Goodbye, Motivational Mirror!

Tragedy has just struck the office.

The janitor walking by my cube knocked down and completely shattered my "motivational mirror"! Literally, 2 minutes ago. He's cleaning up the glass as I type.

What is a "motivational mirror" you say? Well, about a year and a half ago, I was given a large, junky mirror by a coworker who was quitting. Being the jerk that I am, I put it in the hallway right outside of my cubicle. I angled the mirror in such a way that anyone walking by my cube would see their own reflection. Then I taped a piece of paper with the phrase "You Are Special!" to the top of the mirror, thinking "boy what a funny jerk I am!"

As it turns out, people loved it... They thought I was being serious! Like I genuinely wanted to let people know that they were special! It got rave reviews from all of the underachievers in the office suite.

My coworker and I decided that we would change the phrase every week or so, and we put up some preposterous stuff: "You Are a Champion!", "Go Get 'Em Tiger!", "You Make A Difference!", "Keep On Truckin'!", "Fight the Power!", "Every Little Bit Counts!", "Smile and Be Happy!", "Enjoy Every Sandwich!". It got to the point where my boss would walk by and ask "What's the next one gonna say?" when we had left one phrase up for too long.

But alas, a chapter in my snootyness has come to a shattering end. With one swing of the garbage bags you were carrying, Mr. Janitor, you ended an era. An era of what, I'm not totally sure. But it was definitely an era.

Meeting and Meetings and Meetings

So my life has recently been overtaken by meetings. I have so many meetings it's disgusting. Some of them are for important work stuff (planning budgets, preparing for Congressional hearings). Some of them are not (what to do in case of the Avian flu!). I am not necessarily upset by these meetings though, because the more time I spend at them, the less time I have to spend sitting at my desk pondering which office supply I could use for the least painful suicide (letter opener or scissors?).

My favorite type of meeting by far is the "Meta-Meeting". Meta-Meetings are meetings ABOUT other meetings. Literally, we'll have a meeting to discuss the list of things that we will choose to discuss at a future meeting. It makes my brain hurt to type that. These meetings are like a dress rehearsal for the real thing, which could be useful if my job was important. Actually no, I take that back, this type of meeting has never proven to be useful.

One time we even had a "Super-Meta-Meeting". Yes, we had a meeting to discuss our agenda for an upcoming meeting, which was a preparatory meeting for another big meeting. A meeting about a meeting about a meeting. I need to take a break.

I love Fridays!

Fridays in the Federal Government are great! My FederalEntity participates in the "compressed work week" schedule. Basically, I work 9 hour days throughout the week and I get every other Friday off. I work 80 hours every 2 weeks when you add it up. And having a 3 day weekend every other week is fantastic. It gives me another night to go out and party (not that I avoid that on work nights anyways...).

On those unfortunate Fridays where I have to come in (like today), I don't have to accomplish anything. In fact, it's nearly impossible to accomplish anything because on any given Friday, 50% of our FederalEntity has off. I'll make a few phone calls to try to handle some issues, and inevitably no one will answer. I'll send some emails and I'll get "out of office" replies. I'll walk to other people's cubes and find only a vast wasteland (well to be fair, its a vast wasteland every day).

Plus, I have off the opposite Friday as my two bosses so there is nobody here to babysit me. I can come in late, take long breaks, leave early, and nobody even notices. In fact, they probably wouldn't even know if I skipped work entirely! I've never had the guts to try that though. Instead I come in, race around the information superhighway, and apply to new jobs. Wait, why do I hate it here again?

To cap it all off, the one email I sent today elicited this response from a coworker in Texas: "We really appreciate all the quick turnaround times you have provided.....I can only imagine how busy you must be right now!"

If he only knew...