Rays of sunshine on a gray autumn day

Why I bother to write about modern workplaces

I doubt that my workplace and my reactions to it will change much before I leave it behind for good. I wish I could just let it all go--the stupidity, rude behavior, narcissism, ego trips, lack of common sense--just put all of these things behind me. Just do it. Be the better person. Take the higher road. But if I do that all the time, what then? When is enough enough? When is it ok to stand up for yourself so that you don't get stepped on all the time by the 'system'? When do you need to stand up for yourself? When it means that if you don't, others, including yourself, get hurt? I see the word 'system' used so many times when people complain about things in their workplace. We employees are a part of the system, ergo, we must stand up and be counted, otherwise we are just stupid sheep who have no right to complain that things are not as they should be.

I so enjoy the intellectual aspects of my work; unfortunately the reality of my workplace is something other than enjoyable since it does its best to destroy that joy coupled to the accomplishment of real work. The bureaucracy does not understand that it exists to serve the employees, not the other way around. Additionally, everything boils down to money. Daily work life is an endless conversation about money to do research or to pay the salaries of hard-working people--the desperate hunt for it, the lack of it and the stress (bordering on desperation) of not having it, the envy of others who have it, the lack of 'smarts' about how to use it when one gets it--and so on ad nauseam. I never thought I'd say this, but I actually miss the 1990s because there was less emphasis on money, budgets and bureaucracy, and more on actually getting some good research done, whether or not you were a small research group or whether or not you had a lot of grant money. You did the best you could with what  you had, and you were no less a good researcher if you didn't manage to bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding. Now you're simply no good if you don't. It was understood in the 1990s that some few (as is always the case) would be the best (at getting grants and international acclaim), but there was room for the others--the next best. There was room for 'good enough'. Not anymore.

There are and always will be conflicts about who gets what, whose ranking is higher than others, who 'deserves' this or that, etc. But it's out of control now. I realize about myself that I really am not a person who is good at tackling conflicts. But sometimes it's necessary to take on the system when it is defined by conflicts, especially if they border on stupid. As I've gotten older, I see that I am simply not interested in being talked down to, treated like a child, controlled/measured/evaluated at all turns, treated rudely by arrogant people, etc. I don't treat others this way, so I don't want to be treated this way. Leaders have simply not learned how to treat their employees with respect. Each day that passes is a new exercise in being treated like a child. When I say this is in my workplace, my words fall on deaf ears. That is my workplace's way of dealing with things it doesn't want to hear. It ignores emails, direct confrontations, attempts at compromise, etc. When they want things their way, that's law, and employees must just accede.  

The contradictions are many:

1. You are asked why you don't take on responsibility for this or that task, but when you do, you are not given the authority to change anything, to spend any money, or to ask for help from others. You are not given control over the task you have assumed responsibility for. You are like a child told to wash the dishes. You are not to question any aspect of what you have been told to do. It's fine for a child, but not for an adult. 
2. Alternatively, you find out that the reason they asked you to do 1) was that the bureaucrats could 'check off' that point on their list. She said yes to doing this or that, great. It doesn't actually really matter that it's just responsibility on paper. In other words, they don't care whether you do a good job or not. 
3. You are forced to listen to the endless rhetoric about how 'we are going to be the best', when being the best entails allowing employees to function as adults in their workplace--letting competent employees decide the best way to do this or that, especially if they have the expertise and you as a leader do not. Leave competent people alone to do their jobs. But the bureaucrats/leaders don't understand this or don't want to in 2017.
4. Leaders in our research system say that everyone can be 'the best', but what they don't acknowledge is that if everyone becomes the best, then no one is best anymore. It is circular stupid logic.

You may wonder why I bother writing about this at all anymore. For those of you who have read this blog from its start, you know that I am quite critical of modern workplaces that let themselves be run by bureaucrats (most of the public sector workplaces) who enjoy incorporating the trendy business philosophies of the moment into their workplaces. It doesn't matter that they don't fit there (think LEAN in a research environment. We are not a factory). My public sector workplace has spent a decade or more trying to perfect New Public Management, and now they've moved on to LEAN. Why, we'll never know. Private sector workplaces do not permit this idiocy. I don't know if they are any better in the long run. But I prefer to think and hope that they are. 

What’s wrong with this picture? v3

I promise this will be the last post with this title. But the past week or so has been nothing but scenarios of this type at work—inefficiency, stupidity, misinformation, poor communication, laziness and just plain indifference. I'm so tired of it all, of having to deal with customer service reps at scientific supply companies who don’t want to deal with customers, of talking to salespeople who haven’t the faintest notion of when their products will be delivered but who lie anyway and give you a delivery date so that you spend several hours running around trying to find out to whom it was delivered. I’m tired of leadership that doesn’t have the faintest idea what employees want or if they do know, how to give it to them. I’m tired of hearing ‘we’re going to be the best in the world’ when the IT infrastructure is crumbling around us. You don’t get to the top with an IT infrastructure that is from the Stone Age. I’m tired of hearing the same conversations about the same problems that we’ve been talking about for years. There were no solutions to them four years ago and there are no solutions to them now. There are no solutions because there is no money, or if there is money, it has been misappropriated and used on things that were not necessary. We need an IT budget to revamp the IT infrastructure. We need to be discussing the future of IT in our department, how to arrange it, how to pay for it, etc. We don’t need to be discussing Christmas parties, overnight seminars or other social events for which we have no budget.

I’m tired of so many thing in the workplace. I cannot wait to retire, so that I can do other things that get me outdoors, away from the four walls of a sterile office, away from the claustrophobic interiors and indoor climates of modern buildings where you can hardly open a window. I want to breathe fresh air, be surrounded by trees, plants, greenery. I want to let go of all that is unhealthy—the stress of useless discussions and problems that will never be solved. I want to be free of arrogant leaders, leaders whose egos are like black holes that destroy everyone in their vicinity. I’m tired of leaders who permit convicted criminals to remain in their jobs. I want to be free of the rhetoric, the bullshit, and the lies when it comes to ‘being great’. I’ll settle for being good enough. I don’t want any more competition for funding, for promotions, or for publishing. I don’t care about impact factors, H-factors, titles, prestige or anything related to inflated egos. I am so tired of academia and academics. I never thought I’d say it, but it’s the truth. I can’t wait to retire to my garden. That’s where you’ll find me.  

What's wrong with this picture? v2

And then there’s my bank. Another exercise in stupidity and misinformation. Really, you couldn’t write these scenarios if you tried. Truth is really stranger than fiction.

I received my new MasterCard in the mail from my bank at the end of August. I’ve had a MasterCard account with them for over twenty years now, and there’s never been a problem with my name being misspelled, etc. This year, for the first time, they had spelled my last name wrong. So I called the bank and spoke to a customer service rep who assured me that the problem would be taken care and that he would correct the misspelling and send out a new card. He spent all of about a minute telling me that, and the next few minutes trying to convince me to invest my money in one of the bank’s stock market accounts. When he realized I wasn’t going to bite, he switched over to trying to get me to buy insurance. I politely told him that I was considering many options concerning how to invest my money, but that the only reason I had called was to get a new MasterCard. He backed off. I received my new card about a week later, and the new card had the same misspelled last name as the first card. So I called again, and another customer service rep registered my complaint and the problem, and assured me that the mistake would be corrected and a new card (#3) would be sent out to me. He said he had even tested the computer system and that it ‘took’ my last name with no problems. A week later I received the new card, and wouldn’t you know, my last name was misspelled exactly as on the first two cards. So I called the bank again, and this time I spoke to a female customer service rep who informed me that the correct last name was registered in the system, but that there was a computer error in the system such that they could not send out a new card. She also suggested that I just use the cards with my misspelled last name. When I informed her that this was not right and that I would not be allowed to use these cards by any of the companies I buy from online, she backed off. I asked why the other two reps had not been aware of the problem that had existed for a least a few weeks already according to her. Her reply was that they might not have been aware of it. But how was that possible? This is just one bank with many customer service reps. Don’t the employees communicate among themselves? Don’t the leaders inform their employees of a major glitch in a computer system? Am I the only person to whom they've sent a new MasterCard? Surely the IT department had informed the customer service reps of this problem so that they in turn could inform the bank’s customers of the same? But no. Apparently with all the means of communication available to them, they had not communicated to the service reps that this was a problem. Folks, this is 2017. What is the problem with these IT departments? Don’t they know how to communicate?

The end result of all my phone calls was that I now have three MasterCards with a misspelled last name that are completely unusable. I have no idea when I will receive a new card with a correctly-spelled last name because the female rep I spoke to had no idea when the problem would be solved. At least she was honest; I’ll give her that. But I did lodge a complaint, and it was this—that the bank could have informed its customers that the computer program responsible for creating new MasterCards was not functioning properly and that issuance of new cards would be delayed. What is so difficult about doing this? With all the means of communication at our disposal, there is no communication at all. Either people don’t care anymore, or they are too wrapped up in their smartphone apps to realize that customer service and real communication have gone down the drain. I don’t want to invest in any of this bank’s stock accounts, nor do I want to purchase any kind of insurance. I want my new MasterCard, and that is all. 

What's wrong with this picture?

I thought I was pretty much finished with writing posts about the stupidity that goes on generally in the workplace and more specifically in my workplace. I was wrong. I doubt I’ll ever be finished, because my workplace continually gives me something to write about.

Believe it or not, the researcher network that is available to scientists (non-MDs) at my hospital is so outdated that it is still using Windows XP to run the computers that were provided to us well over eight or nine years ago. Ditto for the screen, but at least it provides good resolution for the most part. Windows XP is no longer supported by Microsoft for starters; this is the message that Microsoft has posted on their website: “After 12 years, support for Windows XP ended April 8, 2014. Microsoft will no longer provide security updates or technical support for the Windows XP operating system. It is very important that customers and partners migrate to a modern operating system such as Windows 10”.

It’s got to be at least three years ago that the IT department at my hospital informed us that hospital network users (mostly MDs and a few researchers, myself included) would be getting new computers with the Windows 7 operating system. When I asked at that time what the IT department was planning to do concerning the researcher network that is used by research staff (mostly non-MDs) employed by external grant organizations and not the hospital, the answer was that they were working on a solution but were not there yet. They’re still not there. Most hospital network users received their new computers three years ago; I was not one of them. This past spring, I finally got a hospital computer, but I can understand why most researchers do not want one. The restrictions on what programs can be used/downloaded are major, even if one is only going to use PubMed to search for medical research articles. Permission from the IT department is needed for any software that they have not pre-approved for download. This makes it extremely difficult if not impossible to install any kind of demo software or to upgrade instrument software via the internet (the latter is an annual occurrence for most laboratory instruments). This means that each time we need upgraded software, an applications specialist has to come from whatever company sold us the instrumentation, and that person will charge for the time to travel as well as the time spent in our laboratory to install and test the upgrade. Is this saving the hospital money? The hospital IT department does not want the hospital network users to access the internet in ways that the department cannot control. While I can understand this approach to some degree, it makes it impossible to do extensive literature searches or to download upgrades to existing instrument software, etc.

Sadly, the researcher network hobbles along, but there will come a day (very soon) when it will all come crashing down around us. I am still running the CS2 version of Adobe Acrobat software (it reached version C6 and then Adobe moved to another platform). The CS2 version still works, but my hospital’s researcher network has ceased to provide the latest upgrades/licenses for Adobe software and other software packages highly-discounted/free to its employees as it did ten years ago. So those of us without research funding don’t have the possibility to upgrade any software. The researcher network was a good idea while it lasted; it provided the most useful software free to researchers, or sometimes for a nominal fee. I hardly remember those days; they’re gone forever. What we could count on were the network printers; they functioned well for the most part. Today we were informed that the network printers that most of our Windows XP computers use were moved to a new server. That meant that we lost the printer connections on the old server, where at least the connections worked (we were able to print articles, etc.). The move to the new server has crippled the researcher network since most of the computers are still running Windows XP and cannot seem to ‘see’ the connections to the new server. Translated that means that we cannot print articles, our manuscripts, work plans, etc. I ask you—why are we at work? At home, I have a relatively cheap Acer laptop that is running Windows 10 and all new Microsoft Office programs. It functions very well. I have a printer at home that I can connect to my laptop if I need to print anything. In short, I have a well-functioning home office. Is it any wonder that I prefer working at home?

What irritates me is the following: we hear all the time that the department/hospital doesn’t have the money to do this or that or that the priority is to save money at all costs. In my book, providing a well-functioning infrastructure to your employees is a no-brainer. It should be priority number one on the priority list. In 2017, computers and printers should work, not hang or freeze, and operating systems/software should be up-to-date. If the hospital doesn’t want to support the researcher network anymore, they should just say so and be done with it. This gradual wasting away/starvation project isn’t fooling anyone. But meanwhile, the leaders are still meeting at cushy hotels for two-day meetings/seminars that drain the existing meager budget even further. Apparently these meetings are very important, important enough that the leaders have to travel quite a distance in order to meet up. Bus transportation, hotel room costs, three-course dinners, etc.—my, my, there’s always money for those kinds of things. My question is: why can’t these meetings be held at the hospital for a total of one to two hours, where pressing issues are discussed and dealt with. Save the money it costs to house and feed a group of leaders for more important events such as increasing the salaries of the research staff or bettering the IT infrastructure of the research staff. Drop the annual department seminar for the same reason, and use the money to improve the IT infrastructure in the department. This is an obvious solution but it never seems to be chosen by the department leaders. I have to ask, why not?

Honeybee on sunflower

My sunflower plants have grown quite tall during the summer, and the bees have discovered them. Recently I managed to snap this photo of a honeybee on a sunflower with my iPhone. It amazes me that the quality of photos from the iPhone are so good. This was a lucky shot; many of my close-up photos are often slightly out of focus.

Sunset at sea

Also taken from the ferry on our trip back to Oslo from Copenhagen......I love the path the sun makes on the water. Ever since I was a child, I have always wished I could walk on those paths toward the sun. Those thoughts have formed the basis of several poems that I have written over the years.

Rain shaft seen at sea

A rain shaft is one type of precipitation shaft; other types are hail or snow shafts. They appear as dark vertical shafts emanating from the clouds. We recently saw one such rain shaft at around 9 pm on our overnight ferry trip back to Oslo from Copenhagen. This shaft was not very wide but was a bit fuzzy. Although it was not raining at our location, it was clearly raining in a very localized spot over land to the left of the ferry (northeast Denmark). A strange weather phenomenon! I managed to get a few photos of it. The other interesting thing was that the clouds in the sky all seemed to level out at the same lower position, something I've never seen before. The natural world never ceases to amaze me.

Some words of wisdom from Piet Hein

Piet Hein was a Danish mathematician, inventor, designer, and poet who was born in Copenhagen in 1905. He died at the age of 90. We were recently at a flow cytometry conference in Copenhagen, and written on one of the walls of our hotel room was one of Hein's short poems, entitled:

Det må vi efterligne (Kulturkritisk)

Kultur er evnen
til at leve livet,
så ny og ægte
livsform leves frem.
Den evne var
de store gamle givet
av hvilken grund
vi efterligner dem.


My translation from Danish into English; I hope that I have gotten the gist of the poem:

We must imitate (culture critical)

Culture is the ability
to live life,
so that new and genuine
life forms are created.
That ability was
the gift of the great old ones
and is the reason
we imitate them.
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