Hurry Up and Wait
Great Big Company tells me I’ll be getting half a desk of my very own on the seventeenth. I’ll be sharing a cube the size of a bathroom stall with another technical writer. No word yet on when I’ll have a computer, although I apparently do have email, and I’ll bet the inbox is filling up nicely.
In the mean time, I have the use of a desk in a high-traffic area and a red pen. I’ve been doing what GBC calls a “peer review,” which is simply a fancy way of saying “proofreading with a format-specific checklist”. (I’ve used immense amounts of red ink on some of the documents I’ve seen. One of them looked like the guest of honor at an axe murder.) The problem is, I can’t get into the electronic document control system, so I have to run around and find not only someone who can access the system, but someone with the authority to acquire the document on my behalf. This can involve some sitting and waiting.
But that’s not the good part.
The good part is that I have to sit and do nothing while I am waiting, because if I read Photoshop User magazine while I’m waiting, it looks like I’m doing nothing. Then, there’s a great hue and cry over the fact that I’m doing nothing while there are piles of documents that are more than two weeks overdue. Never mind that I only got there a week and a half ago. Never mind that the people who have custody of the documents I need are in four-hour meetings. Never mind the fact that I’m sitting around waiting because I have finished all my work two days ahead of two of the other new people. And never mind that the person responsible for entering the corrections can’t do it because he doesn’t have a computer either.
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June 13th, 2003 at 11:12 am
And you thought state bureaucracy was bad….
You could always use my trick. Take along a legal pad and write. No one will check to see if what you’re writing is business related or Lunar Ellipse or short stories; you look like you’re busy with something that could be work.
August 26th, 2004 at 4:50 pm
[...] 17;t you know, it turns out to be someone with whom I have a passing acquaintance from the Project of Elemental Evil. Fortunately, it was a positive acquaintance, as it’d be very awk [...]
August 26th, 2004 at 4:51 pm
[...] 17;t you know, it turns out to be someone with whom I have a passing acquaintance from the Project of Elemental Evil. Fortunately, it was a positive acquaintance, as it’d be very awk [...]