General Assembly at 1PM
You’ve got mail. A very short email from HR to All Users popped in your inbox first thing that morning:
General Assembly
11th Floor, 1PM, TODAY.
See you.
Off the usual, there was no agenda after it; neither warning nor gauge whether the update was to be missed or be excited for. Off the usual again, the 11th floor was filled with employees come one o’clock that afternoon. Typically, General Assemblies (GAs) slid down a full ten minutes because the GM had to wait for the rest of The Office humanity to lumber in and occupy the empty seats. Now she’s rather amused, thinking the short email worked, and says they should always do it that way in the future – quick and clueless. Being mysterious had dug into everyone’s penchant for a good scoop. However, she hastily explains that the assembly had to be today, and no other time, because the CEO based in the US had just announced to the shareholders
statements of utmost importance. They were the Quarter 4 strategies to counteract the dismal global financial performance of the company.
Tactfully she segues into other topics like good news (bonus was coming in on the 26th) and somewhat bad news (Sales Leadership Program having a boycott), before going in to the
really bad news – global downsizing.
You’ve seen it in many case studies in your MBA. Slumps in performance lead top managers to “rationalize” aspects of the business that were not helping cash flow or the company’s EPS (earnings per share). When it’s written in a textbook or a business journal, it’s logical why chief executives had decided to sell parts of its company to other entities or cut off thousands of rank and file workers. Now it’s different. When you hear it said in your own turf, being a successful case study is the remotest thing on your mind. You feel every inch a family man, a working student, a single parent-to-be, a breadwinner. Will you still keep your job after this GA? Can you find another job if ever you’re tagged “redundant”? Will other companies accept you despite your advanced age or unheard-of specialization?
There were other strats mentioned which weren’t entirely new. But they didn’t matter. They weren’t important. You’re trying to give yourself a quick yearend assessment, just in case you have to fight for your name to remain in the book of the employed.
The GA ends an hour later when the last question in the Q & A was finished off by the GM (“No, the news is still fresh so we haven’t got a timeline on what actual steps will be taken.”). You’re back in your workstation and your computer and your unorganized files. And then you wonder, “Am I going to be lucky?”
NON-FICTION FICTION
(I discovered this story while I was cleaning my computer files. I don’t know how and exactly when I wrote it, but I must have been an estimator then. Looks like I was terribly bored that time… -- christie)Hi. My name is Alisha. My mother said she named me after her favorite singer in the sixties. There was one time I wanted to find out if I could really sing. So I looked for this Alisha singer from the music archives I had to dig up in the magazine section of the public library. Well, I guess I’d never be famous. Never read Alisha in those old magazines.
Anyway, I’m not really going to tell you about me. But I will tell you about my work.
I sit all on day in front of the computer eight hours a day. Five days a week. My cubicle is small but just right for me sized 4 ft. by 4 ft. It’s a perfect square as seen from the top, but it has one corner cut away so I have a place for my ergo chair and my PC. You can say it’s a almost a diamond when I get to position myself in it. Two sides of this cube are lined with one and a half foot wide planks two feet long. They serve as my work desk where I put on my computer monitor and keyboard, a desk calendar, mirror, a picture frame with me in it, and some files standing upright in a file container. I also have my trusty phone of which I spend a lot of time arguing with co-workers on numbers. (I forecast sales, by the way. I really like numbers.)
Every morning I come to the office at ten to eight a.m., and I put my handbag and file carry-alls in a secret compartment in my desk drawer. I pull out the rubbing alcohol and start wiping dust and dirt that may have settled on my desk and computer during the night. I also clean my phone extra well because I wouldn’t know who might have used it when I got out of the office yesterday.
Once I had a nightmare about germs getting so many like the ones you see in that safeguard soap commercial. They were all over my phone and the bad part was, my phone was ringing an important call so I had to pick it up. I didn’t have alcohol with me so all the germs went into my ear and then swarmed into my eye that I could actually see the germs multiplying in my brain.
I check my calendar for meetings that are lined up for the day. I also make sure that the upper rightmost corner of it is aligned with the corner of my desk, because I want to make sure that it doesn’t take up any more space than it needs.
I pick up my picture frame with me in it, and take a look at it also, everyday. I wonder if my expression in the picture has changed… it was taken when I was at the beach with my mom, and I was so grumpy at that time I didn’t want to have my picture taken. Besides, the sun was in my eye and I couldn’t get to smile the kind of smile that has all my teeth showing.
I love the beach.
When I put back the picture frame it’s 45 degrees with one side of my cubicle. I wanted it that way so that it greets visitors and shows my favorite beach when people pass by my place.
I have three other co-workers who are really close by, and they have exactly the same sized cubicles I have, only that their entrances differ from mine. I think it was really a smart thing for the cubicle assembler to do this, to have our seats positioned differently. It’s become easy to get in and out of our area.
All four of us are sales forecasters, but we compute for different categories of baby products. Cherry, a really nice pregnant woman, computes the sales of baby bottles that have different sizes. Natalie, a girl who has stayed with the company we worked for seven years with the same job, computes the sales of baby carriers and cribs. Villie, is a big woman and almost like a man, and she computes for the sales of baby clothes.
I notice that Villie is also neat with her things and puts her files back into the right folder, but she doesn’t use alcohol like I do. When she borrows my stapler, I clean it with alcohol immediately because it has touched her desk and microscopic virus may be in the staple bullets.
Cherry doesn’t really care about way her papers are disarranged on her table, but I think it goes with her not pressing her toothpaste tube at the end of the tube. She presses it in the middle. I saw her do that when I was brushing my teeth in the ladies’ bathroom.
I can’t really say a lot about Natalie because she’s always out of the office. She logs in at 9.30 (which is the latest time that’s allowed), and takes a lunch at 11.30 am. She comes back at around 2 pm. Most of the time our bosses would be looking for her because they need some important sales figures on the cribs and they wouldn’t find her at her cubicle.
Villie likes to joke that Natalie must have watched the first showing of a movie of Keanu Reeves.
As for me, I’m really very shy around people, but I get really loud when I get angry. I handle baby toys, which is good because I like the new smart toys. They’re so soft and colorful. At the same time they help the baby develop his (if he’s a boy) or her (if she’s a girl) “life skills” like telling apart shapes and tying shoelaces.
Our group (the four of us) shares the twenty-first floor with the rest of the sales department. They’re pretty noisy because on the average they are 80% present, and that makes twenty nine other people on the floor, aside from us (the sales forecast group).
The sales people are noisy all the time, and there are always new people getting off the elevator. I can tell because our cubicles are the first ones you’ll see when you come up our floor. Sometimes visitors mistake us for receptionists and they always ask where Ms. Lieza’s or Ms. Cel’s or Mr. Roel’s place is. Of course we tell them where they are, but it does get pretty tiring when each of the seventeen Speech Power participants ask where the conference room is. On that day, I said “It’s down the hall at your left” fourteen times. The other three were answered by Cherry.
On Miss Number Ten I was beginning to get grumpy that I felt my neck tighten. I had to drink water and there wasn’t any in my glass so I asked Cherry to answer her for me while I go the drinking fountain. When I stood up and walked away from my cubicle, Ms. Number Ten shouted at me and told me that I was disrespectful and that the company should not have taken me in as a receptionist. Why was I turning my back on her, she said. That’s no way to treat a guest, etc. etc.
I turned to her and told her I was not a receptionist but a SALES FORECASTER.
I don’t know what happened to her but she quickly ran away and headed out of the building. Villie said the woman was pretty upset because I shouted at her.
“I was trying to explain!”
Cherry got my water glass and filled it and asked me to drink. But just before that Mr. Roel yelled from his cubicle that, “The entire sales department can hear you, Alisha!”
I didn’t realize that I was shouting at Ms. Number Ten already when I did. So I drank the whole glass of water and then refilled it with more. After that my neck became pretty okay and I was even nicer to Mr. Eleven, Mrs. Thirteen and Mr. Fourteen.
High Fidelity
(with apologies to Nick Hornby)
Once I almost strangled my cube neighbor Ray (IT guy, marketing support). The music he was playing on his PC was too loud I couldn’t think straight. Found out that he puts on Bamboo to cool him down whenever he gets stressed. Forgave him eventually, but I asked him to plug a pair of earphones on next time (Bamboo could be heard five cubes from him).
Anyway, Ray wasn’t the only person who plugged and played when the pressure was too much. Here’s a sample of what I and some Officemates play for days when we have stress, boredom, booboos, and the occasional good news:
SLEEPY – U2’s “Elevation”, Eraserheads’ “Combo on the Run” and “Alkohol”, SugarFree’s “Mariposa”, Jamie Cullum’s “Catch the Sun”, Robbie Williams’ “Let Me Entertain You”, Alanis Morisette’s “You Oughta Know”
STRESSED –Sarah Brightman’s “Nessun Dorma”, Beatles’ “Hard Day’s Night”, Keane’s “Everybody’s Changing”, Norah Jones’s “Sunrise”, The Corr’s “Summer Sunshine”, Rivermaya’s “Sunday Driving” and of course Bamboo’s “Aleluya”
SENTI – MYMP’s “Waiting In Vain” and “Especially For You”, Louis Armstrong’s “La Vie en Rose”, South Border’s Mulawin Theme, Gary Valenciano’s “Reaching Out” and “I Will Be Here”, SWV’s “Weak”, Gabrielle’s “Out of Reach”, Martin Nievera’s “Ikaw ang Lahat sa Akin”, Paolo Santos’s “Swept Away”, Alicia Key’s “If I Ain’t Got You”, Jamie O Neal’s “All By Myself”
NAUGHTY & NICE– Craig David’s “Fill Me In”, Jamie Cullum’s “High and Dry”, Frank Sinatra’s “You Make Me Feel So Young”, SWV’s “Right Here”, Gerry Halliwell’s “It’s Raining Men”, Eraserheads’ “Ang Huling El Bimbo”, Nikki Hassman’s “Any Lucky Penny”
FRIDAY – Swing Out Sister’s “Break Out” and “Same Girl”, Bonnie Bailey’s “Ever After”, Jason Mraz’s “The Remedy”, VST and Co.’s “Swing”, (forgot artist) “Hey”, The Corr’s “Angel”
Favorite Things and Such
Office Supplies. Aren’t they grand? My favorite toy is the heavy-duty stapler that could staple an inch-thick of documents with a single wire. Running second is an old-fashioned pencil sharpener, not the plastic one but the metal type you vise unto the table, because it makes wood-clinched pencils so wonderful to use with their sturdy lead points.
Lately, I discovered that my Office-mates have affinities for office things as well, like Post-its and bull clips. One brand manager was “caught” hoarding a big plastic tub of bull clips; she said she runs out whenever she needs them most. The planner who loved Post-its stuck notes all around the frame of her computer monitor (does that mean she doesn’t get anything done?). Another marketer adored pencils and kept them in a white ceramic mug, like a bouquet of flowers (ala You’ve Got Mail). I guess she only uses one or two for work, the rest is just decoration.
This brings me to the topic of Pencils, very strange creatures. When I was an estimator, I always ran out of pencils. I kept going back to Marni the secretary for a new pair every week. She asked me what I did with them; I said they just kept disappearing and I didn't know where they’ve gone! Curiously, the disappearance of pencils was accompanied by a multiplication of paper clips in my work station. (I only asked once for a box of paper clips, and that was years ago when I first joined marketing, and yet I had enough paper clips to fill two more boxes!)
If you were in my shoes, you’d theorize that Pencils morph into Paper Clips, like, you know, the way caterpillars change into butterflies? I never shared this theory with my co-workers. Not that it was stupid, but I didn’t have enough proof…
To prevent my pencils from disappearing, I stuck thin pieces of sticker paper on them with the words “This Pencil Stolen from (My Name).” Eventually, the culprits voluntarily turned themselves in with the embarrassed “Hey, this is yours” line. They were either brand managers or marketing planners. It seems that whenever they dropped in my cubicle to discuss something, they borrowed
my pencils to take down notes, and then absentmindedly took these pencils with them when they returned to their own cubes. Aha! Mystery solved.
(Remarkably, this nicely explains the converse phenomenon I have observed as a marketing planner – that of pencils multiplying.)
But what about the mushrooming paper clips? I haven’t proven it yet, but my current hypothesis is:
Paper Clip growth is proportional to the volume of incoming documents received in a day. Estimators get a lot of estimation requests, and these requests have lots of documents held together by paper clips. They're probably the most received by a function on this floor. Brand managers and marketing planners’ paper trail is usually on the outgoing mode; ergo they don’t gather enough paper clips on their side as much as the estimators. This could pretty much justify the brand manager’s obsession with bull clips.
Presenting Mr. D. Niles
The D is for Daniel, which in the world of films and novels is an overused name . The moniker usually stands for chunk-o-hunk like Daniel Cleaver (portrayed by Hugh Grant) in the
Bridget Jones movie, or sheepish-bartender-hunk like Daniel in the
PS I Love You chick bestseller, or kid-who-would-be-a-hunk-someday-but-is-adorable-for-now teenage star Daniel Radcliffe who currently plays
Harry (ugh, curses! another overused name!)
Potter. In the Office, Daniel stands for the new ex-pat Financial Director -- blonde British bloke, age 31, unforgivably married with two dogs, and if the rumors are true, incontestably hhhhott.
He’s rather young for a Financial Director. I thought it could be insulting for Millie, Pinay senior finance officer, who in a few years is ready for retirement. On the other hand, she says she doesn’t mind. Those ex-pat guys, like the one before Mr. Niles (Mr. X from India, age 35, also a cutie), are just watchdogs and not “really” directors. They’re here as a result of a post-Enron-debacle Global Audit Policy, making sure that the local FO
[1] of each country doesn’t go into “creative accounting”.
Truth be told, I haven’t met Mr. D. Niles. Haven’t been within elevator-distance of him to assess “the goods”. So how did I know the new FO was a hottie?
Enter Yahoo Messenger. Monday, 9:11 AM.
(Trinny is marketing planner, one of my cubicle neighbors on the 7th, while Jeng is Trinny’s close friend from Finance at the 9th floor.)
Jheng_79: Uuuuyyy!!!!! May chika ako sa iyo, lola!3nnie: Nag-resign si Sonny? Lam ko na iyon…
Jheng_79: Ha???? Kelan!?? Teka, di un ano…. CUTE yung bagong FO!!!3nnie: Bagong FO? Papalitan na si (Mr. X)?
Jheng_79: Yup, manganganak na kasi yung misis nya sa India. Nag-request si (Mr. X) na mag-pa change post pabalik ng India. Kya eto na si D. Niles! Di k ba nagbabasa ng email??? In-nannounce yan last Friday a?
3nnie: Sori po… e ang daming kayang email akong nakukuha in a day ?! So … cute kamo?
Jheng_79: Mare, backstreet boy!!!!!!! :-)3nnie: Ha? Talaga?
Jheng_79: Yup! Naka-highlights pa ang buhok! Guapo!!!! Atsaka, BRITISH!!!Incidentally, Trinnie knows that I fantasize hooking up someday with a witty Brit. She dragged me out of my cube and showed me her trail of YM messages. Got me all excited and giggling like a school girl. Unfortunately I had a pending color proof on my hands with the Creatives manager breathing down my neck; I couldn’t go up the 9th to “verify the information.” When I finally did have time the following day, Mr. D. Niles had returned to England to tie some domestic loose ends, and would come back after Mr. X has completed his work here by end-October.
Anyway, I’m waiting for the right opportunity to come along, probably an inventory management meeting I can sit in for Marian (my boss) when she decides to go on leave on a Monday.
Naah… can’t wait that long. I’ll just go up tomorrow and check him out.
[1] FO = Finance Officer
Another One Bites the Dust
Two weeks ago, Sheila the demand planner turned in her resignation letter to join the Great Unknown. Actually, the Great Unknown offered her just about the same pay as the Office currently gives her, but with some added benefits, like a funkier title – Planning Manager, and opportunities to travel around Asia since her new stock keeping units
[1] would comprise of chemicals that criss-cross the region.
She had been talking about this for months – moving out of the Office and getting better employment somewhere else. In Sheila’s mind, what qualifies for better employment wasn’t higher salary or a company car, but an obsessive-compulsive friendly system that connects nerve endings from your brain to the rest of the operational elements (like delivery service or production). Don’t we all want that? You only have to will it and it would be done. The Great Unknown seemed to promise Sheila the technology, and that meant, aside from other perks, less time at work and more time with her family.
My experience with technology is that it doesn’t, it NEVER, helps you ease your choking workload. Workload, I realized, is a function of Personnel Management and Business Direction, not Technology. Take the case of our Supply Chain (SC) department. Eight years ago we implemented what was considered a breakthrough supply chain management system. Because the department came from manually taking down orders, typing it into the MS Office applications, printing and then carrying out onto the shop floor, the New Technology which committed to automate those non-value adding work (like walking from point A to point B) looked like THE solution to their non-existent social lives.
And for a while, it did. It automated everything the SC specialists took hours to do. Since stock distribution became more “efficient,” the managers thought of other ridiculous things for specialists to waste time on, like generate reports of the same data in five different formats that nobody reads. However, as a result of aggressive global strategy, the number of customer branches grew (really, no secret; one of Sales Department’s key strategies to increase customer access), number of new SKUs increased (Marketing’s tactic), and the target customer service level, as a result of the enabler, was raised.
Did putting in the New Technology translate into an increased efficiency for the SC specialists?
Ha-an. Dili. No.
The specialists were, and still are, working overtime at the distribution department because of 1) the increased channels or customer branches whose parameters could only be established in six months, 2) slave-driving manager who couldn’t say No (it’s a mutation;
see related blog). We still have stock-outs, probably in the same ratio as we did eight years ago, if you consider that we had fewer outlets and products then than now. The department hired even more SC Specialists and assistants to take on the load; it was more than the department could initially handle. Last thing I heard, the specialists and its manager were putting in 14 to 15-hour days because the GM was asking for daily stock situation reports from them. (I hate micro-managing...)
It’s an operational practice never to work a machine at its full capacity to prevent breakdown (ideally, it should be around 80%). If that’s a practice for machines, people should be taken care of no less than that.
I just hope Sheila gets what she wants in the Great Unknown with her technology wish list. If not that, well at least she gets to travel.
[1]Abbreviated as SKU in supply chain jargon
