomed to my work environment #COVID19

Earlier, I’d written about getting myself situated in my home office. While my environment is still not ideal — my place is still a mess, and I’m still working directly from my laptop, instead of connecting to a full-sized monitor, keyboard, and mouse, as I’d prefer — I’m discovering that, as I continue to work within this environment, I’m getting used to it more and more.

I’m noticing that I’m much more productive with this setup than I was sitting in the living room recliner with the TV on in front of me. As I write this, I’m sitting within the privacy of my own home office (hey, I’ve always wanted my own office; maybe this is how I get it!), I have some good jazz playing over my stereo speakers, and I’m getting my work done. It does make for a good, comfortable working environment.

When I go to the office, it typically takes me fifteen minutes to drive to my office, and that doesn’t count stopping at the corner Cumberland Farms or Dunkin’ Donuts for my morning coffee and a quick bite for breakfast. Now, my commute has been cut down to however long it takes for me to go from my bedroom to my home office downstairs (all of, by my estimate, fifteen seconds, not counting the time it takes for me to start the coffee maker, fix myself breakfast, or occasionally feed our two demanding cats).

Let me emphasize that I would still prefer a good monitor, keyboard, and mouse, as opposed to working right on my laptop. At some point, I’ll need to take the time to clean up my work space, maybe head to Best Buy and get some decent equipment, and get myself better situated. And if there’s one thing I’m missing, it’s the camaraderie of my office mates (our occasional virtual meetings notwithstanding). But when it comes down to it, this setup is likely one that I could get used to, if I absolutely have to do so.

The perfect workspace

My client office is in the process of redesigning and rebuilding the office space. The old environment was the traditional “cubicle farm,” along with individual offices used by managers. The new environment — still a work in progress — eliminates the cubicles and utilizes a more open office environment. Each worker who is not a director will have a desk — and not much more.

I have mixed feelings about the new setup. For over a year, space has been an issue; there had been talk about moving to a larger office. The new setup maximizes the use of space. The office spaces have a sleek, modern new look; it looks like a brand-new workspace (which it is), and the new furnishings appear comfortable and attractive. A part of me looks forward to relocating to a clean and shiny new desk. At the same time, it also leaves something to be desired; privacy is non-existent, I have no place to hang my jacket (I do NOT like putting it on the back of my chair), and seeing that many of us participate in virtual meetings through our computers, it could potentially get noisy.

Throughout my professional career, I’ve had a variety of workspaces. In my first job out of college, I didn’t even have a desk of my own; my “workspace” was a data center. Granted, I didn’t do a lot of “sitting at a desk” at that job; much of what I did involved roaming around the data center. Nevertheless, I wasn’t too happy that I didn’t have a space that I could call my own. My next job (and for many jobs afterward), I had my own cubicle. I once had an office (that I shared with another guy) with its own window and door. (I even bought a small dorm-sized cube refrigerator that we shared.) Other times, I worked (as I do now) in an open shared office space. And every once in a while when the need arises (daytime appointment, illness, bad weather, etc.), I’ll work at home in my own living room, sitting in my recliner with the TV on, my laptop, and (sometimes) Bernard — our tuxedo cat and my co-worker for that day — in front of me.

I wrote in an earlier article that I believe a comfortable workspace is important. (For the sake of context, “comfortable” means “I feel good in my workspace,” as opposed to “I love my job.”) Most of my waking hours during a typical week, I am in my workspace; for all intents and purposes, it is my home away from home. If I spend so much time at my workspace, I want it to be comfortable.

What makes a perfect workspace? It depends on the person. Personally, I like having multiple large monitors, a comfortable adjustable chair (that I always adjust to its highest position), a place to hang my coat (again, NOT on the back of my chair), some type of climate control (I usually prefer it cooler, so I usually have a small fan at my desk), a little space where I can put my wife’s picture on my desk and a Syracuse pennant on the wall, and a little bit of privacy while still maintaining some face time with my co-workers. Even those requirements have changed over the years; at one point or another, I would’ve wanted a door that closed, a window with a view, and a place where I could put a small refrigerator. As time passed, those features became less important to me.

No workspace will ever be “perfect.” No matter how comfortable you make your work environment, there will always be some kind of flaw. Nevertheless, it should be a place where you’re comfortable while being productive. Consider it your “home” when you’re at work — because that’s essentially what it is.

Fun times in the office

Steve Jones’ post today about fun at work got me thinking about the fun times I’ve had in the office.  So I thought it’d be fun to write an article in which I shared a few photos of some fun times I’ve had in my workplace, past and present!  Enjoy!

Here’s a pic of me around the holidays.  As you can see, I just have to have something Syracuse-related at my desk.  I’m loyal to my alma mater; what can I tell you?

My office has a significantly large Indian population.  Last year, they had a Diwali celebration in the office, to which the entire office was invited!  This is a pic of the spread in the main conference room.  If you walked away hungry that day, it was your fault!

One day, we declared Hawaiian Shirt Day in the office!

This next pic is from a previous job, right after I was moved to a new desk.  My friends asked me if I had my stapler, so I took this pic.  Yes, it was a Swingline, but unfortunately, I didn’t have a red one!

Practical jokes abound!  One of my co-workers built this around another cube while the occupant was on vacation!

Of course, said co-worker got her revenge!

One day, one of my co-workers and I randomly showed up at work wearing these.  How often do you see two guys in the office randomly wearing hockey jerseys on the same day?

Another pic from another previous job.  I looked out the window, and saw this guy sitting on the street light!

And finally…  I occasionally need to work from home.  Here’s one of me where I’m working out of my living room…  along with my co-worker for that day!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Steve Jones recently asked: what were your best days at work, and what was your worst?  He also issued a challenge to write about our typical days at work.  In terms of writing about a typical workday, I have the first of four (per Steve’s challenge instructions) draft articles warming up in the bullpen; hopefully, I’ll crank that one out sometime within the next week or so.  But in the meantime, for this article, I want to take a moment to address the best and worst days.

In terms of the worst day, I don’t think there is any contest.  I think it’s pretty safe to say that 9/11 was my worst day at work.  (For the benefit of those of you who don’t feel like clicking my article link, I worked for a company that had an office in the World Trade Center — when 9/11 happened.)

In terms of the best days, however, that requires a little more thought.  It’s not that I haven’t had any great days — that isn’t true — it’s just that there are a number of them, and having been a working professional for (cough! cough!!!) years, trying to pick out a few that stand out over the years is difficult for me to do.  So what I’ll do is pick out a few project victories that I’ve had over the course of my career.  Granted, I’m picking these from the top of my head, and there very well might be others that were more significant that I’m not remembering right now, but for purposes of this exercise, I’ll write about some projects with which I was involved and take a measure of pride.

I’ll start with a project related to the worst day that I mentioned above.  One of my tasks was to maintain an inventory of the servers in our data centers.  For a long time, this was a tediously manual task.  I went through our data centers with a clipboard, checking to see what servers were in each rack, noting any changes and adding new servers and racks that I found.  I drew a map of each room in Visio, even going as far as to count the floor tiles so that I could draw them to scale.  I populated the maps with boxes representing server racks and came up with a naming scheme directly tied into a row-and-column location scheme, making it possible to identify and label each rack so they’d be easy to find.  Included with the maps was a listing of servers within each rack.  I maintained the Visio file on my PC, making sure it was backed up to a departmental file server, and keeping hardcopies in each server room as a reference for various IT workers.

Because this was a manual process, the maps were never completely accurate — I have no doubt that new servers were continually added in-between map updates — and it was a tedious process.  All the while, I kept thinking, “there has to be a better way to do this.”  Sure enough, I found one!

I discovered that all our servers included a product called Insight Manager.  Among other things, it included the ability to collect server BIOS information and store it in a format suitable for importing into a database such as SQL Server.  Using the Insight Manager data structure as a template, I set up a SQL Server database on one of our departmental servers and created a system that enabled it to import data from any server on demand through Insight Manager.  I now had a central database with server data that could be updated at any given time!

Of course, data isn’t information unless it can be interpreted and understood, so the next step was to create an interface for it.  I was responsible for maintaining a departmental intranet site; although it was an internal intranet, I treated it as though it was a full-blown web site.  I created a web site to display the server data stored in my back-end.  I took my Visio server room maps and created image files from them.  From the image files, I created image maps that enabled a user to click a server rack on the map, drilling down to a list of servers in that rack.  Clicking on a server displayed data for that server — serial numbers, IP addresses, applications, and so on.

My server inventory system, which I previously had to update manually, was now automated!

This project was a major milestone for my career.  It was my first significant foray into SQL Server.  (At that time, I hadn’t yet learned about data normalization; had I known about it, I could’ve made the back-end even better.)  It gave me some experience with image maps, HTML, and classic ASP (the technology used on that intranet server at that time).  Most of all, it was my first taste of what it was like to be a web applications developer.

Memories of this project also reminded me of another good day I had on the job.  One particular day, I traveled to remote offices in Yorktown Heights and Middletown to survey their data centers for the server inventory system that I just described.  I hopped into my truck (I owned a small Toyota pickup truck at the time) and drove to Yorktown.  It was a gorgeous picture-perfect day; the sun was out and it was comfortably warm with low humidity.  It was comfortable enough that I left the air conditioner turned off and drove the entire trip with my windows rolled all the way down.  It was the kind of day where I wished I owned a convertible!  My route between the Yorktown and Middletown offices took me through the Bear Mountain area, including traversing the Hudson River over the Bear Mountain Bridge.  If you’ve never driven through that area of New York State, it is an absolutely picturesque and beautiful drive.  The entire trip was so fun and relaxing that it did not feel like a business trip at all; I actually felt as though I was on a vacation!

Finally, I want to talk about one last project in which I had a hand.  In one of my first jobs out of college (my second job out of school, actually), I was responsible for supporting my company’s document imaging system at a client site (a client that eventually ended up hiring me directly).  One of the system’s components was a WORM optical platter jukebox that was in constant use and occasionally needed operations maintenance, which ranged from simple tasks such as inserting an optical platter to complex ones such as restarting it when it locked up.  The device had to be operational 24/7, even at hours when we were not in the office.

I was tasked with putting together a small set of instructions — nothing big, just a few pages — that explained how to perform these tasks, including the correct way to insert a platter, what to do when (unfortunately, not if) the machine stopped working, and so on.  It needed to be written in such a way that the night maintenance staff could maintain the device.  So I sat down in front of my PC with a blank MS Word file and said to myself, “if I was a member of the night staff, what would I want to read that would enable me to perform these tasks?”

I had intended for the document to be a simple three to four page quick reference.  As I wrote and came up with more ideas that would help the readers who would be using it (including the innovative — for me — use of illustrations), the document kept getting bigger and bigger.  I don’t remember how big it eventually became, but I think it was somewhere in the ballpark of thirty pages.  I had absolutely zero technical writing experience at the time; I wrote the document completely by instinct.  I didn’t really know what I was doing; I just did things (illustrations, headers, subject organizations, etc.) that made sense to me.

The final product was a huge success — so much so, in fact, that management developed a training program based around this document.

A couple of years later, I discovered that nearby Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute had a Masters degree program in technical communication (note: I am not entirely sure if the program still exists).  I had been interested in pursuing a graduate degree, and I thought the program sounded interesting, so I decided to apply.  During my application interview with the faculty, I brought along a copy of that operational jukebox document I’d written.  I explained that I’d written the document completely by instinct and with no knowledge or experience in technical writing whatsoever.  The faculty seemed to be impressed with my effort on that project.

I was accepted into the program.  I now have an MS from RPI hanging on my home office wall and listed on my resume.

This article ended up being a lot longer than I expected.  Looking back on this exercise that Steve assigned, I suppose my good days at work were more significant than I thought.  These projects were major events that ended up shaping this professional career.  I suppose the moral of the story is not to underestimate job achievements.  You never know where they might lead!