Author: Brian

For the past several years, “Cinnamon” by the Long Winters meant one thing.

And for most of those years, I avoided the song, because of that meaning.

Tonight, this evening, the song was chosen by iTunes on shuffle. And I realized that I can finally put that old meaning away, and hear it as if it was new again.

Time to play the whole album and see what I can see.

It’s been a good day.

The team I’m on is in IT but we’re just one small team. Our responsibilities are narrowly defined; we’re responsible for just one small piece of the action. This is a consequence of a combination of a large organization, public sector service, and union contracts.

The goal of the larger organization, IT, is to solve problems, so, in total, we solve problems. However, problems don’t always come nice and neat and narrowly defined. Often they’re messy and complex and they take more than one team to fix… or at least resolve.

Luckily the many separate teams of IT have a tool that was sold to us as a “communications tool”. It’s a database that is supposed to be used to collect customer problems in one virtual place, generates trouble tickets for those problems, and that all of the teams of IT refer to and update and check off as we all complete our parts of the problems that customers have.

But because of the vagaries of customer problems, and the minutia of communication in general, and the fact that no database can be designed to cover every possible interaction of fallible imperfect human beings… sometimes things get lost in the process.

Know what the difference is between a “system” and a “process”? A process takes an input, and generates an output. A system then adds feedback; was that output the right output? How can we make it better? Systems are circular.

IT does really well with processes. Systems, not so much. Or maybe that’s just the IT department I work for.

My team got an email the other day from someone on another IT team, asking about a customer problem that we had shared responsibility for. In the email, the tech asked a simple question: “Can this ticket be closed?”

Simple questions often aren’t. I don’t know; can this ticket be closed? I mean, it’s possible to close the ticket. It’s a simple matter of choosing “closed” and clicking “save”. But I’m sure that’s not what she meant.

The ticket in question is weeks old, and there were no notes in the appropriate fields showing that the customer, or the customer’s boss, had called in to complain that the work in question (it was a request for work to be done, not a crash or problem that needed resolving) had not yet been done. Since the work wasn’t a high priority, and my team is strapped for time and resources, if I had noticed this ticket still in our bucket, I would have been sorely tempted to simply log that the customer seemed happy enough not to complain (covering my ass in case of review) and closing it. But that’s not our process.

In the strictest terms, we could only close a ticket if the work had, in fact, been done. That was the most correct interpretation of the tech’s emailed question.

Our boss copied everyone involved on his reply, but directed his response at my team. “Is this done?”

Ah, now my boss is asking a different question. “Is this done?” Standing by itself, what does that sentence mean? It hinges on what “this” is referring to, doesn’t it? Is “this” pointing at the previous email from the tech and referring to the action of “closing the ticket” that she specifically asked? Or does my boss’s “this” refer to the strict interpretation of her question and the process of “work done; close ticket to document”?

Since my boss supervises our work and therefore holds the responsibility to discipline in case work is not done, the best interpretation of his question would include the assumption of the process we have in place for actually getting work done. I mean, if one was going to overthink things, that’s the assumption that would result in the most happiness; for us, the customer, and the other IT teams.

One could interpret my boss’s question as just being about the actual process of closing the ticket. But that path, while strictly logical and defensible in a linguistic sense, isn’t politically viable.

So my teammate makes a couple phone calls for information from the customer, and then replies to our boss and the other tech (and copies my team) with, “I checked with the customer and it’s done.”

His response seems to cover all bases. He mentions calling the customer, which implies that they are satisfied with whatever happened, and he uses the phrase “it’s done”.

But again, the language barrier of ambiguity strikes. What is “it” that is now “done”? Is “it” the ticket being closed, or the work that was requested by the customer?

Because our boss responds with “But is the ticket closed?” Frustrating, in that it circles back to the original choices presented by the other team’s tech and her question. Can the ticket be closed? Isn’t closing the ticket just the last step in the process of resolving customer problems? Or is it a separate act in itself?

Didn’t my teammate address this with his reply? Or should he have gone into more detail about everything he’d done – called the customer, asked if the work was done, documented and closed the ticket, then replied to our boss?

Is it any wonder there are so many barriers to getting work done at my job? We spent at least a half-hour, maybe more, parsing all the ambiguities of this exchange to try to figure out what, exactly, our boss wants from us and how best to communicate back and forth with him and other teams.

What is “it”? It’s it.

Dinner’s main course was entertaining conversation and excellent company. But it was spiced with some surprising flavors.

Acadia specializes in Cajun food but it’s not the bustling party of Le Bistro Montage nor the comfortable diner of The Delta Cafe; Acadia reaches in the direction of the fancier upscale dining establishments along Rue Bourbon in New Orleans – but minus the white jackets and starched white tablecloths.

We’d started with the cheese plate. I’m not a gourmand nor a restaurant reviewer, so I can’t assign words to the various flavors on the plate, but they were all different. The one that drew my dining companion and my attention, though, was the dark red chopped fruit under the smoky-flavored cheese. I asked our waitress about it, and she didn’t know at first but returned with news that it was sun-dried tomato. It was good.

Then, my jambalaya had spicy andouille sausage, shrimp, and… duck? Really? Again, though, in spite of my mental reservations, it was delicious.

My friend, who wasn’t a vegetarian but who was trying to win a bet about not eating meat the longest, had ordered a gnocchi dish. Which included beets. Which she was not happy about. She found that she enjoyed the flavor the beets added to everything else in the dish, as long as she didn’t actually eat the beets. Her face when she tried one, however, told a hundred stories, several of them funny.

For dessert we decided to share some pecan pie. When it arrived it had a scoop of ice cream on top. Which our waitress announced was, in fact, bacon ice cream.

“Oh, no!” I said. “Your bet!”

“The ice cream is all yours,” she said, digging in to the pie.

I scooped off some ice cream and tried it. Bacon is one of my favorite foods, but… in ice cream? Turns out it was subtle and not overdone. The rich vanilla was enhanced by the smoky salty bacon. As is every single food that bacon touches. I was relieved.

And with the pecan pie… so delicious.

On her first day back from vacation, she powered up her computer and found… the administrator had logged on while she was gone.

She worked in IT, so she knew that the administrator account allowed full access to the system, and almost anything could have been done to her computer while the administrator had been logged on: programs installed (or uninstalled), system settings changed, wallpaper or monitor settings, mouse movements reversed left-to-right… Literally, anything at all.

Her mind raced. Did she dare log in with her own account and brave whatever prank had been played on her? Or was there a more sinister reason for someone needing full access?

“Who logged on to my computer?” she shouted out over the cube walls. Expressions of surprise and denial came back from the team. And especially from me and Ken. Which caught her attention.

She launched herself up and out of her cube and bolted over to where Ken and I sat. “What did you do?” she accused us.

Ken started laughing. “Nothing!” I was able to keep a straight face, though it was obvious I was trying. “Maybe we had just logged on…” I trailed off, invitingly, suggestively, and suspiciously.

“I knew it!” she cried. “What was it? What did you do?” She had obviously drawn the conclusion that we were lying. When we repeatedly stated that we had done nothing at all to her computer, she did not believe us. Finally, resigned, she went back to log in and find out what cruel trick awaited her.

Her desktop looked the same… She poured through the Control Panel, looking to see if any suspicious programs had been installed. Nothing. She checked the task list; it all seemed normal. Her mouse moved as she expected. The system didn’t seem especially slow. Her home page in Internet Explorer was what she expected.

But there had to be something. She was sure of it. We wouldn’t be laughing so hard if there wasn’t something, right?

She spent the whole day using her computer carefully, as if it were a bomb about to go off. She insisted Ken and I had done something, over our protests. At one point her PC crashed and had to be rebooted; she suspected it had to do with what we had done, but nothing obvious linked a normal crash with any kind of prank.

She invested a lot of energy into looking for something that was not there.

Because, in truth, all I had done was log in as administrator… and log back out again. Her paranoia had done all the rest. I was being honest when I had implied we had just logged on.

It was the best prank I had ever pulled.

Kevin picked me up from work, as a surprise, for no other reason than he happened to be going by my office near the time I was ending my work day. Oh, and he just wanted to see me.

He’d had some dental work done the previous day, by a dentist who can fairly be described as “brutally direct”, and his jaw still hurt. He had a bruise on his lower lip from the implement that the dentist had used to pull his mouth open.

Within minutes of getting into the passenger seat of his car, and before we had gone even two city blocks, I had said or done something that caused him to laugh, then clutch his cheek in pain and groan.

“I can’t laugh or smile,” he said.

Deadpan, I said “Oh, I see. You hadn’t had enough torture from this dentist. You just had to go and compound the pain by hanging out with your friend Brian. Because he’s so damned serious.“

Kevin bit his lip. Which triggered another expression of suppressed hurt.

Under discussion last night at my union meeting was a motion to reduce the monthly stipend for union officers, as a show of solidarity for the rest of the membership. And I was struck by how contentious this was, considering how progressive and supportive the membership had been recently. Were there really people arguing forcefully to keep $7 a month in their own pockets, when that money saved could be used to help another laid-off member down the road buy groceries or keep their health benefits? Was a few dollars going to make that much of a difference for them?

Earlier this month, AFSCME Local 88 had proposed a one-year wage freeze for its membership, as a cost-cutting measure to save some union jobs. To the best of my knowledge, none of the other County unions have proposed a similar measure, so I am very proud of my union leadership for being ahead of the curve on this.

We not only proposed it, we voted on it and decided, together, overwhelmingly, that it was a good idea. It passed, and that means that the layoffs will be fewer (though not entirely eliminated), and the Board of County Commissioners has agreed to a number of concessions in light of our agreement. First, that the money saved (which is estimated to be around $6-7 million) will be used specifically for Local 88 jobs, that management will provide an accounting of both the money saved and the jobs saved (gotta love some accountability), and that, since in some areas of the county the management to represented ratios are so out of whack, any cuts will address the inequity (in other words, please layoff those managers who supervise only a handful of people before cutting line workers who actually get shit done).

Back to the motion under consideration. My local pays a small stipend to its leadership and stewards. In years past, it was enough to recoup the dues we paid, but it was only paid to active stewards; you had to attend the meetings, minimum. And most stewards did more than that; they served as information conduits, they answered questions about the contract, they dealt with grievances and challenged management on different issues, they volunteered and put in extra time not just to help the local and the membership but the community at large. For stewards, the stipend was reduced last year to $32 a month.

I am a steward, but I haven’t gotten the stipend in years. I am still active but it’s difficult for me to get to the meeting place. The money wasn’t ever that important to me. But because of the looming layoffs and financial crunch, last night I decided to attend. And I’m glad I did.

Because there was a level of hostility and resentment in the room during discussion of this motion that I clearly did not understand. The idea was to show the membership that, yes, we’ve asked them to tighten their belts, and now, so shall we. It seemed like a slam dunk to me.

Until one of my union brothers stood up and explained that he was one of the lowest-paid members, that he was the main source of income for his family, and that he did not like the idea that the more highly paid members were taking more money from his pocket for a symbolic gesture.

What was class envy doing here?

Local 88, like all the other AFSCME unions, has already put into place a proportional system of dues; it’s a percentage of your income. You make more, you pay more dues. There’s a cap, though, and upper limit to how much you can pay. And my union brother was arguing that caps are all well and good, but why isn’t there a floor, too.

I’m in the upper half of the pay scale, since I’m in IT. I don’t consider myself very highly paid, but if I had to support a family on my income things would be very tight. I’ve made decisions not to subject anyone else to my financial management skills (or mis-management skills) but I also understand that not everyone makes the same decisions I make. Life happens and you’ve got to deal with what comes up; a spouse, kids, medical bills, car accidents. Situations, if you’re speaking passively. A shitstorm, if you’re speaking like a person.

I wanted to get up and speak in favor of the motion. I wanted to explain that I’ve been a steward and I haven’t gotten any stipend, that I do it because I want to help my brothers and sisters and bring a little democracy to the workplace.

But I realized that even if I deliberately handed back my stipend, it wouldn’t help the lowest-paid members directly. I realized that I would be seen as… what? An elitist?

My union brother outlined all the dollars he would not see because he would not get a step increase next year, nor a cost of living adjustment. He was counting dollars he did not have and holding that against the rest of us. That did not feel, to me, like he particularly cared for helping out the rest of the union. It sounded like he was grabbing for every single dollar he could get.

I did not get a chance to speak before the question was called and it was put to a vote. By a counted show of hands, the vote was 2 to 1 against the motion, meaning we would not be reducing the stipend this year.

The disconnect between the recent vote to implement a pay freeze, and the contentious arguments last night over seven bucks a month shocked me. But then I remembered that the tally on the pay freeze vote was closer than I expected: 63% yes, and 37% no. More than a third of my brothers and sisters needed that money in their pocket and prioritized that over helping anyone else keep their jobs and their benefits during this horrible Great Recession. And now, at our general membership meeting, I was seeing that same attitude.

On this night, however, that attitude prevailed, to my shame.

I do not know what message that will send to the membership at large, but I want it clear that I voted to reduce the potential money in my pocket, and that I will be attending the meetings but not taking the stipend for the coming year out of principle.

My 17 year old nephew, like me, loves “Futurama”. We’ve both seen every episode multiple times and can quote from it extensively. Mostly quotes from Bender Bending Rodriguez, the smoking, drinking robot.

Since the final direct-to-DVD movie came out recently, after I watched it (and was saddened that a show I loved went out on such a sour note), I texted my nephew to find out if he’d seen it and what he thought.

He replied, “No not yet. I’m in St. Louis right now.”¹

…which came as a complete surprise to me. “What?? Cool?! Send pics if you can!”

He replied “OK can do. Also there are quite a lot of people with crosses on their forehead. What does it mean?”

“It’s a Catholic thing. Today is Ash Wednesday. They get blessed and a priest puts ashes on their forehead.” I knew, since my nephew is an atheist like me, that this would puzzle and amuse him. I sent a second text asking him why he was in St. Louis.

I was right. He sent back, “Raquetball nationals. Oh and religion is dumb.”

He pretty much calls them as he sees them… I wouldn’t put it quite so bluntly but I have to admit the symbolism of Ash Wednesday escapes me.

Tracy, Ken and I had just finished lunch at Taco del Mar, and were gathering the energy to head back to work for the last half of a sunny Friday.

I stood near the door, drink in hand, while Tracy went to the fountain to get a refill and Ken dumped our garbage into the tray. Shortly, he joined me and we made small talk. Near the door.

Three beautiful women walked up to the door, bags of to-go food and drinks in their hands. They shuffled items around to have and empty hand, pulled open the door, and then turned around to help the one behind them keep the door from swinging shut on them. As graceful as these women probably were, normally… it looked clumsy and awkward.

At no time did Ken or I pause in our conversation as we stood there, chatting back and forth, both of us watching mesmerized just one step away as these three women navigated the door with their hands full of food.

When Tracy returned, I snapped out of my trance long enough to play back what had just happened.

At no time… did Ken or I… pause… to help them.

At no time.