{{first name | Reader}}
They disabled the chat for this one.
Not announced, just gone. The little icon that is usually there was not there, and four hundred of us noticed at the same moment and said nothing, because there was nowhere to say it.
The slide had four words on it and one of them was "bold."
Forty minutes, then the Q&A, which is eleven. The questions had been submitted in advance, through a form that closed on Friday.
Two were read out. Both began "lots of people are asking."
I have been here long enough to know that the questions people submit are not the questions that get read, and that this is not a conspiracy. Somebody sits down with a list and picks the two that have answers. I would do the same.
I just do not know who that person is. I have stopped wondering, and that is the part I noticed on the way back to my desk.
A RESIGNATION LETTER I WON’T BE SENDING
To: The Q&A Portion
Re: Questions submitted in advance
Please accept this as my formal resignation from the Q&A portion, effective immediately and retrospectively.
I have attended eighty-eight of these. I have submitted no questions. I would like that recorded not as apathy but as an accurate reading of the mechanism.
The form opens on Monday and closes on Friday. The meeting is the following Tuesday. In the four days between, somebody reads what came in and selects two. That is a reasonable thing to do and I would do it the same way.
What I object to is the phrase "lots of people are asking," which is used to introduce both. It is either true, in which case the question was obvious and did not need submitting. Or it is not true, in which case somebody wrote it on Monday morning.
I accept there is a third possibility. That it is true, and I was simply not one of the people asking.
That one has been sitting with me since the call ended.
Regards,
DEEPLY UNSETTLING MATH
A new direction roughly every eighteen months. Twenty-two years.
That is fourteen of them.
Fourteen times somebody stood at the front and explained that this one is different.
I can name two.
ONE GENUINELY USEFUL THING: Spend the training budget.
Most places run the training year on the finance year, and most finance years end in December. Unspent budget does not roll. It goes back, and next year's allowance is set using this year's spend, so money you did not use is taken off you twice.
Nobody will chase you about this. It is in nobody's interest except yours.
Find out three things. Your handbook or your manager has all of them, and asking is not a favor.
What the allowance actually is. What the deadline actually is. And what counts, which is usually wider than anybody volunteers: conferences, books, a certification that has nothing to do with this job, sometimes a course in something you are not paid to know.
That last one is the category worth using. A qualification you chose, paid for out of a budget that expires anyway, is a thing you keep. It leaves when you leave.
Ask this week rather than in November, because by November the answer is that approvals are closed.
PARKING LOT
Eighth one.
They have scheduled a follow-up session for the questions that were not reached. It is optional. It is at 4:30 on a Friday.
There is a thing I made in September and then never mentioned, because mentioning it felt like selling something.
Standard Responses. Ten situations that happen at work, and one sentence to say in each. What not to do, the exact words, and why they work. None of them will fix anything.
Seven pages. Free, and there is nothing to sign up for, because you already did.
And one question. One tap, no typing.
Question: If I made one thing, which would you actually use?
Go do something that isn't work.
R. Countdown
ANY OTHER BUSINESS
Q&A closed. Forty-one questions received. Two answered.
Enough, Already Club. Form EA-1. Distribution: internal.
Retention: until you leave.