Mixed Blessings
The realization of the lost month hit her all at once when she received the email announcement. She didn’t know what to do so she reread the email again, then printed it and read it yet again. As she read her email, she realized that the whole thing was a complete and absolute waste of time. Once she allowed herself to catch up with her racing mind, she crumpled up the hard copy email and threw it away. Within a few minutes, she turned off her office light, logged off her computer, grabbed her purse and left to get drunk. It didn’t matter what time it happened to be that moment, it was time to have a few stiff drinks and re-shuffle the cards. She was literally out of the door when she returned, grabbed the crumpled email, stuffed it into her briefcase and continued with her original plan of imbibing. This email was a lesson worth preserving. As
the stubborn consequences of her hangover combined with the litany of
ridiculous and recent circumstances, she finally understood the
absurdity of both her job and the work environment; which apparently
surrounded everything in her life. Every month, she dutifully listed her
accomplishments, issues and concerns making a summary of monthly efforts
but this report was going to be different. The task usually took less
than an hour, as one month’s report was an updated version of the
earlier month’s report. This report, which would also be sent up the
chain to the bosses, would take more time to compose. Her
boss, would collect all her subordinate’s reports, and cut and paste
them into a new report, which was sent to the next set of bosses. This
collecting, regurgitating and reformatting of activities would continue
until they reached the desk of the President of the company by the tenth
of each month. The thirty plus page report was a collection of activity
that was actually completed by junior and mid-management types; parsed
and politically altered by subsequent levels of senior management to
represent the activity of the entire group. The President would review
it as if he was looking at the TV Guide; specifically seeking out his
favorite programs and rarely deviating from the pattern. If someone
wanted to slip in a paragraph of greeked gibberish, the chances were
better than fifty/fifty that it could have made the final rollup report. A
report has an illusion of readability in the same vein as a bestseller,
which is purchased but is rarely read by anybody. It sits there,
uncracked and dormant, almost challenging the reader to actually take
the time to absorb both the content and the writer’s intent of
enlightening the audience on an issue. However, this illusion quickly
dissipates as the new report arrives before the old report is read and
digested, forcing the reader to promise themselves that they will make
every effort to read it over the weekend or on the next plane ride. That
promise falls by the wayside and the next report comes dutifully at the
tenth of the next month and the second report suffers the same fate as
the first report. This pattern of unread information continues with a
cruel consistency but the first line supervisors continue producing the
variations on a theme and the second line supervisors take the
variations and blend them into yet another version of their last
variation and the cycle of contrived and useless insights continue
unabated, ignored and unread. The handy bromide of “perception is
reality” was created not by a modern-day philosopher but rather by
some tired executive named Bill who couldn’t find the time to read an
executive summary. “Bill,
what do you think of the report?” “It
is hard to say.” “What
do you mean? Did you read the report?” “Of
course I looked at it but remember that perception is reality.” “What
does that mean?” “It
means that I will read it, some day.” “Oh,
I understand. Where did you get that ‘perception is reality’
response?” “I
am not sure. I might have read it somewhere.” Shelby
Donald started writing her report and instead of concentrating on the
act of updating and editing her last report, she made the fatal mistake
of thinking about it for the first time. Usually, she would move bullet
points from the “tasks/projects planned” section to the
“tasks/projects underway” section and make a few edits in tense and
content. Items from the “tasks/projects completed” would then be
deleted or edited (depending on the activity) and items from the
“task/projects future” would enjoy reclassification as
“tasks/projects planned” or “tasks/projects held” depending on
the bureaucratic winds of the moment. This hierarchy of defined effort
had a hard set of rules: issues lived and died through the spectrum of
evolutionary effort. These categories were, in the nomenclature of the
company, ordered as future, approved, planned, underway and completed.
It didn’t matter what the actual effort entailed, the steps were the
steps and you dropped them into the slots and pushed it up the line. Shelby,
when reviewing her month, moved the task of interviewing for a security
manager from the “planned” section to the “completed” section;
an effort that literally spanned from the alpha to the omega. This
effort took approximately twenty-five working days during the month
which meetings and interviews that ate up six to seven hours a day.
Initially flattered to be part of the interview team, the actual process
began a quagmire of droning discussions only broken up with desperate
interviewees kowtowing to a four-person team of increasingly cynical
interviewers. The content of the recent email provided even a deeper
sting once she saw the total collision of wasted time, dysfunctional
management and a distinct veneer of stupidity across the top of the
whole crap fest. The
company was apparently a big fan of two of the most annoying personnel
interview practices: using scripts of pre-determined questions and
presented those questions within a team environment. These two interview
strategies then combined to provide the perfect storm of Human Resources
(HR) misery as the team of brain-dulled interviewers is forced to engage
in scripted prattle with candidates stressed to the point of
self-urination. The collective indifference was only surpassed by the
frantic, cloying desire of the applicant to put up with this
esteem-destroying exercise without imploding from the stress of their
forced smile and illusion of engaged demeanor. Shelby
remembered a quote long credited to Voltaire in which he said that
“God was a comedian working in front of an audience that was afraid to
laugh.” She was not one for tossing out obscure quotes to impress but
for some reason, she was able to pull that quote out of her subconscious
with ease. She smirked when the thought of quote enjoying some practical
legs in conference rooms everywhere three hundred and fifty years after
Voltaire opened with that material in some palace somewhere. The
involvement started easy enough when Shelby was asked to participate in
the interviews. Her background in HR and Information Systems (IS) were a
nice compliment to the group, which also included the hiring manager
representing the new Security Department, a HR representative and an
experienced technical professional. This team of four was going to find
the best candidate they could with the tools in front of them and it all
started with a plan. “Here
at the company,” began the HR representative with his own scripted
remarks, “we believe in scripted interviews.” “What
does that mean,” asked the hiring manager. “Can’t I make this
decision based on my own experience and observations?” “No,
you can’t. We believe in team efforts and the value and effectiveness
of team observations, not individual ones.” Shelby’s
stomach hurt: she saw where this was going. Not only would they have to
take turns with scripted interview questions, they would have to listen
to each other ask the same questions, in the same order, to all the
candidates that were up for the job. She literally shook her hand to rid
the images of dinner theatre troupes from her aching head. The
hiring manager had no more questions and the discussions began. Armed
with dozens of canned questions from some internal inventory, the group
slogged through every example, debating the merits and potential
shortcomings of each one. Given the wide range of experience and
differences in each of the four, the conversations lasted for several
days until the final list of twenty questions lay before the group.
Another four hours were needed to assign to each participant their
allotment of questions as well as the both the priority and planned
order of asking; the running order. Things got so anal that cues were
assigned so people knew when they could add follow-up questions and with
the last fifteen minutes, a seating order was even blocked out. This
first exercise took one entire week of time. For five straight days,
four supposed professionals sequestered themselves in a conference room,
arguing question content and debated hypothetical issues and personal
opinions as if they were facts. Shelby was a reluctant but polite team
member; the hiring manager was new and desperate to make a correct
decision while the HR representative was just happy to be engaging with
people other than his usual, smarmy peers. The final interviewer, the
supposed technical resource, was equally internally cynical as Shelby
but maintained an appropriate team attitude because he was the odd
combination of process loyal and professionally bored. The
unsaid but collective initial feeling was this exercise might not be
completely futile. This could have been the start of a pure exercise in
needs analysis and resolution. The politics involved with actually
adding someone new to the staff was complete and the budget dollars for
this needed but unplanned position was over. The work that these four
executives embarked on a few days ago was going to actually be brought
to fruition. The position description was read and re-read with
countless edits and cosmetic modifications imposed upon it. A headhunter
service was engaged to validate their findings and within a week, the
online posting hit websites, the various professional organizations and
even the newspaper. Within a few hours, the resumes started to come in
and the pile of potential candidates were presented to the group. The
pile of resumes, now dutifully collated with four copies of each
candidate, began to collect confidentially on the desk of the HR
representative. In the early stages of searches, the quantity was far
more important than the quantity. The paper pile calms the ignorant and
allows the HR representative the much-needed prop to wave their hand at
during updates. “I
have a ton of candidates,” the HR representative would crow, while
waving a hand either stage left or desk depending on their desk set-up
with the stack of resumes used as the ultimate prop to reassure folks
seeking redemption from the outside. Once the postings hit the web and
related mediums, the stack continued to grow the hiring manager was
drunk with specifics. So drunk, another meeting was called to raise the
bar even higher due to the corresponding height of the resume pile. More
and more requirements were added with reluctant agreement by the hiring
team. The
candidates were across the board: frustrated security ex-cop types,
mousy and introverted auditors, passive yet aggressive self-described
operational geniuses and the well-represented group of desperate job
seekers that compensated for their lack of occupational qualifications
with the desire to do something new. Finally,
the day came to begin the first round of interviews. The first two were
carbon copies of each other; both ex-military right down to their
spit-shined black shoes. The re-use of military issue shoes by veterans
always fascinated Shelby because of the analysis of motivation. Was it
another version of re-working dyed wedding shoes into a business
wardrobe or was it a calculated respect for fully utilizing government
property with no regard to the social stigma? Shelby was both unsure and
unimpressed no matter the reason. The
interviews were kindly parsed four hours apart, allowing the volunteers
to at least remain connected to the world around them but the long
scripted interview questions, detailed down to who owned which follow-up
question, was showing high potential to eat up the entire four hour
period. The two military types were literal copies of each other:
blathering on about standard operating procedures, MIL-SPECS, chain of
command and the respect for predictability. Neither were impressive in
person and Shelby began to suspect that the new HR representative was
confusing impressive resumes with resumes that were saturated with
jargon and abbreviations. At the end of the day, it did not matter how
they got an interview; they were both stiffs. Over
the two weeks, the four sat in assigned seats in a generic conference
room and went through the sisyphusian exercise with interview
after interview, asking the same questions and getting generally the
same answers. The next sets of candidates were no better than the
military duo. Each candidate had their basic experience that qualified,
in the loosest possible definition, them for consideration but they also
all had possessed some other qualification that easily declared them
unworthy of hiring. Inaccuracies in their timelines, incredibly stupid
answers to standard questions, troubling personal habits that
collectively turned off the committee and the mother of all turnoffs,
the smell of desperation combined with narrow mindedness. At
one break, Shelby asked the group some questions with the intention of
using the answers as an internal sorbet to cleanse her mental palate. “What
are we doing here?” “I
think we are looking for a new security manager reporting to
Kristine.” “And
how many people have we seen?” “I
lost count,” said the HR representative. “So
have I,” said Shelby. “I don’t know if it the inane script we are
following, the ponderous questions, the well-rehearsed adlibs or the
mind-numbing waste of time just to hire someone.” The
Security Director, now long past the novelty of hiring someone, finally
said the words Shelby had been currently fantasizing in her head for the
last several days. “I
have had enough. I can’t keep looking at people, no one is good
enough.” Shelby
knew a week ago that the combination of initial requirements compounded
by the secondary batch of requirements resulted in an impossibility of
satisfaction. No single individual could satisfy all the requirements
listed nor could they endure the amateurish attempt at
Machiavellian manipulation. The questions, the good intentions of the
volunteers and the lack of wisdom came together in this waste of time.
The sheer volume of questions seemed like a good idea at the time but
now, they were imploding under the weight of it all. “I
know this isn’t popular,” said the technical resource, “but none
of the candidates meet the qualifications set forth by this group last
week. A few come close but none achieve our agreed-upon standard.
It is clear that either we do what we want or comply with our
earlier decisions. Right now it is the worst of all worlds: spirit
sapping bureaucracy, built by us, which we are ignoring.” “Let’s
either save time and just make a decision or let’s actually comply
with our decision and redouble our recruiting efforts.
But what we are doing is wasting time and then ignoring our
earlier efforts. In fact, I would question the use of the word
‘recruiting.’ There has been no recruiting, but rather just posting
jobs and hoping something good walks in.” “Let’s
just make a decision,” said the supervisor. “I have to have this out
of my system.” “Out
of your system?” Shelby recognized the sound of her voice and was
surprised at its volume and intensity. “I have spent several weeks of
my life sitting in this room with the group, yammering on about
questions and their goals, our structure and plan and now you have
determined the time is a waste? I haven’t even addressed the candidate
quality and their collective demonstration of living torpor.” The
group’s eyes were down on their interview notes while Shelby
continued. She had spent time decompressing over the last week,
researching synonyms for stupidity and had been waiting all week to drop
‘torpor’ into a sentence. “We
discussed fifty multi-tiered and open-ended questions and re-discussed
them until their initial points were mired in individual, muddled
interpretation.” No
one said anything. “We
then combed through the resumes and since we made the qualifications
impossible, we have to water down our criteria to actually get people to
interview.” “Correct,”
said the young HR representative while he raised his head to re-engage. “Then,
after enduring two weeks worth of interviews in which we all sat
together and listened to the canned questions and the canned answers,
all scripted within an inch of their mutual life its life, we decide now
that it was a waste of time?” “Yes,”
said the Security Director. Shelby
picked up her notepad, handed the interview script with her notes to the
HR representative and walked to her office. This was a complete waste of
time; precious time that would never be recovered. The thought of
finding thing that could have been accomplished during this time period
began to pour into her head: to circle the globe, to build several
houses, to lose ten pounds or to get a great start on finding a new job.
They all seemed so valid, so sensible and so ridiculously distant. Shelby
did not formally quit the team but no one had the guts to see if she
wanted to come back into the fold for the next round. She heard a few
days later that an unseen internal candidate was going to be hired for
the position and that he was a majority of the first generation
qualifications. Shelby hoped that the HR representative had followed up
with the interviewees and assured them that the decision not to hire
them had nothing to do with their qualifications, but rather the
dysfunctional environment that made up the company. Three
weeks after the internal candidate was hired or transferred (Shelby
didn’t have the either the heart or genuine curiosity to ask), the
email arrived on her desktop. The Security Director’s job was
eliminated due to mounting internal labor costs and he was gone that
day. The new Manager found himself now reporting to a group at
headquarters that he didn’t know or didn’t meet for several months.
The rumor is that the new hire sat in his cubicle and waited for
instructions that didn’t come for months. Three
months after the Security Director was taken out, the technical
resource was also let go for similar reasons and the rumors of future
consolidations loomed large for everyone else. As Shelby began to put
together a resume for defensive reasons, the time wasting interview team
kept staying right in her face. It was a month of her life stolen
through stupidity and the time was never coming back. Shelby shook her
head and wondered what difference that month would have made on her
life, her job or her sanity. Shelby met one
of her best friends that day for lunch. Her hangover had subsided and
she was recovering nicely with a healthy salad, lots of water and adult
conversation. “There is good news in bad events and obviously, bad news in good events. Nothing is absolute and we need to realize that life is a series of ideas and issues, which can blend in fascinating ways,” said Shelby. Her friend,
still reeling from the story of the lost month, paused and asked, “How
so? It sounds like you had a month of your life stolen from you.” “I did but I
grow tired of people that make absolute declarations about things;
especially trying to sum up complex issues with simple solutions. Take
it from anyone who knows: things are not that simple.” “No argument
from me.” “We continue
to chip away at problems and do the best we can with what we have. The
many factors that effect issues, including time, money, culture,
education and energy. They will have significant influence on what
happens but don't kid yourself that a one sentence sum-up of an issue
does the trick.” “Well, if you
could sum it up, what would you say?” Shelby smiled
and said, “Life is always something: it might be complete crap from
eight to five but I am alive, healthy and have realized how lucky I am.
It is kind of a mixed blessing.” “How do you
feel?” “I feel better
now.” “What are you
going to do?” “I have to get a new job.” |
