The intellectual equivalent of a ham sandwich.

Posts tagged ‘corporate’

The Coffee Pots

My latest corporate development is an unfortunate one – I have taken on a new pet peeve. Just what everyone wants, things in their life that had always been there but now they drive them nuts.

At work I sit near a coffee machine that has three coffee pots. Two normal and one for decaf (I think we have one, maybe two decaf drinkers … you guys are just messing it up for everyone. A full pot for you crazies? Madness.)

A coworker has a system for the coffee pots which I subscribe to, as do a number of others. The system is that you pour coffee from the right coffee pot, and when that is empty you move the left one over and start a new pot brewing in the now emptied pot. Therefore the left should always be full, or if a rush comes and lots of coffee is taken, someone is setting the machine up to brew a new pot. A smooth machine.

But. There are … those. Those who do not subscribe to the system. Those who come around and pour a little bit from each pot. Because it is inevitable that I come around and the right one is mostly empty (grumble grumble, lazy jerks) and then the left one is … equally almost empty (lip snarl grumble long exhale head shake).

The coffee scoundrels.

That’s when a few sound bytes will appear in my mind – “it’s not that hard, just make another pot.” But then, “EXACTLY. It’s not that hard! Who is the punk that is stealing coffee lazily!?”

Now when I’m at the coffee pot I watch people. I judge. I make predictions and assumptions.

And these, these dear future children, are the kinds of mental developments that happen when you are a corporate entity.

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Want the history of “Corporate Brad?” Sure, have at it …
•    Corporate Brad – From 3/15/2010
•    Self-Assessment – From 10/25/2012
•    Don’t Mess Up – From 4/25/2013
•    SysML, UML, and My Most Ambitious Self – From 6/13/2013
•    Corporate Brad Update – From 9/16/2013
•    Corporate Brad Announcement – From 8/11/2014
•    My Legacy at Work – From 11/24/2014

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My Legacy at Work

I work with a group of very intelligent people. It’s nice. My co-workers also have long memories of who wrote what code and they are quick to give credit to people who no longer work here.

Unfortunately, people can also be quick to be frustrated with and blame co-workers who are no longer working here for code that they originally wrote which appears to be bad. (Sometimes people speak too soon, sometimes people don’t speak up soon enough … How very Zen and noncommittal of me to make this comment.)

What I would like to do is this …

I am going to bring in a stuffed animal to work and name it Brad (my name). Also possibly a few others for co-workers who have left and there is a lot of code that is in use that is still seen as “theirs” more than anyone else’s (like the current maintainers).

I will get people in the habit of addressing these stuffed animals by name so that the names will be instilled in everyone’s brains.

Then, sometime down the line, a new person will arrive.

The new person will be learning about this and that and will eventually hear a co-worker say, “oh that’s Brad’s code … No, he has a mistake in that area with threads. You have to watch out. You have to make sure YOU’RE thread safe because Brad’s not thread safe.” (Some coders I have worked with also have the habit of using someone’s name in place of the name of the function/class/whatever code thing you are looking at.)

The new person will wonder, “who is Brad?”

Then, a few days later perhaps the co-worker will ask the keeper of the stuffed animals, “mind if I ask … what’s up with the stuffed animals?”

And hopefully, from wherever I am at that moment, I will magically sense that I should be laughing, because the new guy now thinks the co-workers who are prone to blaming are abso-freaking-lutely nuts.

It’s all about the little joys in life. And plush stuffed animals named Brad. Who are bad about threading issues.

What’d you do this time, BRAD?

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Du Jour of the Week

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Corporate Brad Announcement

This past week I had a breakthrough event in the life of my corporate mind: I was an a-hole to an intern. Sorta.

The area where my co-workers and I work is going to be moving into a smaller space so people need to take a good look at any and all papers they have. Some co-workers even have filing cabinets worth of papers. And in some common areas there are filing cabinets. I was standing in a common area looking at one with another co-worker when I said, “aren’t the interns back? Can’t we just have one of them scan all this just in case before recycling it?”

Wait – WHAT?! Did I just casually say ‘make the interns do the work everyone hates?’ And not just assigning work to interns because it’s boring stuff, but assigning it to faceless interns because I haven’t met any of them. (One summer my friends and I befriended the interns and tried to be nice to them. At the time I thought ‘am I a weird older guy trying to be cool in front of young people?’ This summer I haven’t even bothered introducing myself to the interns because I’m afraid they would look at me and think ‘ew, why’s that old dude talking to us. Did he just make a joke about how he used to play with a ‘yolo’ but could never figure out how to walk the dog? Was it even a joke? Or does he think yo-yos are called yolos? Ugh. Let’s leave.’)

Anywho … There you have it. Continuing my slow march toward being 100% corporate entity. Say, have you checked out those benefits, boy, and how about this weather, oh what’s that, sure sure the corner office. (Psst. That’s my example of being 100% corporate.)

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Want the history of “Corporate Brad?” Sure, have at it …

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Weekly Wacko

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