On Being Late for Work

Sometimes, try as you may, you end up being late for work.  Generally it's my own fault - I didn't leave home early enough, or I slept too late, or some such thing.  Other times it's Metro's fault - trains are slow, late, too full, whatever.  But occasionally, like today, things just get ridiculously compounded, to the point when you stop trying to find someone to blame and just look on and shake your head at the foolishness of it all.

This morning was one of those times.

Now, I will admit that I was running a bit late, and I didn't get to Waterfront station until about seven minutes before eight (not allowing enough time to get to work by eight, true, but I've given myself a ten-minute "acceptable tardiness" cushion).  I went down onto the platform and was discouraged to see that it was fuller than normal - which of course means that getting a spot on the next train is much less likely.  Discouraged, I found a place in the throng.

Minutes later - about 8:00 - an odd tri-tone chime was played and followed by an announcement - telling us that there was a sick passenger at Navy Yard, the station before Waterfront, and that trains would be delayed.  Now, "sick passenger" sounds much more innocuous that it is.  It sounds like "someone has a cold on the train, oh noes" but in fact means that someone needs medical attention, generally for the sudden development of a major condition, like a heart attack.  So a sick passenger is likely to foul up your entire commute.

Moments after the first announcement, the announcer - I presume the station manager, though I have no way of knowing - told us that a train would be coming into the station, but that trains were single-tracking, so it would show up on the opposite side of the platform, where trains going in the other direction arrive.  So the whole crowd shifted over to the other side of the platform and waited, only to be informed a few minutes later that, just kidding, the train would arrive shortly on the normal side of the platform.  Just kidding folks!

So the train arrives, and it's jammed to the gills.  A few intrepid people forced their way on, but as it was already quarter past eight I figured I could wait for another train rather than get up in someone one else's (or elses') personal space to a degree that I usually - no, always - reserve for my boyfriend.  Fortunately, another train showed up two minutes later  - in total defiance of the arrivals board, which declared that the next train wouldn't come for another seventeen minutes - and I got on, thinking that my troubles were over.  Of course not - we had to wait in the tunnel for a few minutes while the train in front of occupied the platform at L'Enfant Plaza.  I should have known.

When I finally got off at L'Enfant Plaza to change lines, I heard another announcement, informing the world that there was a sick passenger at Navy Yard, which I already knew, and that I should expect delays throughout the system.  The entire system, delayed on account of a sick passenger at one of the stations, and not even one served by multiple lines?  Bah, humbug, I thought to myself, being careful not to be angry with the sick passenger, only with Metro for handling it like O'Hare handles a snowshower.

Upon reaching the lower platform where my next train would arrive, I was disheartened to see an even more crowded platform than the one I had left at Waterfront.  After dodging lots of oblivious people who seem to think that the best thing to do once getting off an escalator is stop dead and look around confusedly, I made it to the far (and emptier) end of the platform, and was able to get on a train after waiting a while.  (It's a bit past 8:20 by this point).  In short order I was delivered to my destination station, but upon disembarking found yet another crowded platform, with people in long lines for the escalator.  High volume, I thought, and I exited the system thinking only about how late I would end up being for work.

But when I came above ground, yet another change from normalcy awaited me - the entire plaza, which I usually cross to get to the street, cordoned off.  Uniformed personnel directed us towards the only un-cordoned-off exit and I went around a couple of buildings before arriving at the point where I would have been had I been able to cross the plaza.  Then I saw the fire trucks and ambulances, and the blocked-off street, and began to worry.  Apparently a large government building had been closed off, in its entirety, but no one was saying what was going on.  No SWAT team in sight, so probably not a hostage situation, but who knew?  Bomb threat, maybe?

I made it to my office and logged onto my computer, thinking to check the news, and only then glanced at my phone.  8:30.  It took more than half an hour to make a commute I can usually do in about twelve minutes.  Tripled.  Oy vey.

Well, turns out it was a grease fire in a food court which spread to some ductwork.  And it also turns out that I wasn't the worst affected by a long shot.  They closed the building's associated parking ramp too, so my boss (who drives to work) couldn't park for hours.  They didn't give the all clear until 11.  Yet another reason I'm glad I don't drive.

You will be please to know, of course, that my afternoon commute was totally uneventful.  After today, I think karma owes me a couple of weeks of smooth sailing, don't you?

Things I Learned Today (II)

• Keeping one heater on is apparently not sufficient to keep my apartment warm through the day.  I came home and it was 63.  I have since turned on the other heater, but after half an hour my thermometer records no progress.  Might be because my heaters are actually "convectors," and at the moment they're blowing cold air.  Lovely.
• My boss(es) loves me.  I got an award yesterday (yes, I'm stretching the "today" part of the post title a bit)  at the quarterly recognition event-thinger for my work over the past few months which included twenty-four hours of leave for me to use at my discretion, which is one of the more joyful things that has happened to me in a while.
• Metro's timing system is completely bollocksed up.  As I was trying to return home today, an Orange line train showed up three minutes earlier than the posted times said it would, and then departed as I was coming down the stairs.  Three minutes later, when the boards showed the Orange line train arriving, a Blue line train comes up instead, four minutes ahead of schedule.  I realize that I haven't given a proper rant about Metro yet, and given that it's been such a quiet week - and will probably be a quiet week next week too - I may need to devote some time to DC's delightfully dysfunctional urban railway.
• Hosni Mubarak has a death wish.
• Diets are easy to break.  Leftover cookies from yesterday's recognition event (see above) were in the lounge today, and I may or may not have consumed four of them over the course of the day.  At this rate I'll never get my abs back.
• And lastly...filing cabinets are expensive!  I had thought about getting one, but there's no way I want to drop $50 for a filing cabinet!  Bah, humbug!

Oh, and I will write those posts on Air and Space, I promise!  It's just that right now I feeling like getting under some blankets with some food and staying there - blasted convectors!

What a Difference Two Hours Makes

You will be pleased to know that, after missing out on the two hour delay last week, I got one this morning - and slept until 9 until 6:30, as usual.  Gawd, was it ever glorious.  I then walked to work and was late, but it didn't matter because I was one of five people in the office - everyone else decided to telework.  I also walked home - I'm feeling healthy! - and thought a bit about the blog as I passed through the Smithsonian complex for the fourth time this week. 

I realized that I haven't actually been to any of the Smithsonian facilities on the Mall (I have been to the National Portrait Gallery, as you'll recall), which means I'm missing out on ten museums, according to Smithsonian's website.  This is an unforgivable sin on my part and I feel culturally impoverished just thinking about it, but it also offers me a great opportunity for this blog.  You see, church reviews are drawing to their natural end, because I've visited most of the Catholic churches within easy reach.  Yes, there are one or two others in the "DC core" that I'll go to eventually, and I haven't been to the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception yet, but the days of a new church review each week are over.  But there are plenty of other things to review, which is what I realized as I walked across the Mall.  This is a city full of museums of monuments, and although I've given some attention to the major monuments, I've said precious little about any of Washington's many museums.  I've also intended since this fall to do a bit on minor monuments - the ones hardly anyone knows about (you'd be surprised how many I've been able to run over without even trying).  Add some more concerted efforts to find new and unique retailers (I already have one in mind), and I've got all sorts of things to write about.  Since this blog is not intended as an exercise in navel-gazing, this is excellent news.  This also means that I can finally start making us of the "DC Guide" tab which I had (and now have) such grand plans for.

Of course, I'm always happy to take requests.  In fact, I might even relish to challenge.  Want me to find something within the borders of the District?  Leave it in the comments, and I'll see what I can do.  And bring photographic evidence back as proof, of course.

Today I Learned...

...that the abbreviation "OBE," which in my mind has always meant "Order of the British Empire," has a far less sexy meaning at work.

O.B.E.  Overtaken By Events.  That is, redundant, out-of-date, and no longer relevant given the present situation.

I think I'll try to start using it.

[Have an] Ice Day

Usually I'm somewhat proud of the fact that I am not surgically attached to various items of technology, and that I can get along relatively well without it, but today I'm feeling a bit abashed.  You see, had I been more attached to technology, I would have been able to sleep in this morning for an additional two hours.  But I didn't get the memo, literally.

Last night we got an interesting mix of snow, rain, and sleet, all of which froze over in the wee hours of the morning, and by commute time things looked like this:

For someone from Wisconsin, this is nothing.  So it's a bit icy - big deal!  Just allow a few more minutes for travel and walk carefully.  What did I care?  I went most of the way underground, so the ice didn't bother me.

And then I found out.  I should have known, really.  You see, in Washington, this kind of weather is a crisis.  So OPM (the Office of Personnel Management, essentially the government's human capital office) declared a two-hour delay because of the weather.  No one had to come in until 10.  But I didn't know, because I didn't check the government operating status  this morning - hell, I didn't even turn on the computer!  So I went to work at my normal time, and found out about the delay there.  Though how empty the Metro was should have given me a clue...

And those two "extra" hours at work?  I might have spent them reading...

Dear "Leadership Guru"...

...Martin Luther King, Jr. was not a "schmo," Sir Isaac Newton did not discover gravity when an apple fell on his head, Saving Private Ryan is not a management instruction tool, and you're not funny.

That is all.

You Known You Need a Weekend When... (II)

...you read "program" as "pogrom," and then wonder why we want to measure "pogrom management success."  Oy vey.

Buzzwords

Today marks exactly one month since I started my employment in the public sector, and in that time I have noticed a few annoying things.  One of them, near and dear to my heart as I consider myself a fairly good user of the English language, is the misuse of the English language in the form of buzzwords.

My father, who worked in human resources for a very long time, has a book of early Dilbert cartoons, one of which features the employees getting ready for a meeting with "buzzword bingo" cards (see it here).  While I suspect the the private sector, in which Dilbert and much other shenanigans take place, is a far greater offender in terms of buzzwords, some of the offenders which I have encountered in public have made it into government, much to my dismay.  Two in particular have irked me enough to bring them up because they occurred within the space of five minutes in a meeting yesterday, and to keep from cringing visibly, I wrote them down and vowed to rant about them later.  Now, I'm going to explain why these two constructions of the feeble mind should be blasted straight out of existence.

1.  "Disconnect" as a noun
Simply put, this word does not exist.  I don't care what the dictionaries say - in our language, dictionaries document whatever tomfoolery the public decides to spew forth.  But surely, you may say, if it's in the dictionary it's legitimate!  My answer to you: have you ever heard of a connect?  Of course not - it's a connection, the opposite of which is disconnection, not disconnect.  Disconnect, like connect, should only be used as a verb, as in "When people used words stupidly, I feel a strong urge to disconnect their heads from the rest of their bodies."  Disconnection: it's only three more letters, one single syllable!  Surely that's a small price to pay to not sound like you have a cliche-ridden corporate phrasebook lodged in your nasal cavity?

2.  "Reach out" as a synonym for "contact"
Unlike "disconnect," "reach" and "out" are perfectly fine words, and "reach out is indeed a verb phrase.  But when it is used to mean "contact," I lodge an objection.  My reasoning is that "reach out" reeks of sentimentality and excessive emotion.  When I hear it, I think of a secluded, bedridden invalid, isolated from human company and desperate for human contact, reaching out pathetically to brush her nurse's hand because he (male nurse) is the only human the invalid ever interacts with.  Think Miss Havisham, except human.  This is not an appropriate connotation for a phrase used in a business setting; the concept of contacting someone should not inspire intense feelings of sentimentality (unless that someone happens to be your one true love who's on the other side of the world for an indeterminate length of time, in which case I will forgive you for a fit or two of excessive sentimentality).

Simply put, if you need information from someone at work, you don't need to "reach out" as though you had been marooned on a deserted island for the greater portion of your adult life.  Just send a blinking e-mail.  If you're so starved for emotional meaning that you feel compelled to "reach out" to people at work, you might want to contact someone who can help you.  Like a psychologist.  Or a counselor.  Or a grammarian.

You Known You Need a Weekend When...

...you're attempting to type "opportunity" in the final version of the meeting minutes you took yesterday, and you type "pooportunity" instead.  And then spend between five and ten minutes convulsing about how utterly hysterical that word is.  Any ideas what we could use it for?  I'm thinking of it as a synonym for "bathroom break - number two."  Leave other suggestions in the comments!

Redonkulus Sh!tshow...

...is either the name of my rad new electro-funk band or an appropriate summary of my day.  I'll let you decide which.

Oh, and by the way, I'm drinking.  Should you, oh, need a hint or something.

Mash-ups

One of the communications staff at work sits across from our IT point person, and periodically the two of them converse.  Since they're just a few desks away, I can't help but hear what they say, and yesterday I overheard a rather funny mash-up.

They were discussing a disused mental hospital that the communications guy had toured with a mutual acquaintance, and he (communications) related that the mutual acquaintance, upon seeing one of the dark, abandoned basements, remarked that he would like to bring his wife there - and leave her.  "Just like," the communications guy chortled, "a cask of Monte Cristo!"

Give it a minute.

It didn't take me too long to figure out that he was shooting for "Just like a cask of Amontillado," from the Edgar Allan Poe story.  How "Monte Cristo", as in the count of (Dumas) got into the matter, I don't know.

I chuckled to myself over this amusing slip of the tongue and concluded that the communications guy had simply mixed his stories.  Isolated incident, surely.

But this afternoon the two of them were talking again, this time on the topic of religion.  I missed the beginning of the discussion because I was at lunch, but when I came back Communications was expounding on saints.  I actually had work to do but overheard a mention of St. Ignatius of Padua, patron saint of lost causes.  Ai!

I suppose for one who isn't Catholic (and I suspect Communications Dude isn't), the saints are a bit mystifying, in which case I would recommend that you refrain from pronouncing authoritatively about their various characteristics.  But to clarify for the record, there are three different saints in this mash-up:

1. St. Ignatius of Loyola, a Spanish (Basque) knight and founder of the Jesuits, patron saint of soldiers

2. St. Anthony of Padua, a Portuguese Franciscan who spent most of his life in Padua, Italy, and is patron saint of lost things (not causes)

3.  St. Jude the Apostle, one of the original Twelve, who is the patron saint of lost and desperate causes

Now, I suppose one could confuse Ignatius and Anthony, since they're both Iberian and monks, and Anthony with Jude, for being patrons of lost stuff, but mixing all three together is bewildering to me.  I can't help but wonder if CD has a proclivity for these sorts of mash-ups, and I'm a wee bit ashamed to admit that I may start listening for them in the future...

Workin' 9 to 5

...or, actually, 8 to 4:30.  But never mind the specifics - I'm a member of the work world now!  I get a paycheck now!  I have a desk, and a phone, and a computer!  Of course, I can't get on the computer yet because I'm not in the system yet (which means no e-mail), but I'm sure I'll find something to do!  Why sure, I'd be happy to read the org chart, the Who's Who PowerPoint, the daily briefing, and a few other things - hand them over!

Two hours later: I'm boooored.

And so it was.  So it is with most first days working for the government, I imagine.  I did eventually make it into the computer system (it took until 3), but I still don't have e-mail.  Never mind - I'll be somewhere else for the next three days getting trained, and everything should be in order by the time I get back on Friday.  One would hope.

There's really not much to say, so instead of blathering I'll head to bed to get some much-needed rest.  But before I go, a fun fact - did you know that the federal government still uses Microsoft XP?  It's true, and they'll probably use it until it becomes unusable - none of this "upgrade every time something new comes down the pike" business.  Microsoft XP on a desktop - I feel like I'm an undergrad again!

EDIT (Tuesday afternoon): Unless you've been talking to me recently about my YouTube explorations, you may not have figured out why I titled this post in this manner (that is, why I didn't write "working" as I normally would).  This is because I've been on a musical kick; see below.  Should I be embarrassed that I actually like this stuff?