measi's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wasted time It's been a long time since I've played hooky. Generally, I don't like to skip out on things that I'm expected to do, but today I feel more than justified, and fortunately, my boss is neutral on the whole thing, so I don't have to worry about reprecussions too badly. I just hate having my time wasted. Dammit, if my time is wasted, I want to be the person responsible for said waste. Procrastination is my goddess-given right. Torturing me with boredom and disinterest, when I have things that I know need to get done are sitting on my desk, is just cruel and unusual punishment. So today I'm playing hooky with a training class. I never really was psyched to go to it anyway, but I went yesterday just to see if it was something that would be valuable to me. I played fair-- I gave it a chance. But from 1-5 yesterday afternoon, I was fighting to stay awake, listening to consultants who were telling us how we should go about organizing and doing projects, despite telling at the same time that they don't understand why, through several sessions of this training, they receive the same feedback about how project management is done at our company. Perhaps I'm wrong, but if a presenter openly admits that the upper management of a corporation never follows the methods presented by said consulting firm, the training course pretty much loses any steam or credibility to me. If the lessons they're teaching me don't get followed by our upper management, this plan won't work. And essentially, I'm taking a day and a half out of my work-week to listen to a presentation that will never have an effect on my job. It's a waste of my time. And my energy. Within three minutes of getting back to my desk yesterday evening after this class, I had two people in my department freaking out, screaming at me for one thing or another. One I had sympathy for, but I wasn't staying late to get a contract together that couldn't go out until today anyway. The other I had no sympathy for-- she was yelling at me for not reminding her to get her timesheet in to get paid. The deadline was last Thursday. It was now Monday evening. And I'd sent a reminder last Tuesday (ironically stating that I would no longer be reminding people, since it was their responsibility to get timesheets in if they wanted to get paid). Goddess help me if another day went by without these things being resolved, and my work sitting here rotting on my desk. Now, don't get me wrong-- I think that the method these consultants are using is a sound one for project planning. The kicker is that I already do a lot of the things they're suggesting-- making a checklist, thinking things through as much as possible before ever actually doing something, etc. But I don't work in groups too often in my position. My work is predominantly solo. I'm an admin. assistant. It's part of the job assignment to have all of the details ready to go at a moment's notice so I can complete a project. I already have had to think this stuff through. And quite frankly, I've developed a sound way to do projects in a timely, organized way. Again... that's my job. So I'm playing hooky today from this training course, which is scheduled from 9-5. I can't afford to waste that much time in a course that won't help me with my work. I already have enough things that need to get done, and the day's wasting away. But dammit... it's me wasting my own time now. 10:13 a.m. - 14 May 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||