Back in the days

There are some people that are just naturally gregarious and love being around other people and more power to them. Others find it difficult to sort through all the mixed messages people give them or find other people in general to be annoying or even terrifying.

There used to be a place for that second kind of people. Librarian, bookstore owner, computer programmer, outdoorsey jobs where you're alone a lot, lab technician, well technicians in general. There were behind the scenes people everywhere who were perfectly happy to just do their work quietly and get paid for it.

Now everybody's gotta be entertaining in order to make the first sieving. If you don't pump that interviewer's hand and baldly stare him/her in the eye it makes no difference whether you can do the job or not. You'll lose out to the competitor who can manipulate people emotionally.

This is wrong. It takes energy for that kind of gregariousness. Assuming that on average people have about the same amount of energy, simple math will tell you that the energy spent on making sure the network is good, making sure you get recognition for your work, making sure to grease the wheels, knowing who to grease, knowing exactly what kind of joke you can tell your boss, etc. is energy taken away from the work itself. I'm not saying every non gregarious person should avoid teamwork. I'm just saying that if each member of the team knows what their job is, and feels fine to simply ask without any one upsmanship or game playing, if he/she needs some information, as well as provide it to others when appropriate, the team works a lot better.

Too many teams are really folks jockeying for positions. There is bogarting, seeing who can be in the right place at the right time for the boss to notice, individual career strategy, finger pointing, back scratching and/or stabbing. Problem is, there's very little option to choose not to play. If you don't play, you will be assumed to be up to something. If you just spit forth the truth without any embellishment or wordspin to make sure you look good, you'll look bad by comparison, and you'll be the first one to get a pink slip.

This is the message that's being hammered over and over. What it's doing is turning the workplace into one incredibly complicated game, in which major work is not valued as much as the ability to make other people believe you're doing major work. This is particularly a problem in the knowledge work field.

I mean if you worked on an assembly line, you could say I attached 2500 cup nuts today, or I cut out 500 left sleeves and even if you were unattractive and surly they couldn't really argue with your output statistics. An invisible non-entity could quietly do quite well at this type of thing. They don't care in a factory whether you're visible or not, as long as you mill out piston shafts within their tolerance...

But how do you measure knowledge output when it's generated by a lot of people together? It seems to be quite a bit the matter of the squeaky wheel. And I would put forth that many of the giants in any knowledge work are standing upon the heads of invisible non-entities, and that by themselves they're utterly useless.

And bosses need to realize this. Because now they think they're taking the jobs that used to be held by invisible non-entities and outsourcing them to India. so they don't have to pay so much. And so they are turning their rock solid feet into crumbly clay. and the man with the heavy golden head and the feet of clay crashed hard.

I shoulda been a spy

I missed my calling in life, I think. I shoulda gone into industrial espionage.
Remember that movie about the English chap who got himself a Russian mail order bride who didn't speak English, only she really did? Or that story about the Chinese house boys in the American embassy who were supposed to just be barely bright enough to serve tea. Such invisible non-entities as these pass through the lives of big important people unnoticed. Or even if it isn't the language thing it's the status thing. Have you ever confided in a complete stranger of low status just because you presume they can't do anything with the information.

This is one of the ways I know that I'm an invisible non-entity. Sometimes big important people whom I run across are just bursting with some knowledge but they can't share it with any other big important people because they know that the other big important people are just as ruthless as they are and might use the knowledge to gain some advantage. They presume that I can't or won't, and so they tell me.

And so I know a lot of things about a lot of people. And they're mostly right about me not using the knowledge to screw them over. How would I do that? By spreading it around? Consider the source. The other big important people would probably assume I was making it up. So I keep my mouth shut. I'm very good at that.

I should have been an industrial spy. I could get an id badge and a clipboard and look like I had some kind of job checking the fittings on the flobbermeister stamper machine or something. No one would ask me any questions. I already have spied on several local businesses. The easiest way is to just call them up and ask them whatever you want to know. I got one local business to tell me what equipment was best, where to get it, how much it cost, how they break down the pricing for their services, who their best customers are and how much they turn over per job. I guess a non-entity is recognizable even over the phone.

We'll explore some day how you get to be an invisible non-entity. Maybe it's not such a bad thing to be. At least I will probably never be the target of a hit man.

Being in the hospital

A very close family member just had major surgery. It got me thinkin about
hospitals and death and dying and such. Like suppose Bill Gates was in that
hospital. I'm sure they'd be all over him. They might be all over him so much that they'd forget about the invisible non-entity in the next room. Maybe the non-entity's beepy thing would go off and they'd be so busy mugging for the paparrazzi that they wouldn't notice. And so, the non entity dies the same way they lived. No one notices.

Gettin' a Job

I want to get a job. I have a degree. I even have a Masters Degree. Guess what--in computer science and not last year. Damn. The world is doing a real good job making me feel worthless. Utterly worthless. But what else can an invisible non-entity be?

OK so I go get some Cisco certifications. Update the old skills, they say. Woop-de-doo. Them certs and $3.50 will get me a nice hot latte. Cisco doesn't give a RIP. (haha. in-joke.)

Gawd jobs are so effin' specialized now. We want someone who knows GoLive. Not Dreamweaver. Like there's no commonality? We want MS SQL. Not mySQL. Like they don't have more in common than different? Like somebody who really KNOWS SQL is gonna have any trouble makin the jump? I pontificate the following: some yutz who studied their MS SQL notes and got that cert is less valuable than someone who REALLY GROKS relational databases and never touched MS SQL. In a week the GROKKIN guy will be running circles around the little cert guy.

But HR people don't get this. They want to check off their little boxes. And of course, I couldn't possibly know anything. I'm an invisible non-entity, remember?

Hey I like this blog. It's not like a forum where people will jump all down my throat. This is MY blog, and I'm pretty much talkin to myself.

Well good. But of course you don't care. And you never read this. Why would you?
Good night.

Little Singing Girl

I wrote these lyrics many years ago. At that time I was the mom of three young children. I felt like the world was a cold, sterile, uncaring place. Little did I know how warm and fuzzy things were then compared to now. The protagonist in the song just can't understand how people can be so indifferent. She is me.

I guess I don't have to worry about copyright, eh? No one is going to read this anyway. And even if they did, this is me writing this already. Nothing I do could ever have any commercial value. At least not for me. So no one will probably even bother to steal these. But just in case you steal this, it is actually copyrighted and registered with a TX form. So if you have any hopes of making money off this (derisive laugh) you better share it with me. Hey, even invisible non-entities can fantasize...

Anyway here ya go with the lyrics:

Little singing girl,
The wind is playing through her baby hair;
Little singing girl,
Hopping up and down the bottom stair;
She sings because she's happy
She doesn't understand
Ah, my little singing girl. (repeat)

Little singing girl,
Her voice is ringing out so strong and clear;
Little singing girl,
The mocking echoes tell her no one's there to hear;
Everyone's so busy;
She doesn't understand
Ah, my little singing girl. (repeat)

Little singing girl,
I see her playing in her garden below;
Little singing girl,
She's only playing that her seeds will grow;
She planted on the pavement;
She doesn't understand.
Ah, my little singing girl. (repeat)

Little singing girl,
Her face is frozen in an icy stare;
Little singing girl,
The spring is coming but she doesn't seem to care
She sings to hide the pain inside
She'll never understand
Ah, my little singing girl. (repeat)

Well, I may just fire up ABC and even post a leadsheet of this someday.