I don't like being publicly acknowledged.

Last week at our annual general meeting, I was publicly acknowledged several times.

I don't like it. Actually, I should say, I don't like it when I'm there. I don't mind being acknowledged when I'm not around. But when I'm there, it's awkward.

I'm never really sure what facial expression to have. Do I grin? Keep stern? Look down? I don't know. I kind of keep my face pleasant and I look at the speaker. During applause I nod my head in a quick thank you.

Sometimes I clap, but then I quickly stop because I realize I'm clapping for myself. However, if I'm being acknowledged along with other people, I do clap and feel it's okay because I'm clapping for them, not for me.

A few times I watched other people who were being publicly acknowledged. They seemed just as uncomfortable and confused as me.

Last year was worse than this year because last year I had to stand up and give a wave. Very awkward and embarrassing. This year I didn't stand up. I stayed in my seat and tried to will myself to disappear.

I'm slumming it a work.

When I go to rich companies for job interviews I realize how much I'm slumming it in my current job.

Today I had a job interview at a huge auction company - a company that makes billions and billions of dollars. Their building was like a glass palace. They had an in-house cafeteria, daycare and fitness room.

They had glass elevators and huge walkways and giant pillars. They had LCD monitors embedded in the glass for chrissakes.

Here, I work out of a classroom in an old elementary school that's closing in a month and a half. The fluorescent lights in the classroom hum. My boss sits so close to me that I can hear her breathe. The hallways smell like chemical disinfectant.

There are no LCD monitors embedded in the glass, but there are stick-figure paintings of people and animals pinned to bulletin boards along hallways.

Two things I like to "steal" from work.

I really enjoy taking a poop at work. Why? You're getting paid to poop! And you're using their toilet paper and their water and their soap. Again: they're paying you to poop and supplying you with all the needed equipment.

Afterward someone comes in and cleans up your mess. It's perfect.

I love charging my cell phone at work. I'm using their electricity. I won't get a large hydro bill in a month. Again: my work is paying for the power it takes to charge my cell phone.

These are the little things in working-life that you need to relish.

It's always good to have something to look forward to.

I was talking to my coworker and she said she was feeling down about the prospect of continuing to work indefinitely for our organization. I told her I felt relieved that my time here was coming to an end. Scared, but relieved.

It's always nice to have something to look forward to - even if that thing is uncertainty. Why? Because there's always a chance things will work out better. For example, I may find a better job that pays more money.

Not likely though. Most of the time things don't really get much better. But it's nice having "hope".

More than a change in my employment, I'm looking forward to the arrival of my new son and daughter. Though I'm very scared and nervous about it.

Back to my co-worker. She was trying to get me riled up on some issue here at work and I said, "You know, my concern with this problem in my life right now is here." I gestured with my hand, very low.

"My concern for my family and my future job and my future baby is up here." And I raised my hand very high above my head.

I wanted to put things in perspective for her.

My boss is obsessed with the Olympics.

While it's certainly nice that we're hosting the Winter Games, it quickly gets tiring. It's really all you hear on the news, radio and street. Literally all the time. For months.

So now that the games have started, my boss has become obsessed. She has news alerts emailed to her and loudly announces various Olympic doings. "WE JUST WON A MEDAL!" or "DOES ANYBODY KNOW WHAT HAPPENED IN THIS EVENT?"

She even comes over to our computers and forces us to watch clips of the Olympics on Youtube. She does this at work, while I'm trying to concentrate on something. At first, I politely responded. Now I just ignore it and let my other co-worker answer her questions.

I keep my back turned and pretend to squint in concentration at my monitor.

A work story about staples.

At work today I heard a large bang and my co-worker said, "Now you know why I need an industrial stapler."

The bang was the sound of the stapler. She showed me a thick stack of papers, now stapled together.

I nodded.

After a moment she excitedly said, "Look at this!" She came over to my desk and pointed to the stack of papers she had just stapled. "That's a damn near perfect staple."

I looked at the staple and it was perfectly straight and positioned in the corner of the stack. I congratulated her on her stapling.

Then I added: "And now I know how to mess you up. When I staple something for you I'll be sloppy with the staple."

"No!" she said.

We shouldn't love our job.

One of the most damaging things we hear nowadays is that we should "be in love with our job" and we should "do something we love".

Umm, no.

When did we get the idea that we should love work? Alain De Botton brought this to my attention in his book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.

I think it stems from our cultural fascination with optimism, self-improvement and self-indulgence. Oprah Winfrey stuff.

By definition our "work" is just that - work. It's not our dream and it's not an amazing thing which will make us self-actualized. It's a job and it sucks. The weekends are awesome because we don't have to work.

That's the way it is and that's the way it has been for thousands of years of history. People don't like doing work. Why do the experts say we have to "love" our jobs?

This idea that we should love our jobs leads to people soulessly, cruising from job to job because they're never "happy". Young people get depressed because they think they're supposed to love their jobs - so they quit or go back to school or demand raises and other indulgences.

Now get off my lawn!

I can actually feel myself getting dumber.

I've noticed lately that I can feel myself becoming less mentally sharp. I would love to blame this on lack of sleep, but the truth is I'm sleeping fine.

Maybe it's age? I'm not that old. But I do have the sense that I was much more mentally agile 10 years ago. I'm beginning to tell people the same stories over and over again. (I never used to do this. Now I no longer remember if I'd already told someone a particular story.)

I'm beginning to lose track of conversations. I don't recall this happening before. Just the other day we were having a technical conversation in our office, and I soon realized that much of the information went over my head.

I seem to be reaching my level of incompetence - as I basically have the same job as a did 10 years ago, and I realize that I'm very likely to have a similar job 10 years from now.

I'm beginning to notice there are younger people who have more success, smarts, money and talent than me. This certainly wasn't the case 10 years ago. (And to be honest, at this stage it's mostly older people who have more success, smarts, money, and talent. But the tide is slowly shifting.)

What does all this mean? It means that I've probably peaked, and it's going to be a slow decline from this day forward. Oh well. I had a good run.

Why do women secretly listen to your phone conversations?

I've noticed throughout my working career that women listen-in on private phone calls. I'll be talking on the phone to my wife, and the women nearby will appear to be working away, but they're listening to everything I say.

I know this because they will often mention something later in the day that they could have only heard through my phone call.

In my last job, one woman nearby would directly ask me, "Who were you talking to?" after listening in on my phone calls. She obviously didn't care.

Cindy confirms this is the case. She says women "can't help" listening in on phone calls because it's evolution. She says women don't focus their attention like men do. Women need to be aware of all sounds going on around them so they can "hear the baby cry".

Men, on the other hand, tune out other sounds and focus on the prey. The hunt. That's why many men don't listen to women, and women get so mad.

I can easily ignore phone conversations around me. Cindy cannot.

The endless email.

I guess this would be considered a moderately interesting work story. Yesterday, a guy sent me an email I didn't understand. He said:

We still need our tour out form and roster filled out before I can send to the UK for their approval................[link]

I wrote him back:

Hi Bob, I'm confused by this email. Can you explain what you need me to do? Thanks,
Jim

He wrote back the exact same thing:

We still need our tour out form and roster filled out before I can send to the UK for their approval................[link]

I was greatly amused. I've never seen this before so I thought for a moment and wrote back:

Hi Bob, I'm confused by this email. Can you explain what you need me to do? Thanks,Jim

I was half hoping he'd write back the same email, but instead he wrote:

I don’t believe I can be any clearer – here are the procedures to follow for international tours....................................read the linked page, and forward to the school.

Okay, maybe that's not such a great story. But it helped break up the day. Plus when I told my wife she said I was "cheeky". And I needed a blog entry for today.

Defend yourself or not?

Lately at work I've been finding myself in an interesting situation. I'll get a comment or a hint from someone that I made an error. Nothing overt and nothing accusatory.

Just a hint - almost like a backhanded compliment. This is more like a subtle, (very subtle), accusation. Sometimes it's my boss. Sometimes it's just some random "customer".

When this happens I have a dilemma. Should I respond to defend myself? That's my first instinct. But then I think, "That just shows I'm defensive. It's not cool." Plus I could be imagining the hint. Maybe there wasn't anything accusatory at all.

I think a much better way is to simply ignore the subtle hint. You have no obligation to respond to a hint that you made a mistake. You maybe have an obligation to respond to a direct accusation - but a hint is just a hint.

Important people don't have time to respond to hints. They'd ignore them. They'd focus their energy on continuing to do the best work they possibly can. That's what I'm going to try to do.

An Epic Journey.

Lately I've been having some epic journeys - "containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation" - on the commute home after work.

I leave around 4:30pm, just as it's getting dark, and I arrive at home at what feels like midnight. Everything is dark. It's been pouring rain so I've been staring out of a water-streaked windshield, for hours, lines of red brake lights stretching off into the infinite distance.

I'm drained. Sometimes my leg hurts from pressing the gas and break over and over. My eyes are sore. I ache. I step in the house and am faced with an exhausting task of making dinner, cleaning, putting Jake to bed, cleaning some more.

On Fridays I need alcohol to wind down from a week of this.

Well the latest news is that my company is moving to Maple Ridge! A mere 15 minutes from my house, a few minutes from Jake's daycare! This is insanely good news, if it happens. (The problem is things change so much you never know if it will really happen until you're moving your furniture into the new office.)

I estimate it will save Jake almost 2 hours in daycare. That's a huge difference. It will save me a ton of driving and just in time for the messy winter season. (We're set to move in early December.)

This is a huge stroke of luck as Maple Ridge generally does not have any office jobs or businesses. I should know - I spent a year looking for a job in MR to no avail. Hard to believe out of all the places in the Lower mainland, the place where I work is moving 15 minutes from my house.

I'm flabbergasted. I only have a month left of epic journeys.

They changed the smell of our bathroom at work.

This morning I walked into our bathroom at work and it smells different. Sweeter. More vanillaey and bleachy.

It was jarring. I've been here for 7 months and my nose had quickly adjusted to the smell of the bathroom. I didn't notice it anymore. When I walked into the bathroom, if I noticed a smell at all, it was the foul smell of defecation.

Today it's all changed. The new smell is not unpleasant, just overpowering. I find myself wanting to breathe through my mouth - which isn't so good. If I breathe through my mouth it means the air won't filter through my nose hairs. I'll be breathing in raw shit particles.

I'm sure in a few weeks, my nose will perfectly adjust to this new bathroom smell. By then we're moving to a new location and THAT bathroom will have a smell.

By the way, when you move offices, here are the questions people often forget to ask:

- What is the bathroom like? Roomy? Clean? Smelly?
- Is there a place to go for a walk? Can you walk around the block or is it industrial wasteland?
- Can you walk to a decent/cheap place to buy lunch and/or coffee?
- Is there an adequate lunch room with a microwave, fridge, running water and coffee machine?
- Are there other people who work near you? Are they attractive? Are they your age, or are they really old?
- Is it too cold or too warm? Does the heat work? Is the air condition too powerful?

There's a group of people in my organization trying to overthrow my boss.

My boss was upset yesterday when she got wind of a coup d'etat. Apparently there's a group of people in our organization plotting her demise.

Ho hum. What's new? I think in any large, controversial organization there is always a group of people planning a regime change. That's just life.

This is especially true when you organization loses funding, and its viability has become shaky. Even if it's not the boss's fault (which it's not), some people will still want heads to roll.

That's what happens when you're the top staffer at an organization. The benefits are lots of money and power. The risks are fast, ignoble firings.

I'm surprised she didn't see this coming. Or maybe she did and is simply feigning outrage to the board of directors to get them more involved in our plight. (To get them to care. Those bored, stoney-faced bastards. Good luck.)

I love drama at work. Makes things so exciting!

When I go to the bathroom at work I get angry.

Because it’s so busy. We have a small bathroom – one urinal, one toilet, two sinks, one paper towel disperser (always broken). There is always someone in there and I can’t stand it. I like being by myself while voiding. I just do.

When another guy comes in this is what goes through my mind. “Frick NO! What’s he doing here? What an A-hole. Can’t he just hold it? He likes coming into the bathroom. Where does he work? Why are there so many guys working in on this floor. Is this a sausage factory? I’m sick of it. Don’t talk to me. Don’t look at me. Don’t nod at me. I don’t want you here. Next time go upstairs to that washroom.”

Interestingly, the bathroom has a door for the urinal. I’ve never seen that before. Most people don’t close the door for the urinal. A few do. I don’t because I want to touch as few things as possible in a public bathroom.

I don’t need a door blocking the view of my back to someone else, while I’m urinating.