From the Brain of Matty

work rant (31.10.07 7:54 pm)

I'm going to vent a little pent-up frustration. Excuse me for a few minutes.

This morning I was told, "I don't pay you to chat on messenger."

Here are some of the things I didn't say:

You don't pay me to breathe either.
No, you don't. Go away and stop interrupting me while I'm trying to do what I am paid for.
You pay me for 7 hours' work a day, not including an hour for lunch. I usually get in around 8:30, leave between 5:15 and 5:30, and have an average 45 minutes for lunch. Worst case, that's 8 hours. Let's say in my downtime I get a message on messenger every 5 minutes; then I take 1 second to open the window, 3 seconds to grok the message, 3 seconds to formulate a response, and 3 seconds to type it. That's ten seconds out of every 300. That's 16 minutes over my extended 8 hour day. 8h - 16m is still more than 7h. So if you want to get picky, I'm actually owed more time to chat on messenger. And that's only downtime — if I'm on a roll or doing something important I ignore messenger.
Fuck you.

I didn't say any of those things, but I was tempted to say them all. Instead I said something mundane about how it can actually increase productivity to have a few minute's break every however long. Then I was told something like, "Well I'll come in for two minutes every 20 and ask about your progress." To which I said something banal in a tone that said, "You're being stupid." Then I was told, "Well Matty, you have to make a decision." and he walked off.

What the fuck does that even mean? I have to make a decision? What decision? You can't sigh and say something in that ominous voice and walk off as though you've made a point, when what you said doesn't make sense. At least, not if you want to achieve anything.

Unless you want to achieve pissing people off. According to Scott Adams' blog unhappy workers are more productive. If that's the case, hah! It didn't work. I got exactly as much done today as I did yesterday, and as much as we predicted yesterday I would do. I'm going to use messenger again tomorrow. If you try to say me nay, I probably will say "fuck off."

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