Author’s Note: This piece was originally posted November 19, 2013. Present day commentary is in italics.
Back in college, I had a part-time job providing content support to school administrators attempting to fill out an annual report to continue accreditation of their school (I really need to post more about this job) . My main task from September through April was to troubleshoot problems that school principals encountered in completing this report (sounds much easier than it was).
Most of the time, the callers merely needed guidance on how to answer a specific question (and TBH they were usually stupid questions- amazing how many high school principals could not grasp the concept of an FTE). Other times, questions were of a technical nature and the old “reboot your computer then log back in” trick cleared up most problems (ah- I still use that one with co-workers. 90% of the time it works, thereby avoiding a call to IT).
However, every once in awhile, the questions from callers were so bizarre it was mind boggling that these questions were coming from people whose jobs entailed inspiring children to learn and become productive members of society.
One of my favorite bizarre questions was handled by my co-worker Marta (as with all my posts- not her real name). Marta’s phone call started off normal enough. After the obligatory “hello how may I help you” salutation, Marta’s voice took on a startled and confused tone.
“I’m sorry, sir, can you please repeat your problem? You say that when you hit the Delete All Records button, all the information in your report disappears?”
Marta paused for about 30 seconds before responding. “Sir, can you hold for a moment.” Marta then hit the mute button and announced her phone call to the rest of us in the office.
“Dude, what the hell am I supposed to say to this guy? He’s a principal and wants to know why his report clears out when he hits delete! Does he not know what the word delete means?”
At this point, I was already halfway to the kitchen, laughing all the way. I was just thankful I didn’t have to deal with this particular customer. Our supervisor, patient as ever, suggested to Marta that she just slowly and calmly explain the function of the delete button and advise him not to use the delete button. Her advice worked, and Marta did her best to explain the function of a delete button without patronizing the caller.
Do you have a bizarre question you’ve had to answer on your job? Do tell! Share in the comments.
What is a typical day? Is up down? Why ask why? All kidding aside, this is an interesting question for me because something I’ve come to realize is that each week reveals itself to have its own personality, and within each week, the seven days in between feel typical compared within that week, but can very easily feel atypical when compared to another week.
Even the magic 8 ball is against me. “Is today a typical day?” “My sources say no.”
If this all sounds convoluted- it is! One of the reasons I blog is to document my “mundane” experiences – because apparently my “mundane” experiences sound made up. If only! The expression truth is stranger than fiction definitely applies to my everyday living.
Rather than describe my current day, I’ve opted to talk about one of my commuter experiences from 2021 that was typically atypical for me. It was August, and was reporting for duty into the office a few days a week after being comfortably productive nearly 18 months in a magical palace I call “home”.
At this point, it was week 3 of going into the office. As I stood at the side of the busy road, waiting in the hot (90 degrees at 7am) and relatively humid rays of the early morning August sun, I thought “what better time of year to start commuting again.”
Nothing wakes me up faster than gasoline fumes from passing cars amidst the beaming sunlight of a typical August morning.
While standing at the bus stop, I noticed an ant hill near me. Great. I paced around to avoid the ants. Last thing I needed was to have ants crawl up me. As I paced, one of my neighbors who works for the county walked up- let’s call him Gene. Gene walked up and expressed joy that he had not missed the bus.
“I ran like hell yesterday because the bus driver showed up 5 minutes early”. Luckily for Gene, I recently discovered that the local bus company now had an app that could track where the bus was in real time. I demonstrated the app to Gene and forgot about pacing around to avoid the ants. Before I knew it, the bus was here.
During the “before” time, I would have been lucky to board at this point as the bus was usually packed by the time we reached the park and ride- the last stop before heading into the freeway. During the “return to office that only my company and a handful of county offices seemed to enforce in 2021” time, it was pretty much myself, Gene and maybe 3-4 other people on the bus ride into work. Which meant I could sit anywhere and be far away from anyone.
I plopped down in a seat towards the back of the bus. As the bus pulled away from the stop, I glanced down at my sneakers and noticed a handful of ants crawling around on my shoelaces. I quickly brushed them off with my hand. At that point I figured I must have stood too close to the ant hill when I wasn’t pacing around. No big deal – just a few ants.
I then turned my head towards my left leg and froze in absolute terror- my pant leg was engulfed with hundreds of tiny black ants. I closed my eyes for a second then opened them thinking maybe, just maybe I had fallen asleep for a minute and this was all in my head (hey falling asleep while commuting to work is a perk of public transportation). I opened my eyes and my leg was still covered by hundreds of moving creatures.
The stuff nightmares are made of- oh wait I’m actually awake.
I took a deep breath to assess the situation. In my head I kept telling myself “don’t scream don’t scream don’t scream don’t react don’t move don’t do anything”. I didn’t dare draw attention to myself.
Thankfully, no one was sitting in the aisle next to me or behind me or in front of me. Confident that none of the other passengers had a view of me, I quickly rifled through my backpack (which was sitting on the otherside of me on the non ant infested side) and pulled the cardboard backing from a spiral notebook I had tucked away and starting scraping the ants off my leg and onto the ground.
Who knew this doubles as a tool to fling ants off oneself?
I quietly stepped on whatever ants were immediately underfoot, but I recognized that I was grossly outnumbered. While I succeeded in scraping the ants off me, they were now pooling around in the seat next to me and milling around on the floor. I had to escape the ants.
I had to time this in a way so that none of the other passengers would notice I changed seats. We were quickly approaching the park and ride- that would be my window to move, but I’d have to do it before any passengers at the park and ride boarded. I quiety slid my backpack on while fanning the ants in the seat next to me to avoid them crawling back on me.
As the bus pulled up to the curb I saw there were only 2 passengers waiting to board. There were 3 passengers sitting towards the front, but only one passenger sitting in a row ahead of me but behind the other passengers. As the bus pulled up, I quietly slid out of the seat, and stealthily moved up 4 rows from where I was. The one passenger I had to pass had their eyes glued to their phone. Success. I made it into the seat undetected before any new passengers boarded. I felt home free.
Settled into my new seat, I took a deep breath. I didn’t know what to do. Should I tell the bus driver? If I do, what do I say?
“Hi Mr. Bus Driver, I apparently boarded the bus full of ants which no one seemed to notice and now the back of the bus is infested.”
“There are ants back there- for all I know they were there already there when I sat down.” This actually entered my mind- where the ants already there? Was it a coincidence that I was fixated on ants at my bus stop? Did someone else bring ants on the bus?
“Ein bus ait ‘ants’?” I’m pretty sure the driver didn’t know German but technically I could inform the driver of ants this way.
Then what? Would the driver kick me off the bus? Would I be banned? Would the driver make everyone deboard to wait for another bus? On the outside I sat cool as a cucumber smiling while wearing my sunglasses. On the inside I was panicking. I imagined myself in an interrogation room at the bus company being questioned by a surly bus driver demanding to know how the ants got there. I don’t even know if such a thing exists but my mind created that image at that moment.
The bus pulled away and conitnued to sit there with a stupid grin on my face. After we’d been on the freeway for about five minutes, I looked down and saw… about 5 ants. DAMN!!! The ants were slowly trickling forward. I quietly smushed every ant I saw with my foot. I felt like I was playing a video game in slow motion. About a line of 5-6 six at a time would slowly move forward from under my seat. I’d kill those, only for another round of 5-6 to appear.
It was like playing a slo-mo live action game of Space Invaders.
This was all nerve wracking and went on for 20 minutes. As the bus drove up the exit ramp and waited at the light, one passenger from the park and ride walked up to the driver.
“Hi- there are a TON of ants in the back of the bus”.
Oh crap – I could feel my throat closing up. I was about to be busted. I thought for sure someone would remember where I was when I boarded. I stopped breathing as the bus driver reacted to this news…
By shrugging his shoulders and saying “oh ok”. And then the light went green and the bus driver continued on with the route. The. bus. driver. did. nothing. No reaction. Did not care.
I deboarded at the stop before my typical stop. I just wanted off of that bus. When I stepped off, I waited for the bus to drive away before shaking my backpack and patting down my pant legs, shaking my feet and just making sure none of those little monsters were attached to me. I could not believe I was a hot mess for the past 35 minutes, desperately plotting escape from the ants while also fretting that I’d be banned for life from riding the bus and all the while the authority figure on the bus gave zero cares that the bus was about to be overtaken by ants from outerspace (okay yes I’m exaggerating at this one).
When I got to my office I stared at a blank monitor for five minutes before realizing I had not docked my computer. I was relieved to be at my desk not covered in ant bites but I was still traumatized by the ride into work. Thankfully, the bus ride home was uneventful- the bus I boarded home was not the same bus and it was a different driver. Normally I’d cap this with a lesson learned but – I really don’t know that I learned anything except don’t get covered in ants before boarding public transportation.
Have you ever been covered in ants? Or any other type of bug? Or encountered ants on the bus? Do tell!
10. I’m absolutely certain that the square root of 4 is 2.
9. I’m absolutely certain that every 10 seconds, another 10 seconds has passed.
8. I’m absolutely certain that I’ll never visit the Republic of Cabo Verde because the idea of being surrounded simultaneously by water and volcanoes is not my idea of a good time.
7. I’m absolutely certain I’ll use the restroom today.
6. I’m absolutely certain that my yard contains dirt.
Also- contains grasshoppers in the summertime.
5. I’m absolutely certain that I’ll be uncertain about some things.
4. I’m absolutely certain that despite my best efforts, pockets of uncertainty will cause anxiety and I’ll have to remind myself not to get all stressed out over unimportant things.
Let’s keep things in perspective. If you die on the job, you’ll be forgotten by next week.
3. I’m absolutely certain that Garfield the Cat hates Mondays. As does most of the working world.
2. I’m absolutely certain that “the sun will come up, tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there’ll be sun.” I’m not into musical theater but even I know this song lyric and hey, it speaks truth.
Yes this is a sunset, not a sunrise, but the sun has to set before it can rise again. Also, this was my first attempt at painting last year. I’m certainly not a professional but it was fun painting this.
1. I’m absolutely certain that there more life lessons in store for me.
Security or Adventure? To be or not to be? Those are questions that have plagued humans since the dawn of time. IDK if that’s true it just sounded good. So to answer the prompt- well duh I want both security AND adventure.
Seriously WordPress, this is a formula failure of epic proportions. Instead of an OR statement this is an AND statement.
I need security to, oh I don’t know, pay my bills, take care of family or have any sense of responsibility. It might sound boring but geez we can’t be all bungee jumping all over the place 24/7 and expect to not have a crap ton of health bills because of broken bones have any type of rest or relaxation or inner peace. All adventure all the time is tiring. I know. Because I’ve gone through pockets of time where I overscheduled too much adventure and after awhile it sucks.
At the same time, adventure is needed to break up monotony of the day to day and expand our experiences. Adventure doesn’t have to be some expensive vacation, like a safari trip or scaling the side of a tall building. You can actually sprinkle adventure through your day.
Like for example, the building I work in was recently bought by a private financial services firm that wanted to move into the building and they thought “huh- let’s just buy the building – how hard can it be to run a building? (idiots).” But whatever- so I’d been hearing stories about the new building owner who sounded like quite a character. I got a tip the owner was outside smoking away while taking a cell phone call with his lawyer after parking his car on a public sidewalk experiencing some parking issues. So I’m like- I’ve got, GOT, to check this out. I nonchalantly walked outside and pretended to be looking at my phone when I reality I was eavesdropping (wasn’t hard- the dude was talking LOUDLY) and taking surveillance photos. I won’t post those here even though it’d be hilarious as the dude was basically wearing sweats while chain smoking and demanding answers on several things from his lawyer.
After a few minutes of playing spy, I decided to take a circuitous route to get back to the building entrance by ducking into another business. What do you know, the building owner went the opposite direction and ended up in the same area without any awareness that he’d been observed for the past 10 minutes. I did nothing with the information I gathered, but it was a fun adventure pretending to live out my real dream job of being a private investigator.
But see, adventure is only special if it’s on occasion or in small doses. Like everything, adventure is best experienced in moderation.
No adventure = no fun.
Too much adventure = fun then no fun.
Some adventure = fun.
Let me know if you agree or disagree in the comments below. If you’re a PI, convince me I should switch careers.
What strategies do you use to increase comfort in your daily life?
Act busy to avoid getting more work assigned. If you’re already busy, act busier. Rinse and repeat. This also works if you want to avoid chatting with coworkers. If they want to ask you questions about work stuff, tell them to throw a meeting on your calendar. 90% of people from my experience will never willingly schedule a meeting but be prepared for the 10% that will. None of this is a guarantee of smooth sailing but it helps make the daily less rocky.
Authors Note: Reading through this, much of this material still holds today in 2024 and if anything, has just illustrated how this particular social media site has gone downhill.
Maintaining a career in these modern times is difficult. Between the economy and the rapid pace of technology, some industries are shrinking while others are expanding. Those of you actively job-hunting know that competition is stiff for jobs. Those of you who aren’t actively job-hunting are being encouraged to network, network, network to keep your name and credentials out there in case you do find yourself unemployed.
These days, many hiring managers don’t just rely on the references you provide them to check your credentials and background. No, like everything else technology has added rather than reduced a layer of stress to a process in our day to day lives. Now, hiring managers often run your name through their search engine of choice and expect to find you on at least one of the major social media sites.
While Facebook has been used by some as way to network professionally, more and more people have joined Linkedin to maintain their professional profile. Linkedin is pretty much the buttoned up, watered down version of Facebook.( Author’s note: Now in 2024- the posts are basically FB lite. Just check out https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics/ for proof. ) Now, I to this day refuse to join Facebook (still refuse) but I did reluctantly join Linkedin about two years ago (2011- so present day 13 years) after being successfully browbeaten by numerous business articles insisting that one simply MUST be on Linkedin to grow one’s career.
Aside from collecting co-workers like baseball cards on the website, you are supposed to join groups and post comments on forums to flex your expertise in your chosen career. Most of us on Linkedin however, rely on the “let’s just connect with as many people as possible” strategy in the hopes that the more your name pops up on contact lists, the more likely some recruiter will find you and offer you your dream job.
Two years into being a member of Linkedin, I’ve yet to move onto my “dream” career (still haven’t but current role gets me closer). Instead, I’ve been hunted down by recruiters strong arming me into interviewing for lateral positions which would lengthen my commute by 15 miles only to be contacted by another recruiter who called me about two potential job opportunities then never called me back (LOL all still holds true today). I have had better luck with applying to positions directly via a company’s website. I’ve had a 75% success rate in obtaining an interview this way, but alas the jobs I’ve interviewed for weren’t quite a good fit for me.
At times I’ve thought about deleting my profile (still think about doing this). Yet I remain. Why? Well, because the one perk of remaining on Linkedin is that you can spy on your co-workers.
Now, before I elaborate on this point, let me say that there are many nuisances on Linkedin. For one thing, when you log into your homepage, Linkedin will feature 4-5 business articles ( not sure they do this anymore).
In addition, you will find that several of your connections have also posted links to business articles they feel you should read. While this doesn’t sounds so bad, having so many business articles grouped together illustrates how most business articles just rehash the same crap over and over.
Once in awhile, you might see an article that shows promise.
An open bar in the office? So now my coworkers can annoy me while sober AND drunk!
On the downside, you have to wade through numerous “5 Reasons You Suck at Your Job” or “Why Top Companies Won’t Be Hiring this Quarter” or “Why Trend X is No Longer Trendy” type of articles.
Really? The job market is experiencing slow growth? The devil you say!
Do you really need an article to spell this out for you? After the initial “honeymoon” period on a new job, it’s been my experience that 2:1 you probably do work for a stupid company.
I don’t even know who or what Huawei is. Thank you Linkedin, for making me feel stupid.
After you wade through dry business articles posing as trendy advice columns, Linkedin will try to recommend jobs that you should apply for. Problem is, these jobs recommendations as far as I can tell are based on keywords from the job titles in your work history. So if you are trying to switch careers, these recommendations won’t be helpful. Also, 50% of the job recommendations I receive are for sales jobs I am not remotely qualified to apply for (still true- which tells me LinkedIn’s algorithm still sucks after all these years).
Sales Manager III? Wow, I’ve never even held a sales job in a retail store, let alone field sales.
Another annoying aspect of Linkedin is that it likes to remind you of how long you’ve been trapped at your current place of employment. The real kick in the teeth is when your co-workers chime in to rib you about it.
Once you get past all this, you can find some good stuff on Linkedin. For example, you realize even that the senior level manager who sits down the hall from you is also ashamed to work for the company and recently changed his job title on Linkedin to identify himself professionally as an improv actor.
The next fun feature is uncovering lies your co-workers tell about their work experience. You see, Linkedin profiles are essentially resumes. This allows you to rifle through the BS they’ve been using to pad their resumes.
Senior Analyst
Company X
Public Company; 1001-5000 employees;
March 2010 – June 2011 (1 year 4 months)
Weekly forecasting of revenue and analysis of weekly changes and variances to budget, forecast and year over year variance.
Resulted in increase in accuracy from 75% to 95%+ with detailed explanation of variances. Really, because after you were fired, our director was still yelling about how you didn’t know what the hell you were doing this whole time.
Creation of analytic model. Analysis and reporting of sales data including year over year analysis, gap analysis, forecasting and variance analysis. Yeah, we scrapped any and all reports you developed and instead put together analyses that were actually useful to management.
When you are checking out another person’s profile, Linkedin gives you a rundown of other profiles people checked out after reading the same profile you are looking at. Sometimes this information can be telling about who else you are lumped in with professionally.
Note: All profile pics shown in this blog post are clipart photos EXCEPT for the Hooters girl above. That’s the actual pic on Linkedin. No, really. I just stuck a red dot on her face to protect her identity outside the Linkedin universe, but somehow I don’t even think it matters.
This leads me to another interesting point about Linkedin. This is supposed to be a professional networking site. Linkedin encourages you to use a professional photo to establish yourself as a credible expert in whatever it is you do. Yet some people still don’t get it. As a result, you’re likely to come across the following profile pics:
The Children – numerous people post a picture of their kids instead of themselves.
Random Object – some people post a pic of an object or symbol instead of a photo.
Guess which one I am – Then again, some people opt to include a picture of themselves…among a crew of others.
In addition to the fun features I’ve shown above, you can also endorse the skills and write recommendations for people you know. This is great if your boss or a co-worker check off endorsements on your profile or write a glowing recommendation. This is not so great if the endorsement or recommendation comes from your mom or your spouse.
In a nutshell, despite the dry business discussions and overt lies found within the pages of Linkedin, it does provide some chuckles and helps you keep tabs on the people you work with everyday. It’s an easy way to maintain an online presence for career purposes. If used correctly, you can use Linkedin solely for business contacts and then promote the fun stuff, like your personal blog, for your other social media sites. (Author’s Note: RIP Twitter.)
1. You have to go to the restroom on another floor because the one you use is being cleaned. It takes you 5 minutes upon returning to your desk to realize…you aren’t sitting at your desk but the desk of the putz whose desk is in the same location as yours on this floor.
2. You can’t wait to get home and finish constructing that voodoo doll of your manager.
3. You’ve run out of people in your company to which you can assign *delightful* nicknames.
4. You’re happy to get picked for jury duty.
5. You’ve secretly put together background checks on all your co-workers “just in case”.
As mentioned in the previous post, I deleted the first few months of this blog back in November 2012 and started “fresh”. After looking up some of my posts via the Wayback Machine, I have no effing clue why I did that. So… each week I will bring you a “From the Archives” to republish the deleted posts I’m able to find. Rather than inserting a JPEG file of a screen snip from the Wayback Machine, I’m doing a copy/paste as several of the images attached to these archives show up as broken links on the Wayback Machine.
This post is self-explanatory. 🙂 However, I’d be interested to know if you struggled with naming your blog? Also, do my ideas below give you any ideas?
Weed Puller Weekly: Sharing the Woes of an Unruly Lawn
Dashboard Diva: Unleashing the Awesome Citrus Power of Dashboard Reporting
NYT June Crossword Hero: Helping You Solve the June 1st, 2012 New York Times Crossword, One Clue at a Time
My Favorite Marshmallow: Inspecting Bags of Marshmallows in the Hopes of Finding “The One” that Resembles Something.
Stoopid Guy Fieri Fans: Mocking Guy Fieri Fans Across the Globe. This one was rejected for the obvious reason that if you are a Guy Fieri fan, you already have enough problems in life than to be mocked by some blogger.
I’m back! I took a 10-year unpaid sabbatical from this blog. Ok, running this blog is an unpaid gig, so I from that aspect I lost out on nothing except possibly my sanity from not having this outlet to regale readers with the absurdity of my on the job chaos. Also, I can’t tell if anyone is still subscribed to this blog, so I probably lost out on all my readers!
But if you are still subscribed and decide to check out this post- please leave me a note in the comment! I want to know whose still out there in 2024!
So in the 10 years I’ve been away from this blog -I’ve continued to stay in the analyst realm. I’d say with a different company but not really. I’m technically with the same parent company but they have a new name and I jumped over to a different area of the company before they dumped the division I was with when I started this blog. So it feels like a different company (well- except the corporate culture is about the same). Also, in the 10 years I’ve moved into manager level roles which required me to supervise people and or processes/resources, so I’ve had some variety in my life since I’ve been here.
As I’m dusting off this blog, I totally forgot that I “rebooted” this a year in and deleted some of my original posts. No idea why! I found some of my content via the WayBack machine, which I will repost. That will 1) restore the original flavor of this blog and 2) buy me time to schedule posts with new tales of on the job absurdity! And believe me do I have some good stories to share!
Alrighty- time to get ready for the work day ahead. Later!
Welcome to the reboot of unfrazzled analyst. I originally started this blog in August 2012 and after a year, I felt de-motivated to continue blogging on this site in its current form. I constantly have ideas swimming in my head, and the primary reason I started this blog was to sort out my thoughts on the workplace issues I face everyday, but in a fun way. Sometimes my blog posts strayed from this theme and after awhile, I saw this blog as a jumbled mess. So, with that in mind, I’m starting over. I may re-write and re-post some of my earlier articles that are directly applicable to the current theme… but I have a wealth of never before seen material to post here as well.
What can you expect to read on this blog? Well, I seem to have a knack for landing jobs in dysfunctional organizations. Often times when I tell my friends about things that happened at work, they think I’m intentionally being funny and making up fantastical stories about incompetence on purpose. Although I do consider myself a storyteller, I don’t know that I could dream up some of the incidents I’ve encountered over the years.
In order to cope with the stress of my job and also to keep some of the more interesting stories of my working years alive (some of this stuff may work its way into my fiction writing), I am using this blog to breathe humor into my situation as well as keep myself motivated to write.
The title of my blog, unfrazzled analyst, refers to my job title. I have been some type of analyst for over 7 years now in fast-paced environments with multiple deadlines. Yes, being an analyst can be stressful and I have found myself frazzled at times. Although this isn’t a real word, blogging about the funnier aspects of workplace insanity helps with not being frazzled – i.e. unfrazzled.
I’m sure most of you out there, no matter what your job title might be, are probably experiencing some level of job stress and can relate to my experiences. Perhaps some of my stories can help you laugh at some of the stressful situations you are facing at work.
Thanks for stopping by and feel free to start a conversation on the blog.
unfrazzled analyst 