Is Everyone Happy?

[Kevin Mader]

Well said, SteelMaiden. For me, I will suffer from the Peter Pan Complex and never grow up!!

Kev

 

[JodiB]

My idea of "happy at what I do": sleeping until a reasonable hour because I can go into work whenever I want to.......going into work at an unreasonably early hour because I want to.

I'm happiest when I'm busiest; I'm happiest when I'm helping people; I'm a get-it-done-now kind of person who chews through tasks in a fifth of the time others would take.

I left my last job because there wasn't enough to do. I'm finding myself struggling to keep busy here too. It's a constant waiting waiting waiting on others to do their parts. So I fill my time writing boring procedures that we don't really need (ug, I'm doing one for Management Review now - what kind of procedure do you need to tell people to sit around a conference table and discuss things?? But I have to do something to keep busy...) There are many many people here who seem to have no problem with all of their spare time and they just cruise slowly through the day.

When I get up in the morning, it's a struggle to feel excited about another day at the office.

 

[Jamie]

Lucinda,

I too struggle with all the "free" time on my hands. I like what I do, however I do get really frustrated during the day trying to find something to occupy my time. When your with such a small company of 35 employees you can only write so many procedures and your audits usually don't take too much of your time either. If you have any advise on things to keep you busy I'd be glad to hear them.

Jamie

 

[JodiB]

Passing the time

Cruising the internet; checking this forum over and over and over; walking around the shop; refilling your water bottle; staring into space like you're thinking; drawing little diagrams in Visio; reading and re-reading and finetuning the procedures you've written already; writing cutesy things for the bulletin board Quality Corner; trying to think of what else you could possible write; re-doing all your Word forms into Excel; reading old email; reading instruction manuals for Adobe and Outlook; playing around with all the loaded software programs to learn what they can do ( click here, click there..)....And it never hurts to build training programs for how to introduce people to the new procedures/processes.

and I make lists. I try to come up with some new projects for myself and put them onto lists. Of course I wipe the lists out in no time, but at least I have a visual that I actually did do something today.

Don't get the impression that I'm a slackard - it's just that I have whipped out everything I possibly can do on my own and now it's a matter of waiting until other people do their parts (sometimes I've even done it for them - bad precedent I know).

Everytime I try to wiggle myself into some extra duties like updating our Website or updating the PO log, my boss tells people that I don't have time for it. I wish that were the case. We just don't need a fulltime Quality Manager yet. And maybe never will, unless I take over the Health and Safety bit also. THAT is what I need to aspire to....our H&S Mgr. would be more than happy to give it up I think because he does have other regular duties.

I have a couple small things to do and I'm eeking them out as far as I can, and then I'll go wander into a department and say "HEY!" and see if I can make some more work for myself.

 

[Laura M]

Jamie,

Not working full time anymore, I forgot about the "slow times." My last few years at it were anything but slow. However, before that, I enjoyed "sticking my nose in." Maybe harder at a small shop, depending on the products, but I did non-audit audits. Just poked around "show me what you're doing" stuff.

Lucinda's list was pretty good too. Finding a new trick in MS word or excel was pretty fun.

Anybody still have the instructions for the "game" in excel? I think it was for excel '97. Go to cell II35 (or something ) type in certain key strokes and the cell opened up into a game like space scene. It was really really cool. I guess an MS employee was bored one day too. If anyone has those instructions hanging around, I'd sure like to lay my hands on them again.

Laura

 

[D.Scott]

Easter Eggs

Here are a couple for you to start with. If you get bored with these, go to http://www.eeggs.com for some more

For Excel 2000 -
Car racing game:
Boot Excel 2000
Under file menu, do 'Save as Web Page'.
Say 'Publish Sheet' and 'Add Interactivity'
Save to some htm page on your drive.
Load the htm page with IE. You should have Excel in the middle of the page.
Scroll to row 2000, column WC. Select row 2000, and tab so that WC is the active column.
Hold down Shift+Crtl+Alt and click the Office logo in the upper-left.
If you have DirectX, you will be playing what looks like spy hunter. Use the arrow keys to drive, space to fire, O to drop oil slicks, and when it gets dark, use H for your headlights.

For those of you still using Excel 97, and haven't yet found its Easter Egg, try this and you will get a flight simulator:

Open a new workbook
Press F5
Enter X97:L97 and press Enter
Press Tab once, to move to column M
Hold Control and Shift, then right-click the Chart Wizard icon on the Standard toolbar


Have fun

Dave

 

[Laura M]

Keeping things interesting

How To Keep A Healthy Level Of Insanity

1. At lunch time, sit in your parked car with sunglasses on and point a
hair dryer at passing cars. See if they slow down.

2. Page yourself over the intercom. Don't disguise your voice.

3. Every time someone asks you to do something, ask if they want fries with
that.

4. Put your garbage can on your desk and label it "in"

5. Put decaf in the coffee maker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has Gotten
over their caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.

6. In the memo field of all your checks, write "for REDACTED favors".

7. Finish all your sentences with "in accordance with the prophecy."

8. Dont use any punctuation marks

9. As often as possible, skip rather than walk.

10. Ask people what sex they are. Laugh hysterically after they answer.

11. Specify that your drive-through order is "to go".

12. Sing along at the opera.

13. Go to a poetry recital and ask why the poems don't rhyme.

14. Put mosquito netting around your work area. Play a tape of jungle
sounds all day.

15. Five days in advance, tell your friends you can't attend their party
because you're not in the mood.

16. Have your coworkers address you by your wrestling name, Rock Hard Kim.

17. When the money comes out the ATM, scream "I won!", "I won!" "3rd time
this week!!!!!"

18. When leaving the zoo, start running towards the parking lot, yelling
"run for your lives, they're loose!!"

 

[Alf Gulford]

Laura-

I've been working real hard on plans for getting away from full-time work this year myself. HOWEVER, after reading your list and reflecting on the state of mind it took to create it, I'm rethinking those plans.

On the other hand, maybe I'd be a perfect fit.

Thanks for the insight.

Alf

 

[SteelMaiden]

Re: Keeping things interesting

Originally posted by Laura M
How To Keep A Healthy Level Of Insanity

11. Specify that your drive-through order is "to go".

Actually, as scary as it may seem, I went through a drive through at one of the fast food joints with my kids a few weeks ago and the person taking the orders asked "Is that to go?" I just replied, "No, I think we'll just park right outside the second window and eat it here."

Unfortunately, the poor [email protected]#$#% was too dumb to realize that I was being sarcastic. He actually told me that it was against company policy to allow customers to park and eat in the pick-up lane.

OF COURSE IT'S TO GO, $__t for brains!

Have a good day, maybe I'm just getting crabby in my old age?

 

[Michael T]

This is scary...

As silly as #2 sounds - we have auto-paging on our phone system. So... you actually page yourself with a pre-recorded page....