You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps!

I just found this from a few months ago, and it still amuses me. 

Jennifer: Wait...so who do you work for now? I should have taken a pic of the org chart!

Virginia: I now work for Marisa

Jennifer: Okay. Frank kicked you and Aaron to the curb!

Virginia: It's like kids at a party...any grown up will do to pour the juice or whatever...any manager will do.

Jennifer: LOL! That's true. Marisa seems like a good manager for career development

Virginia: Yes. And that's what I need, because I am bored to tears. A well-trained monkey in a diaper could do my job. Hell, we could potty train a well-trained monkey!

Jennifer: Thanks for thinking of the carpet.

Virginia: Well, we just had the carpet replaced! And, there'd be the added bonus that the monkey could demonstrate Frank's banana-opening theory. 

Jennifer: We'd have to lock the peanut M&Ms up. I hope the monkey likes donuts. The monkey could also eat the rotting leftovers.

Virginia: Do monkeys eat leftovers? I know pigs do, but they don't have opposable thumbs.

Jennifer: We could make a pig pen as part of space planning.

Virginia: All of the zoo animals that interact with the public have a companion animal...my monkey could have a companion pig to eat the leftovers! And when the pig gets old...instant bacon! Or did I just cross a line?

Jennifer: We could bury it in the volleyball court and have a luau.

Virginia: OMG! YOU ARE SO RIGHT! Best idea ever! Let me tell Marisa we need to hire a monkey in a diaper so it can have a companion pig so we can have a luau! And we'll have revenge on the product team that didn't invite us to their party!

Jennifer: Yes!

Virginia: Nothing tastes better than sweet revenge...except when that revenge tastes like pork!

Jennifer: Haha!

Virginia: OMG! why aren't WE running this company yet?

Jennifer: Right?! Give us a little more time and there will be piglets roaming these halls!

Virginia: I totally went to grad school to run shit. I did NOT go to grad school to accrue severance.

Jennifer: Fact!

Virginia: We live in California...people seem to think they can take their dogs everywhere with them. It's only a matter of time before people take their monkeys and companion pigs with them everywhere, too. We just want to be on the front end of that trend.

Not enough experience

This is a picture of Cape Disappointment Lighthouse

In the past week, I've had two different sets of disappointing news at work. The first is that I will not be going to India to teach business skills to women in rural villages (how awesome is that opportunity!), and the second is that I'm not being considered for a position in our Finance department because they are looking for someone with more experience.

I understand. I really do. They want someone with 5 years finance experience. I have about a decade of accounting experience. That sounds like the same thing to someone not in the field, but it's really not. It's really actually a fundamentally different way of looking at data.

There are a few things about this decision that trouble me. The first is that when I looked over the job description and talked with the managers, everything sounded like stuff I can do. Because I'm smart. And I have a degree in Finance. And because the accounting work at my last company was both more complex and more analytic-based than what I'm currently doing.

This is a picture of a disappointed boy. I think it looks like Sad Christopher Robin. 

The second troubling thing is that I really want out of accounting. Accounting is dull. (I'm sure people in finance might argue that finance is dull, but that's not the point.) The point is, I never meant to become an accountant. I meant to use accounting as a way of getting a job after college, and as a way of getting into a good company so I could eventually do something useful. Well, I've had no problems getting jobs. I'm at a good company. It's apparently the next step that I'm struggling with.

To be fair, I've been at my current company less than two years. It's just that I've been an accountant FOREVER. When I went to grad school, I had no idea that almost 5 years after graduating, I would still have the exact same title on my resume than I did before grad school. Somehow that seems to miss the point of all of those classes (and all of that  money we spent).

As I understand it, the people who don't want to hire me for their finance roles do want to use me for some project work, which is both good and bad. The good side is that they'll get to see how amazing I am and that will hopefully make them more inclined to hire me when another role opens. The bad side is that I'll essentially be doing finance work for free. Sure my hours and my salary will stay the same, but there is a definite pay jump between my level in accounting and the equivalent level in finance.

On the bright side, until they decide what to do with me, I have time to blog at work.

Coffee: it's still hot

Remember a few months ago when I was ranting and raving about how stupid people can be (oh wait, that was yesterday), and how I'd never allow my mother to mix her creamer into her coffee IN MY CAR, because, and she completely supports this, SHE'D SPILL IT!  I'd have a mess in my car, my mother would have to change her clothes, and she could possibly have burns.  Who wins here?  Apparently she would, if she sued me.

Read on **:

Memories last forever


It's time again for the annual 'Stella Awards'! For those unfamiliar with these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the Mc Donald's in New Mexico, where she purchased coffee. You remember, she took the lid off the coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving. Who would ever think one could get burned doing that, right? That's right; these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S. You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch your head. So keep your head scratcher handy.

Here are the Stellas for this past year -- 2010 :

*SEVENTH PLACE*

Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son.


Start scratching!


* SIXTH PLACE *


Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, California won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hubcaps.


Scratch some more...


* FIFTH PLACE *


Terrence Dickson, of Bristol, Pennsylvania, who was leaving a house he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the garage door to open. Worse, he couldn't re-enter


the house because the door connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut. Forced to sit for eight, count 'em, EIGHT days and survive on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner's insurance company claiming undue mental Anguish. Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000 for his anguish. We should all have this kind of anguish. Keep scratching. There are more...


Double hand scratching after this one.....


*FOURTH PLACE*

Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, garnered 4th Place in the Stella's when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the butt by his next door neighbor's beagle - even though the beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. Williams did not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun.


Pick a new spot to scratch, you're getting a bald spot....

* THIRD PLACE *


Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania because a jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her tailbone. The reason the soft drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument. What ever happened to people being responsible for their own actions?


Only two more so ease up on the scratching...


*SECOND PLACE*


Kara Walton, of Claymont, Delaware sued the owner of a night club in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000....oh, yeah, plus dental expenses. Go figure.


OK. Here we go!!!


* FIRST PLACE *


This year's runaway First Place Stella Award winner was: Mrs. Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who purchased new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, from an OU football game, having driven on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver's seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually leave the driver's seat while the cruise control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her, are you sitting down?

$1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home.


The winners this year are particularly stupid.....they must drink tea.......

**I didn't actually write any of these, so I take no responsibility for any grammatical or typographical errors.

(One of) The problems with my job

I'm not sure if you think I complain about my job a lot or not, but I really don't like my job. I'm stuck in what Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project calls drift, when you wish something would happen to change your situation but you're not actively doing anything to help change your situation.

And I have excuses. It's December, so I'm busy with a million holiday-related activities. I can't quit my job because we need the money. I don't have time to look for a new job because I'm too busy working at the job I have. And, I have to regroup: I'm not sure I want to stick with accounting.

Accounting is one of those fields that really isn't all that interesting, ever, but if you're working with a good team at a decent company and have a reasonable boss, it's really quite fine. I know that may sound like an impossible combination, but, really, I've had that job. I just don't now.

And I am totally grateful that I have a job. Lots of people don't, and I'm making a decent salary and have benefits. Really, it's fine.

Except, also, really, it's not fine.

Here's the trouble. I have four bosses, none of whom are particularly good at management--neither managing people, or managing time, or managing projects.

That's not entirely fair. Probably my most skilled boss wanted a lesser job so she'd have a better work/life balance (yeah, right!), so she's totally underutilized, and also frustrated because she'd make better decisions if she was properly utilized, but since she sort of picked to put herself in the position she's in, I'm still holding her accountable.

About my team: I work with fantastic individuals. We all get along really well (we even hang out outside of work). We're all smart and funny, and we appreciate each other's differences. And we work together really well. We help each other if we have a lag in our own responsibilities, or even when we don't have a lag. We trade off jobs to get things done more efficiently. We talk to each other when we find a problem that we think affects more than one of us. We ask each other for help when we're not sure of something, or to talk through problem solving. We're really great. Great enough that my company should be working really hard to keep all of us.

We're so great that under normal circumstances we don't need a manager. Left to our own devices, we'll get everything done accurately and on time.

Unfortunately, nothing in my industry is operating under "normal circumstances" right now, and our inept managers feel the need to micro-manage so we're not left to our own devices.

We still all get along and help each other, etc, but none of us actually likes our job anymore.

And, when a team really needs a manager who can manage is when things aren't normal. Just like it's easy to like my sister when she's in a good mood, being nice and generally agreeable, and/or sleeping, you don't need a skilled manager when you've got a good team and things are going well.

But just like it's really hard to like my sister when she's grumpy, a bad manager does nothing useful when things are chaotic.

One of my managers has, so far, done not a thing related to me. She's a "floating manager" (whatever that might mean), and I'm not sure what she's doing with my department, but frankly, since it's not annoying me, as far as I'm concerned, she can keep doing it.

The manager directly above me, who's title is actually manager, who's the consultant, does the reviews of our work. Except her decisions are frequently being overruled by the manager above her, with the title supervisor. And the manager doesn't get a lot of say in what goes on, even though she has the most experience.

The supervisor has a very good knowledge of the industry we're in, our company, and accounting, but has terrible people skills. She doesn't seem to think it's important to tell us what's going on, so, for example, today, we discovered that someone on another team booked $100K to one of my accounts, and that $100K should not be recognized as revenue (go with me here). Recognizing this amount as revenue means we'd overstate revenue, by, you guessed it, $100K. After a long and tedious afternoon of trying to explain to her that I knew what I needed to make happen, but that the trouble was I had no place useful to put this $100K, she came up with some sort of calculation that would overstate revenue by $350K. At this point, I'm feeling a lot of, whatever--anything to move on with this so I can go get something useful done. She's in the point of saving this entry, and I say, is this what you want me to book? She says, Yes, unless you see something wrong with it. (You can see how we're in a financial crisis. What does it matter if I think about my job if I get paid to do something entirely differently?) I pointed out that revenue was being terribly overstated and, thankfully, she agrees, so we're back to the part where I know what needs to happen, but still need to get there.

So, I have a number of suggestions for supervisor boss, and since I actually like her and think that she really is trying to do a good job, she's just not really good at it, I've gone to her boss, or my 4th boss, the director, and explain the situation, saying supervisor knows the accounting, blah, blah, blah, but that she could really benefit from a mentor and some managerial training because here are the things that she's doing that make her really difficult to work for.

And director nods and smiles and says I'm not the only one with these concerns, and yes, she understands that supervisor is new at the role and needs some help, and NOTHING HAPPENS.

So, I have one manager who does nothing relating to me, one who's underutilized, one who can't manage, and one who doesn't do anything helpful.

Can I please be in charge?

Monday reading update

What have I been up to in the reading world? Well, I finished Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, and it was fantastic! I also read The Hunting of the Snark: an Agony in Eight Fits by Lewis Carroll. Lewis Carroll is one of my favorite authors because he is so weird. I'm sure there were about a million sub-layers to Snark that I simply missed (and I apparently missed the Biblical story of Jacobs in Elephants, and I even went back and read the Bible story, and I still didn't really see it, so that tells you how intellectual I am). Anyway, Snark is a poem about these nine guys and a beaver (who makes lace!) who go off hunting a snark.

Lewis Carroll was apparently known for writing nonsense (how do I get that job?), and he does not disappoint. The part that describes the hunting actually reminded me of Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester, although technically, Snark was published first. Of the hunting technique of this motley group, the book says:

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.

I thought this was wonderful whimsy; after all, I can be charmed with smiles and soap!

I have also been doing some reading in The Science of Harry Potter by Roger Highfield. It's actually an interesting book that explains how some of the magical elements in the world of Harry Potter could actually exist. There was a bit on game theory, which I enjoyed, and the book also discusses genetic engineering and how it, theoretically, would be possible to create Fluffy, the three-headed dog.

Personally, I have no problem with the suspension of disbelief required to thoroughly enjoy the world of Harry Potter. (My mother, on the other hand, has some issues with this...for example, she didn't want to watch Pirates of the Caribbean because she thought it looked smelly. My aunt told her that it wasn't smell-o-vision, and I told her that Johnny Depp wore special sunglass contacts so he wasn't squinting all of the time. It wasn't the fantasy part of the story that bothered my mother, but how could someone be in the Caribbean without sunglasses and not squint?)

So, for me, reading Science isn't increasing my enjoyment of Harry Potter, which is not to say that it isn't interesting.

Finally, I am just about to start Wicked Appetite by Janet Evanovich, and I am so excited! She's written a ridiculous series of books about a character, Stephanie Plum, who is a bounty hunter in Trenton, NJ. I agree with many of the other comments on Amazon that this series has gotten a bit tired, with the same formulaic misadventures, and as least one other reviewer noted, how has Stephanie managed to string along two guys for this long? Wicked Appetite is the first of a new series featuring one of the occasional characters from the Stephanie Plum series, Diesel. I've always really liked Diesel, so I'm very excited to start this book. And stay tuned, because I'll probably have it finished by the next update!

Caution: contents may be hot

No s#$!, it's coffee!

I think we're all pretty used to seeing the warning on coffee cups, and other hot to-go items, but does anyone remember the lawsuit in 1994 that warranted these warnings?

I do, because I thought it was ridiculous at the time, and then when we covered it in my MBA program, I still thought it was ridiculous.

I'll provide a refresher for those of you who don't remember the case: a 79-year-old lady bought a $0.49 cup of coffee at a McDonald's drive through. Then her grandson stopped the car so she could add cream and sugar. She put the cup between her legs, and while trying to remove the lid, she spilled the entire cup in her lap and suffered third degree burns. Her lawsuit against McDonald's alleged that the coffee was defective because of excessive heat and inadequate warnings, and that the extreme temperature made the coffee unfit for consumption.

McDonald's, at the time, served coffee between 180 and 190 degrees, while coffee made at home is usually between 135 and 140 degrees. The reason McDonald's coffee is so hot is because most of their customers buy the coffee and take it elsewhere (like work) to drink, and McDonald's doesn't want it to get cold on the way. This makes perfect sense to me: I have a high heat tolerance, and always order my hot drinks "extra hot" because otherwise they are too cool before I get a change to drink them. Or, put another way, my mother says she prefers her drinks to cool in front of her, while she's enjoying them, rather than starting out not hot enough.

Even the jury foreman noted, of the case,"[I] wasn't sure why I needed to be there to settle a coffee spill." (from "Jury Awards Punitive Damages Against McDonald's for Excessively Hot Coffee," Law Reporter, February 1995).

Here's the thing, in my opinion. I agree that it's awful that this woman received third degree burns as a result of spilling her coffee, but why in the world would you let a 79-year-old fiddle with a hot beverage between her legs in your car? In my car, if you have a drink that needs to be played with, you do it before you get in the car. I don't want spills in my car, and any time anyone is stirring or adding cream or sugar or whatever to a drink, it's possible to spill or drip or something. I don't want spilt coffee in my car, I don't want spilt sugar in my car, and I don't want spilt cream in my car. I understand that it might happen anyway. I occasionally spill my go-cup of tea, but it's usually because I'm not paying attention, which seems to be a big cause of accidental spills.

It seems to me that an easy solution would be to go into the store to buy the coffee, which is what I do with my mother, who is, by the way, not 79-years-old. If we're driving around and Mom wants a cup of coffee, we get out of the car, order the cup "with room," so there's room for the cream, and then she takes it over to the stand and adds her cream and whatever and stirs it there, and we don't leave until the lid is secure, and even then, we grab a couple of extra napkins. I don't want my mom spilling her coffee in my car, but I also don't want her spilling it on herself. Probably, wherever we're headed is more fun and entertaining than either having to go back home for a change of clothes, or going to the ER in the event of burns from a spill. Really, this just seems like common sense to me.

How is a sumo wrestler like a writing desk?

I have a number of things about which I'd like to blog, but obviously, lately, I've been a little short on time. Sigh.

I recently read Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. In one of the early chapters, they discuss whether or not sumo wrestlers throw matches, how often, and why. I don't remember entirely the point they were trying to make (and I have since returned the book to the library), but it did get me thinking, which may be a more important outcome than whatever their point was anyway.

Here's the setup: in a sumo tournament, each wrestler wrestles 15 times (presumably to different opponents, otherwise this math would never work). In order to improve their ranking, they have to win eight of these matches. So, for a wrestler going into their final match with a score of 7-7, winning this final match is very important. In final matches where their opponent is 8-6 (and therefore, probably a slightly better wrestler, but who does not need to win this last match), the 7-7 wrestler wins most of the time, even though statistically they shouldn't.

The Freakonomics guys do a whole bunch of analysis and basically show that the 8-6 dudes are throwing their last match. This doesn't really bother me. I brought this up to Captain America, who felt that professional athletes should always do their best. While I agree in principle, I also sort of feel like this was decent sportsmanship. If a 9-6 record isn't going to do you any more good than an 8-7, why not give the win to the other guy, who actually needs it? (Am I actually nicer than we all think?)

This led me to thinking about two other rather unrelated topics. The first was my high school swim team. My swim team, although labeled "varsity," actually had swimmers of a large breadth of skill (there was no JV team). Some meets we swam were close, and our better swimmers swam a lot, and hard. Others, we knew we were going to win and our coach let our less skilled swimmers swim a lot more (this gave the less skilled swimmers opportunities to letter, which I won't get in to). In these meets, we could have swum our best athletes and creamed the other team, or swimmers like me could have a chance to letter and we'd still win.

Captain America points out that a public high school swim team is very different from professional athletics, and that we still won. But so did the 8-7 wrestler. We won, but we didn't have to be obnoxious about it.

This led me to think about a very random exercise in one of my MBA classes. We did a number of similar exercises but the one I'm specifically discussing involves bidding on nickles. (If you're confused as to why we were even bidding on nickles, so was my team--we were horrible at this exercise. At one point, one of my team members turned to me and said, "Virginia, if you need a nickle this badly, I'll just give you one.")

The exercise is simple: in groups of three, two people bid on nickles (taking turns to go first) and one person acts as the auctioneer. So, if I bid first, and I bid a penny for the nickle, you have two choices: you can let me win the bid, or you can bid two pennies (or more). The point (which my group just could not figure out) is that if each bidder allows the other to win the bid at one penny, after 10 rounds of alternative bidding, everyone ends up with five nickles, but only spent five pennies. This is the outcome that maximized each person's gain. I have no idea how to apply this to the real world because who would sell money at 1/5 of its value? Even if we were bidding on something with a market value, like corn, still, who would sell it for 1/5 of its value?

Later on, in subsequent classes, we did another similar exercise, and I was paired with a girl, D, whom I knew to be a big proponent of this maximized gains idea, so when she bid the minimum the first time, I let her win it, knowing she would do the same for me. I considered the possibility that she would trick me and force me to bid more than the minimum, but I figured I could do the same to her in the next round. As it turns out, I was right; she let me win all of my bids and I let her win all of hers and we ended the game both winning a lot more than we spent and both being even. The professor was thrilled with us, as no other team had managed so well, but I still have no idea how to apply this to the real world.

The takeaway, I suppose, is that if your opponent is like-minded, you can probably reach an agreement at a lower cost. No kidding, right? Or maybe the point was you don't have to be ruthless to succeed in business. (Yeah, I'm sure that's the point.) This could only work if both parties were equally not ruthless.

So yeah, what did you get out of your $55k education?

More on the App Economy

I know I've already blogged once about why I'm a fan of the app economy, but there's even more, as evidenced by this Fortune article.

I'll give you all a break and summarize the article: Apple provides engineers to colleges to teach app programming classes free of charge.

Really, that's the set up.

Here's what I like: colleges get the benefit of a free professor teaching a relevant, real world type of class. This is great for students, because so often professors get all caught up in how much they love their subject, and the theory behind it, that they forget that their students have to go out and get jobs and actually apply the material to the real world.

If you're wondering what Apple gets out of this arrangement, aside from great PR, it's a chance to take a look at up-and-coming engineering talent, as well as a fresh look at what today's youth thinks actually will make a good app. It's sort of an engineering/consumer survey class all rolled up into one.

Here's the risk: this may be the start of a trend where large companies provide area experts for free to top colleges and universities to specifically train students to think and act the way the company wants them to. I'm not sure this is appropriate. If you follow the notion that people learn more from their mistakes than their successes, this might inhibit learning. In my graduate school program, the classes in which I learned the most were the ones where I also struggled the most.

I'm not saying Apple is out to make an army of cloned engineers, and as it's know as an innovative company, surely it understands the value of providing students with a set of tools and letting them run with them.

I would just caution against too many companies providing too many professors to too many universities, as this may, at some point, stifle innovation and creativity, the very backbone of a growing economy.