Superheroes as Diversion

My workplace has again been struck by a reduction in force, for the fourth or fifth time within 12 months. Not a massive layoff, and supposedly more for reorganization of function than financial stress. They don’t like to say “layoff” anytime, but especially when it’s not an economic issue. Still the ghastly HRspeak of saying such-and-such employees have been “impacted” (i.e., we had to realign the department and we’re sorry to tell you that George, Dick, and Karl were impacted this morning) makes me want to puke. (Of course, if it really were a trio by that name I wouldn’t feel so bad.)It’s hard to get fired up about the whole prospect of the enterprise after that, I admit. And there’s a certain envy of those who’ve been handed a transition they didn’t have to agonize over. Ahead of time, at least. Still it never really feels good to be on that end and I wish it were otherwise.

And we’re all of us “impacted.”

I know the people making the decisions aren’t trying to depress us and put people’s lives out of joint. At least I think not. And I don’t think they’re stupid, though they may be feeling their way in the dark more than they’d like to let on. So the invective bubbles up but there’s no rational thing to do with it.

So we divert ourselves with things like the following, sent to me by another former colleague who left of her own accord and commiserated. It’s a short quiz of amusing questions that yields your superhero profile.

Here’s what it told me:

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 70% The Flash 65% Superman 60% Robin 57% Catwoman 55% Iron Man 55% Supergirl 50% Wonder Woman 50% Hulk 50% Green Lantern 50% Batman 30%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the “Which Superhero are you?” quiz…

On Wasting Time

One reason I need to increase efficiency and productivity is to make up for vast quantities of “wasted” time in my life. I’m quite sure that’s true. But still I question myself, what is wasted time? I mean, some time is inarguably, frustratingly wasted, like getting halfway to work and realizing I’ve left my laptop at home and having to backtrack 10 extra miles. That’s plain infuriating. Unless you happen to see a pileated woodpecker or something in that extra leg. And how often is that? (Once.)

But other things that tend to fall into the category of time wasting, I’m not so sure. Especially in the philosophic mood this week finds me in, having just had a long weekend’s whirlwind celebration of my mother’s 80 hale years, and then having heard news of two untimely deaths in my circle (a 40-something woman and a 16-year-old man). Makes ya kind of pause and think it really doesn’t matter, really, if I get that trim around the bathroom windows painted right now, or after the college basketball season… and that sort of thing.

So, noodling around websites that make you laugh or tickle your interest—even if they don’t really relate to anything productive in your life—is that a waste? I haven’t gotten to where I schedule time for it, like I do for exercise or socializing or dogwalking or things that I would declare important and inalienable in my pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. It gets fit into the interstices between these things, and sometimes, like the moss in sidewalk cracks, it takes root and expands the allotted space and if it gets really bad it cracks the cement block around it, which is usually (analogically speaking) domestic upkeep or timely arrival at appointed thingies.

(Like right now, after work and before meeting friends for dinner, I was supposed to go get a new headlamp for my car, but writing this, which I didn’t really intend to do, is cutting into the time available to get to AutoZone and back to Naked Fish in time…. But what’s important? The right-hand headlight still works.)

I blather on about this as my means of introducing a couple of sites that have delighted me (and sucked up time) lately. Best has been sent to my by colleague Todd, who got it from former colleague David, and it’s called The Institute of Official Cheer. Who can resist the “Gallery of Regrettable Food” or “Interior Desecrations”?

Rather lower brow is a collection of TV news bloopers on YouTube, which for some stupid reason crack me up. Laughing is therapeutic, no? So is it a waste of time?

When I’m really suffering low blood flow to the brain, I can pretty reliably get a chuckle out of Engrish.com, a photo compendium of Japanese and Korean signs and t-shirts in English. It’s the proofreader and kid-who-grew-up-watching-Monty-Python’s-Flying-Circus in me that makes me susceptible.

For more intelligent stimulus, I love 3 Quarks Daily. As we say around these parts, wicked smaht.

Ah-ha, that site just offered up justification for all this “time wasting”! With a link to a Fortune article entitled Be Smarter at Work, Slack Off.

The Cubicle: A Big Mistake

Robert Oppenheimer agonized over building the A-bomb. Alfred Nobel got queasy about creating dynamite. Robert Propst invented nothing so destructive. Yet before he died in 2000, he lamented his unwitting contribution to what he called “monolithic insanity.”

So begins a really well written article from Fortune magazine by Julie Schlosser. The office cubicle as we know it today is nothing like its prototype, the “action office,” designed by Robert Propst. The action office was supposed to be ergonomically and organizationally designed to suit an office worker’s physical and functional needs. Not just to be small and cheap. But the ability to shrink them was a modern seeming way for companies’ to save money on the real estate line item and consequently sent them back to being the same old open bullpen of a typing pool, but with ugly beige half walls.

Yeah, I work in one of these. Though it was designed during the late 90s, so it is supposed to be more hip. Ah, I long for plain beige. The rug looks like an olive drab giraffe and the walls are painted a textured insane asylum green (I think the color was thought to be “calming”) and the work surfaces are black faux granite and the pod sides, which are steel and therefore no use for pinning things to, are a riotous carnival pattern reminiscent of airline upholstery. Most workers’ backs are to the hallway, so though we have windows, which is nice, there’s an unconscious anxiety that no doubt could be articulated by someone familiar with the flying stars of Feng Shui. Hey, the company has not done so well since we moved into this hideous configuration. All signs point to….see?