11 May, 2007

Workplace Guilt

So it's a Friday afternoon in my semi-new corporate job, and I find my workplace to be unusually quiet, as it usually is around this time every Friday. One of the downfalls of working in HR is that if there are no employees around to ask questions or enroll in stuff, then you as the HR guy, really have nothing to be done. So I organized a bit of the files, defragged my hard drive, and find myself constant checking the clock anyway.
I have two "carry-over" issues I believe I picked up in the Army. They are as follows:

1) Restless Hands - I've been the kind of worker that loves an enormous stack of work in his inbox. Whenever I'm left to figure out new and innovate ways to make my job more efficient, I have it down in about 3 seconds flat and begin trying to steal work from other people. I've gotten looks of disbelief more than once at my current job when I volunteer to do someone elses job, particularly when it comes to hiring and so forth.

2) Anchor Syndrome - As in, I have to be anchored to my desk for a period of time well past quitting time. In the workplace, but more prevailent in the Army, is that attitude that if you're walking out the door, even right at 5 pm, then you're a slacker. I've worked with other Officers that have worked so late in the night, they've actually put a cot up in their office and slept on that so they could wake up early the next morning and go right back to work. I have never been like that, however, I do feel an odd sense of guilt, even to this day where it's expected that people leave at 5 pm, when I leave work on or even after 5pm.
Shortly before I left the Army, the Sergeant First Class that I worked with and I decided we had gotten fed up with the "work from 7 to 7" attitude and started to lay the law down. Come 4 pm (in the Army, work hours are usually 8 to 4), we would both shut down our computers, walk loudly through the office, taunting the others still in their seats, and walk right out to our cars. Our attitudes were, if you have work for us, we'd been there since 8am, don't drop it on our desk at 3:59 pm. This daily event became even more pronounced when I made up lyrics to the sound Windows makes when it's shutting down. For those of you who have never shut Windows down (uh, like nobody), the tune goes:

Dah dah dah dah (high, medium, low, medium)

To which I sang several strings of lyrics depending on how I felt:

"I'm go-ing home"
or
"Man this crap sucks"
or
"I hate my job"

**Go ahead, shut your computer down now and try singing along, you'd be suprised how well it works.

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