The Marci Rating System

I went to the grocery store last night, as one does, and I got some swiffer dry cloths, because 1) I had a coupon, and 2) they are A+ for sweeping up after a haircut.

And of course the cleaning supplies aisle in the store is very strongly scented, so when I got a whiff of ‘cleaning aisle smell’ as I loaded groceries into my car, I figured the box of cloths had just absorbed some of it by sheer proximity. When the smell seemed to be stronger when I was unloading, I became suspicious, and inspected the box more carefully.

Alas, I was dismayed to find myself in possession of SCENTED dust wipes. WHY IS THIS EVEN A THING? I genuinely had no idea that such a product existed, or I would have checked much more carefully in the store.

Anyway, I sure have learned me a thing. Never assume that just because there is no logical reason for a thing to be scented, that it won’t be anyway!

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

At the end of this week I’ll be trying again to interview my way into a new role at work. We’ll see what happens!

(PS: I am always slightly suspicious when people say they love their jobs. I love my cat. I love my family. I love that feeling of waking up all cozy in the morning on a day when you know you have nothing planned. Work is different. Work is work. I’ve chosen to do my job based on a range of considerations, and in comparison to other currently available alternatives, I am pleased enough with the situation to continue showing up, and to try to transition within the same company rather than leaving.)

(PPS: I feel like the “job as vocation” vibe somewhere along the way got conflated with “you’re not allowed to complain about compensation or working conditions, because that would indicate you’re doing this for some kind of crass commercial reasons rather than the love of the job.” Surprise! I *AM* doing this for crass commercial reasons! Those may not be the only reasons, but they’re definitely a part of it. And I wish we could talk about that as a component of work, and I don’t understand why I have to pretend that I’ve had an immense passion for spreadsheets ever since I was five to be considered for a job.)

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

I have So Many Feelings about commission-based pay for salespeople. None of which are politically expedient to share at work. So I’m summarizing the rant here so I can stop thinking about it.

Unpopular opinion time! (Note: these are based on how things are set up in my current work situation. I understand that commissions and commission-based pay can be set up in a variety of ways, and that it may work better in some situations than others. I’m not saying I could never be convinced, but I certainly haven’t been yet.)

1. Commission-based pay puts self-interest at odds with the the best interests of employees as a group. Arguably worse, it puts self-interest at odds with the best interests of the customer.

2. CBP creates unnecessary divisions between those who receive it and those who do not in an organization, reducing cooperation and workplace morale. The rallying cry of “we’re all in this together” can’t hold up against the reality of commissions proving it to be a lie.

3. CBP falsely treats salespeople as acting independent of the support system of the rest of the organization.

4. If executives think commissions motivate employee performance, what is it that they think is motivating their non-commissioned employees?

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Training a temp this week, and it’s sort of awful. (Not the temp themselves! They are great!) But we’ve never really had a temp doing this before, and everyone is in that weird situation of being all, ‘Welcome! We’re so glad to have you here! Temporarily!’

It seems immensely wrong that this person is being asked to do everything the rest of the team does, but with no benefits, no overtime, virtually no training, and — oh yeah, as soon as we hire the “real” new person, the temp will be finished, but no guarantee of how many weeks that will be.

Someone from “upstairs” (aka the fancy salaried employees) told me, ‘Well, they’re looking for work through a temp agency, that’s what they get.’

I’m pretty sure only the fact that I wavered for a second between bursting into tears and saying something laced with obscenities — and therefore had that second to take a breath and tell myself to walk away — saved me from a meeting with HR.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Ah, work. I’m taking a vacation day tomorrow, so I’m feeling unusually mellow about work drama today. It is what it is.

(Also, we found out yesterday that the CEO is going to be “job shadowing” someone on the team for two hours in June, and it’s not going to be me, so — celebration time!)

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Right, so, annual performance reviews. For whatever reason, my workplace does these in February. Except this year, when they’ve been delayed. All that really matters to me is that this delay means any potential pay increase won’t kick in until March. (Not cool, workplace. Not cool.)

The worst part, though is that we’re being fed a line about ‘these are so important to us, we want to make sure we have enough time to come up with thoughtful comments so we’re all improving.’

No. Either somebody important in the approval process is taking a vacation at a crucial time, or the company’s trying to save money by gradually pushing back the date, but there’s no way it’s because they want to provide us with more insightful feedback on our work performance.

Performance reviews are pretty much just like how Riker made them look in Star Trek — you put them off till the last minute, then slog through them all at once with as much copy/paste from the previous year as you can get away with. So it has always been, and so it always will be; that is the reality of management.

What workplaces consistently delude themselves on is the idea that they are fooling anyone. But work history isn’t linear — half my current team of minion-level coworkers were management in other jobs. There is no fooling us about performance reviews.

In the words of Nick Fury, “It’s stuff like this that gives me trust issues.”

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Only Wednesday, huh? My boss is away on vacation all week, and we’ve been short-handed in addition to that. Yesterday, my boss’ boss emerged from the office to proclaim that we are all “doing awesome.”

I can only guess that this proclamation was based on a lack of crying and fistfights, because it was definitely not based on whether or not we have been keeping up with our ever-increasing workload. (Spoiler alert: we have not.)

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

My current workplace is moving — not the whole company, just one group of us, so we’ll all end up closer together.

(In ridiculous news, apparently this was sort of supposed to be kept on the down low? Not from us, but from people calling in. Probably they should have told us that BEFORE the final day of packing.)

Anyway, there was a packing plan. It was pretty well thought out; I was impressed. As anyone who’s ever moved anywhere can guess, this plan was completely obliterated by reality. We arrived to work yesterday to find movers already there. At one point there was talk of dismantling our cubicles *while we were still supposed to be taking calls.* (Thankfully, saner heads prevailed and this did not happen.)

Basically: CHAOS.

(And a special note to anyone considering moving an office. It is Not Cool to pack up the coffee maker, water dispensers, and all kitchen utensils at 9:00 in the morning, and then expect people to work until 6 in the evening without any of those things. At least not without warning them ahead of time.)

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Amazon states that my new earbuds have been delivered. There’s a green circle with a check in it.

I beg to differ, Amazon. Your definition of “delivered” and mine are clearly not the same. Because, you see, no earbuds are yet in my possession, and therefore, the package has not been delivered.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.

Lesson of the day: training someone to do your job is approximately a million times harder than doing it yourself.

I now understand why so many managers and assistant managers have approached their final two weeks with a firm ‘not my problem anymore’ attitude. It’s possible that’s the only way to stay sane.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.