Please don’t misunderstand me.  I understand that the laws that are in place are to protect the equal employment opportunities of the disabled and to protect them from gut-reaction prejudices of potential employers who possibly cannot see beyond their handicaps to the very capable people they could be outside the handicaps.  However, the political and social climate today is forcing an unnatural pressure on employers to hire the disabled to make up a decent diversity profile for their companies.  What employers are being forced to do is to ensure their employee-base is made up of certain proportions of gender mix, racial mix, and now, abled to disabled mix.  Some employers are falling back on some old affirmative-action ploys of having “token” disabled employees on their staff, while others have slated certain positions to be staffed by disabled persons, exclusively.

At first, I was impressed by our local grocery stores partnering with the local advocacy agencies to hire the mentally disabled.  However, as I return home trip after trip from these grocery stores with torn bags, crushed bread and broken eggs, I ask myself if there couldn’t possibly be a better way.  I still remember the days when it was encouraged to tip your baggers, and in return, they would cushion your eggs and bread separately, and walk you to your car and load your groceries for you.  If the disabled employees need and can be provided additional training and then be able to perform these bagging duties properly, then by all means I encourage this practice.  However, every disabled person’s needs and abilities are unique, and to pigeon-hole them into the role of bagger when they may not be able to handle the tasks of sorting items and judging the proper ways to package purchases is setting up your employee for failure, hurting the reputation of the business and alienating your customers.

On the other side of the employment fence, I wonder if it is fair to the entire work-force to staff by numbers specific ratios of handicapped individuals.  Obviously, the current laws are in place to protect those individuals who can perform their duties but may suffer discrimination due to an obvious handicap.  However, when hiring new employees to perform duties, especially those in customer service areas, is it fair to the new employee, the current employees who would have to work with them, and to the customers to hire someone whose handicap(s) may actually hinder their service skills?  Once again, you are setting up an employee for failure, alienating customers, and now you are placing an additional burden on the employee’s co-workers to pick up the slack or even to repair damage caused by your disabled employee’s limitations.

Disability awareness should never be dropped, and the laws are in place for a good reason.  However, when implementing or adhering to the guidelines for hiring disabled persons, employers should follow the entire guidance – which is that a potential employment candidate should not be overlooked due to a handicap, IF that employee can otherwise carry out the basic duties of that job.  Many times employers are hiring disabled persons who CANNOT carry out the basic duties of their positions, merely to be able to state that they have hired persons with disabilities.  This practice does no one any good – not the employer, not the disabled employee, not the co-workers, and especially not the customers.

Apparently, some fundamentalist, right-wing, religious group believes that God is punishing this entire country by killing off our brave soldiers in a concocted war to punish us as a nation for our collective depravity.  According to one on-camera interview (and don’t they just pick peaches for the spotlight?), the soldiers won’t stop being killed until we wake up and fly straight.

As I was watching this story, I was screaming at the television set, “That soldier died fighting for the very freedom that you are enjoying by defiling his last farewell!”  (Oooh, I guess I need to go apologize to my neighbors!)  The more I thought about this particular irony, the angrier I got.  How often do we hear about, or see, really outrageous happenings?   Social boundaries are no longer being observed.  Common decency and respect have flown out the window.  There are so many things that people do, that I ask myself: How were they raised? Where did they get their values?  I would never think that it would be ok to do some of these things.  What makes them different from me?  What makes me different from them?  Why don’t I think it’s ok to do what they’re doing?  Why do they think it’s ok?

We are so lucky to live in a country where we feel entitled to our freedoms.  We demand our rights to free speech and to bear arms and to assemble.  We sure aren’t shy about exercising those rights.  Heaven help those in our way.  Do we forget that those rights come at a price?  I think we do.  Courageous people a few hundred years ago struggled against all odds to win us these rights.  Brave men and women die every day to keep those rights for us. 

I’m addicted to fantasy adventures, where the good guys fight epic battles against evil.  They all seem to have one thing in common.  The good guys are hampered constantly by the very rules and values and morals they fight to protect and uphold.  The bad guys, the evil villains, the enemy do not feel constrained at all by those rules.  They bend them, they break them, they run around them in order to get what they want no matter the cost.  In my novels, the wonderful authors always write a climactic victory for our heroes, where the virtues they champion ultimately win the day.  I fear that in reality, there is no benevolent hand penning the plotline.  I fear for the good guys.  I sorrow for the father burying his son who had to endure the protestors marring his son’s memory by exercising their rights the young soldier died to protect.

So many of us are so very casual about what we say, or type. I’ve harped on this topic in prior rants, I mean posts, so I won’t bother with it again. However, I have recently discovered a new foible of the masses-enabled age: misuse of document types.

I am plagued by notifications that send out publications, forms, announcements and presentations in the wrong format. I am not referencing file formats, such as MS Word vs. Corel WordPerfect. What astounds me are the announcers of events who create single page, static-content flyers in Microsoft PowerPoint. What ever possesses someone to create an order form in Publisher, rather than in MS Word, or better yet, fillable PDF? Contact management databases in a spreadsheet, rather than a database system? Computer users should not be let loose unsupervised until they have had some basic training.

What is amazing also, is the amount of email traffic with hidden agendas, literally. You receive tons of emails daily. Many of today’s email programs are advanced enough to not only present the subject and sender of an email, but sometimes a brief summary or preview of first lines. This is completely circumvented by emailers who attach files with all the pertinent details but include none of the data in the body of the message.

The above situation frustrates me to no end, when the attachment is finally accessed, and it turns out to be a one-page PowerPoint flyer, which contains information that could certainly have been included in the body of the email message, instead of or in addition to the attachment!

So, let me brow-beat some of my categorizations below. When creating the following types of documents, use the following formats:

Word-Processor (e.g. MS Word):
Almost everything – anything not mentioned elsewhere should at least start as a word-processed document.
- one-page flyers including event announcements, birth announcements, meeting details, get-togethers, congratulatory or laudatory missives
- instructions, including form and information gathering

Slideshow or Presentation software (e.g. MS PowerPoint):
- slideshows, which should have multiple slides, not just one
- slides to accompany live presentation
- stand alone slides with automatic advancement and/or audio accompaniment for distributed presentations

Spreadsheeting software (e.g. MS Excel)
- data analysis/statistical manipulation
- accounting
- formulaic and comparison analyses

Database software (e.g. MS Access)
- data storage / tracking – contact management (names, addresses, service/contact tracking)

Publication software (e.g. MS Publisher)
- final product is to be hard-copy – magazines, newsletters, newspapers, flyers, NOT MEANT to be distributed electronically
(NOTE: MS Publisher is meant as a lay-out tool, not a presentation tool. Once a product is created, it should be output to paper, or .pdf.)

PDF software (e.g. Adobe Acrobat)
- final product is to be soft-copy – electronically distributed anything – final product of any of the above is meant to be viewed only, and no modifications to be accepted, and also for aesthetics and presentational purposes

Disclaimer: All the above is just “my opinion,” and I also know that I will always continue to receive emails with attachments that are in completely the wrong format, but I just had to get this out there, and hope I can convert one or two people.

We work in an environment ruled by fear.  We are afraid of being perceived as cold, calculating and aloof.  We do not want to be judged as unfeeling and one-tracked.  What is actually wrong with being one-tracked and goal-oriented?  What is wrong with wanting to do a good job and deliver?

We are so focused on soft-skill training that we are completely neglecting the nurturing of our actual business skills.  Look around, you will see seminars offered endlessly on change management, team-building, sensitivity training and morale-boosting.

Let me give you a short course on all those topics.  Morale-boosting and Change Management:  The best tool that helps me in both those areas is this fabulous thing I call a paycheck.  Change happens; you can either roll with it and be comfortable or resist it and be the first one shown to the door.  Morale is a perceived thing, and the more a business or employer caters to it, the more it takes away from the real business and the tasks.  The more you pump the morale of those demanding it, the more the morale of the those left doing the work will fail.

Team-building is a joke.  There will always be teams formed to accomplish goals.  Team dynamics change with the composition of each team and the attitude of each member on a day to day basis.  There will always be someone who rides on the efforts of their team-mates; there will always be someone who will make sure the work gets done.  The more time that is spent studying and augmenting, training and lecturing on team-building, the less time is spent on the actual goal.

Sensitivity training – use your common sense.  If you don’t have any, you’ll learn some after the first few times you are fired for saying or doing the wrong thing.  We cannot waste our time tip-toing around all the different people who may or may not have issues and deep-seated psychological trauma from their pasts.  It is up to each of us to overcome those enough to play in the same sandbox as each other.

My place of work has a Social Committee.  I do not know what the purpose is of this organization except to raise money for its own benefit.  The proceeds don’t appear to go to anything.  We have a company picnic in the summer and a holiday party in the winter – for which the employees still have to pay to attend.  They hold food fests constantly, which simultaneously gets the members of the committee out of work for several hours (paid) and completely disrupts the workplace for those of us who believe we should actually earn our paycheck.

There is something very wrong with a workforce that values how many recipes you bring to a potluck more than how many projects you can complete under budget and under deadline.

My company has also recently implemented a center-wide awards recognition program.  It is a complete joke.  It was based on the two-year old awards recognition program internally implemented in my own department; also a complete joke.  These programs do not award accomplishments and merit.  Instead, they cater to the aforementioned morale-boosting.  Those employees who put their noses to the grindstone and actually perform the work will never be recognized, because they are not flashy or good schmoozers and will be overlooked in the nomination process.  Also, the high level of discrepancy between departments and supervisors becomes apparent as employees working under specific supervisors receive award after award, when they have never done anything to warrant such, and other employees are never mentioned.

I don’t want to give the impression that these things should completely disappear.  I’m sure that administered correctly the Social Committee and the Awards program can be a very beneficial part of the organization.  However, the focus has completely moved away from doing a good job and to being a good team-player.  Working well with others should be a given, and a secondary requirement to primary mission-critical skills.  Primary mission-critical skills should not be waived as a requirement to getting or keeping a job, just because a person knows how to manipulate the soft-skills.

Security – there should be security guidelines at the check-in counters and front entrances, rather than only at the security checkpoint. If a person needs to make other arrangements, by the time they get to the security checkpoint, it’s already “too late.”

Boarding – they should board airlines from the back forward, asking passengers to queue up in seat order in the gate area where there’s lots of room to move around and change places. The first passenger on board should be required to move to the very back of the plane, put his stuff in the overhead directly above him and sit down – etc. There would be a lot less hassle for following passengers. The way we board front first is so ridiculous and then asking that all the “rest” of coach just pile in after all the special people get on board causes for so much more delay. People are stopped in the aisle to wait for the one person to get their act together and sit down and get out of the way. Then you have the idiots who have so much carryon they are taking up space belonging to other seats. They cause even more delay while they wander up and down the aisles, or cause other passengers to do so, searching for empty overhead space.

I have to admit – I like the security measures we have in place now which prohibit non-passengers beyond a certain point in the airports. It makes it much easier to get on board and deplane than it used to. Now, I know that many of us miss those last clingy moments of farewell at the gate, and those of us left behind wish for those last lingering moments of pressing our tear-stained faces against the glass walls, waving our hankies in good-bye at the airplane (hoping our loved one can see us out the window). And we all miss the greeting by our lovey standing right in the gate with that armful of roses. But let’s all admit it; we were getting pretty annoyed at those dufuses standing right in the loading area blocking the path of all the rest of us – and heaven help the idiots having a heart-felt reunion at the gate when we have to get to the nearest BATHROOM!

So, traveling in the 21^st century may be a little different than the way it used to be, and I may still have some complaints, but I think it’s a lot better than it was 10 years ago.

In the meantime, I have a pipe-dream I want to share with all of you.  It’s not a SAVE idea, yet, because it’s too far-reaching, and it is not really implementable within a single fiscal year.  In fact, I believe I would be challenging an entire “culture” (geez, I hate that word) within the federal workforce.

I understand that there are some areas of the federal government that has gone to performance based pay structures, but I believe that we need to move to a performance based employment structure.  When you look at any given organization over a certain size, in the private industry or in the public arenas, you start to see the productivity level of each individual drop off sharply.

It is unclear where the dichotomy originates: why are employees of small mom-and-pop shops  more industrious, innovative and work-ethical than those of large corporations?  Is that statement completely accurate?

I’ve written previously on my personal, one-woman campaign to shift a paradigm, to halt the general perception of the world of government workers as lazy, unproductive and stagnant.  It is my dream that one day people will stop saying, “well, that’s the government for you” in exasperated tones.

Having now worked again for the government for three years and seen from the inside where some of the issues arise, I can safely say that a goodly portion of the problem arises from the employees.  This is not unique to the government; as I said, this is true in any large organization.  The individual employee feels safe in their position, and allows their co-workers to pick up their slack.  This non-productivity is costly to the employer; they are literally throwing money away.

My proposal would be to completely assess each employee at the end of their performance appraisal period and determine whether or not that employee retains their job.  There are so many people who think that it is their god-given right to have a job and be paid.  What they don’t believe is that it is their duty to put in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.  So often, you see around you the people who come in (when they do manage to make in) and they spend the whole day on the phone on personal calls, talking to anyone who passes by, and not actually doing the work.

It is NOT my proposal to replace them.  Simply remove them and use the funds that would have paid their salaries, insurance, etc for other programs.  The company already functions without them; they’ve already proven that for you.  So, use the freed-up resources in areas where the needs have already been specified.

It is only when a company is staffed with fully committed employees that the company will succeed.  Nowhere is it truer than in the business world, that you are only as strong as your weakest link.  Let’s band together and get rid of those weakest links, and pick up the success rates of our employers.

It has always been my view that a person should maintain some semblance of professionalism at their workplace, some level of respect given to the hierarchy, and some distance maintained between co-workers.  I have overheard, in this job and in the last two before this one, complaints from fellow employees about people not wanting to be friends, or having somehow betrayed a perceived friendship.  Someone correct me, if I’m wrong, but aren’t we at work to earn a living, to do our assigned jobs, pick up a paycheck and go home?  And aren’t those potential friendships being created between the very same people against whom we’d be competing to get ahead?

Don’t misunderstand me; I certainly believe in networking and creating some solid, professional connections that can become mutually beneficial.  Yes, I did say mutually.  I would hope that however I benefit from the relationships I build, I will also contribute in some way as well.  I merely believe that those relationships begin as professional ones.  I will certainly not object, if after getting to work with someone, and talk with that person (or persons) on a daily basis, that a mutual level of respect forms, and over time, personal regard heightens and flowers into a deeper friendship than that of mere co-workers.  I just don’t believe that one should walk into a brand new job and look around with a gold-digging eye looking for your next best friend.

I have now been at the Forest Service for nearly three years, and I certainly hope that those whom I consider as friends also regard me as one.  I cultivated those friendships carefully, and although I enjoy a very relaxed and convivial relationship with almost all my co-workers and immediate team, I count much fewer than the 400 people I see daily as “friends.”

As far as personal growth is concerned, it is impossible to extend your friendship to everyone you see; you would be stretched so thin that the value of your friendship would become meaningless.  Again, please don’t mistake friendliness with friendship.  I would also not want to bore a colleague with my personal drama (whatever that may be), and would never be able to get any work done if I were mired in the drama of however many hundreds of co-workers.

We spend one-third of our lives, or more, in our workplace, and it’s difficult not to become personally vested in our interpersonal relationships at work.  Yet we must strive to keep our work and personal lives someone separated, so that we can have friends wholly on our side, wholly supportive of us, without any ulterior agendas and without any separate vestment in our workplaces.  Likewise, we would better serve our friends if we can fully give of ourselves to our friendships, without a separate part of ourselves working on how to work the relationship to our own advantage in the workplace.

Again, I do not believe there is anything wrong with developing full and lasting friendships, over time, with co-workers; I just don’t think we should be starting a new job and having new friendships be a priority in a new work-place.

Today, we have our Facebook profiles, linked to our Twitter accounts, which will direct readers to our blogs.  Everything about us is known to others, if not by our own posting, then by the postings of our friends.  Our readers know who we hang out with the most, who we respect, who we don’t.  Our readers know if we like martinis or cola, if we like to hike or ski, and if we have three dogs or two cats and how many kids we have.

Personally,  I love this new “society” – we are more closer-knit than ever, but it does have its drawbacks.  You have to understand that everything you send out is continuously propagated.  If you have children, you probably shouldn’t post their names, ages, and favorite ice cream flavors.  But we don’t think about this when we post, “Charlie and Debbie had another fight, eventually brought peace back to the playroom with Debbie’s favorite pistachio cone.”

Do we really want to put out there how much we hate our job, when we really don’t, but only had the one bad day? Sure, as long as you remember that you can delete Tweets, and Facebook history items.  Blog entries can be edited and deleted.  The Internet is fluid, everchanging, non-permanent, but global.  If your Tweet was read in the time before you deleted it, you may have to deal with the consequences.

I hope that I am not scaring anyone from using these tools, because I think they are wonderful, beneficial, society-changing tools.  I am excited about them because I think they are going to be incredible for bringing people of diverse and like minds together in forums in which amazing things can be accomplished.

I am actually exceptionally pleased about this turn of events that takes away anonymity (sorry, Anonymous!) and brings us to channels in which we can actually be “friends” with people we would never dare dream of waving to in the past.  It also holds us accountable for our opinions and statements.

In the past, Anonymous would comment on someone’s post, or in email discussions, would blatantly disagree with someone, going so far as to cast derogatory names out there, with no consequences.  Now, we have to think – if we claim that our Facebook friend is full of hooey, we may lose a friend, or even a whole truckful!  If I Tweet something inflammatory, I might just attract the “wrong” kinds of followers.  By posting a blog entry that completely throws off everything I claim to stand for in “real life,” am I risking my professional standing?

I’m excited that we are entering a time when we, as a global population, will learn to think before we speak.  I know I never have before, to my mother’s consternation – and perhaps to my own detriment.  If this new world order – this online world – will finally teach me what over 30 some odd years of life experiences hasn’t been able to teach me, how great will that be?

Without going into any specifics on the inane issues being brought to the counter, I want to observe the conduct and attitude of the Comcast representatives.  They were patient, they listened, they made suggestions, they pursued different options and they eventually brought volatile situations back under control.  As I stood there, checking my watch, I couldn’t help compare them to our Contact Center – every day, our agents deal with these same types of situations, with the same types of personality types (aggressive, belligerent, unyielding and demanding – as well as unreasonable and, yes, I have to say it, ignorant).

I’ve been in the customer service industry for over twenty years, and I am still, as I’ve always been, convinced that this is the hardest job to do well, and for everyone who is performing this job, I just want to tell you, you are the best, and I want you to know, you are very appreciated.

A large part of my life in the past three weeks has been dominated by my participation in a weight management program. Some of you may have already heard from me about this, and others may not even have an inkling that I am trying to do something about my out of control weight gain from the past several years.

In 2004, I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. Between being on the road, homeless for a while, self-employed, then unemployed, then sketchily employed with Bank of the West, and finally gainfully employed with the Forest Service, I’ve been off and on health insurance throughout the years – and subsequently, my diabetes has been sometimes well, and sometimes ill, controlled. I’ve been on Metformin (glucophage) off and on, though I am not a good pill-taker. Recently, my blood sugar readings have been running up in the 300-400 range. (Controlled diabetics should be under 180 or 170 – between 120-140, ideally. Non-diabetics tend to run between 95-120.)

The last two years, with the excellent health insurance that I have from my federal job, I’ve been seeing a primary doctor – who has added on to my pill regimen. I’ve added glyburide, lisinopril, and Januvia. Dr. Sanchez, my primary, has finally given up on seeing me control my diabetes, and referred me to an endocrinologist.

When I visited Dr. Ferraro, at Southwest Endocrinology, for the first time, I let him know that I really did not want to go on insulin. I told him that I was not diagnosed with diabetes until I was over 200 pounds. I was always afraid I would develop diabetes, because both my parents had type two later in their lives. My father died from his diabetes. One of the reasons that Dr. Sanchez referred me to Dr. Ferraro was because he also runs a weight management program. This is really what I wanted to investigate.

I enrolled in the program on November 9. I started off on what they called a full-meal-replacement or a full program. I was supposed to have 5 meals each day, consisting of a shake or soup by Optifast. At the beginning of this program, I had one-on-one consultations with a nutritionist/counselor. She examined my daily log after one week, and seeing that I had deviated from my prescribed program no less than three times, but within the accepted exceptions allowed – I had substituted a couple of chicken salads for a shake, several times that first week – switched me over to a one meal per day, and four meal replacements. Week 1, I lost 8 pounds. More importantly, my blood sugar levels came down on day 2 and have remained well-managed (well under 180) since I began. I had an appointment on November 17 to see Dr. Ferraro. He was pleased with my plunge in my blood sugar levels, as am I.

Week 2, I lost nothing. I even gained 0.3 pounds, by their scale. I did deviate a bit, but took in well less than my 2300 calories it would take to maintain my weight. So, why didn’t I lose any weight? The counselor/educator did say that most people will lose a little and gain a little over time, and one hopes that the general trend will be downwards. So, trying very hard not to be discouraged, I plow onwards. The good news, is that my blood sugar levels stayed low.

Week 3, this past week, was Thanksgiving week. I had a brilliant plan to stay on track – I was going to go to the buffet. Yes, this is counter-intuitive, and only works, if you have the willpower. I do. My boyfriend and I went to Furr’s, where he was able to partake of whatever he wanted. I had a lovely little plate of a slice of turkey, a smallish scoop of dressing, and some broccoli. I had another plate of a small side salad. Both deliberately placed on salad plates, instead of the dinner plates. For dessert, I splurged with a small dish of blue Jell-O. Sounds like I did really well, yes? No! I then came home, and this sad, non-eventful four day weekend was just filled with empty hours in which I was bored, and depressed (an entirely other story). So, I ate. I ate outside my prescribed okayness for food. I had my shakes, and I had other stuff. I don’t know yet, what the verdict will be on the weight loss – my bathroom scale says I’ve lost another 3 or 4 pounds, but I won’t know “officially” until I weigh in at the clinic. My blood sugar levels are still in the happy range.

Tomorrow, I begin week 4. The program runs for three months – so I am due to end the program on February 9^th. I have a total of 13 weeks – so beginning tomorrow, I have ten weeks remaining to me, to make a difference. On the fitness side of things, I have continued to pursue my daily break walks around my office building. I have also started (re-started, really) my step aerobics program at home this past week – this is a new activity. I worked out Tuesday and Wednesday, and was too sore to do anymore until today. Each time I’ve worked out, I’ve done more. I’m still on the single step, and though on Tuesday, I had to pause the tape and catch my breath and only worked through the first exercise, Wednesday I worked through the entire routine, but with multiple gasping-for-breath breaks. Today, I did the entire routine through, without taking any breaks, except for water.

So my journey to a healthier, prettier me continues.