A Three-Hour Boor /BWE

In which our Hero just keeps reminding himself that he serves at the pleasure of the client (and sometimes the client is just jerking off)

The provocation for my policy of ignoring automatic “obligations” like weddings of people I don’t know was a mental implosion as an author I can’t remember collapsed a whole bunch of ideas together into a singularity: Time is finite. And time is passing. It’s a bank balance that’s been ticking down since the day you came into the world.

So the result is the choice to be aware of how I spend my time, and to make sure that the things I feel are important are equally where I spend my time. I’m very proud that I didn’t even need to stop to think before offering career-counseling to a depressed 7-year-old ninja. I’m delighted that time spent talking to a 16-year-old has left me able to tease her at 21 about one of her frustrating high school assignments. Sure, sometimes the lines are still not clear, so that I was grumpy about going to the last wedding and I’m still going back and forth about skipping an event at the end of the month. But in general, there’s a very clear line and the rest is just about me deciding where I want that line to fall.

And then there’s work, where for an amount of money that does not remotely reflect the uniqueness of my existence in the universe, I sell hours of my life. To protect that opportunity to sell my life away, I subordinate myself to people who I variably respect or don’t, but there are a lot more that I don’t respect than people I do. And unto them I commend 8 hours of my life that I’ll never get back.

Most of the time things balance out okay. But sometimes the work I do grates on me and I have to consciously tell myself that I sold them those hours, and it’s for them to decide how well to spend those hours. I get paid if I am being clever or if I’m sitting having a coffee or if I’m bored to tears in a meeting that has nothing to do with me. But it gets harder to stomach when they clearly don’t recognize the waste and then are frustrated by the lack of general accomplishment. And I run a juggling act, trying to balance protecting my prerogatives with being an obedient and obliging wage-slave for the masters who don’t seem to learn as much from their mistakes as I do from mine (and theirs).

It’s not easy to balance, as an employee. How do you stand up for yourself without being labeled difficult or problematic or worse “Oh yeah, that guy” in the private staffing and review meetings that you don’t get invited to. The balance gets harder as an independent contractor because I’m outside of the labour laws that say that the employer has to play at least a little bit fair. Standing up for myself always makes me aware that I could be resigning with the same action.

My approach to employment has always been that I am part of the team, that I focus on my individual objectives and when I can’t, then I try to at least support the team. If I can’t do my work, then I *can* change the toner on the printer, or get coffee for the folks stuck in a meeting. Or sweep the floor or whatever. There is no work that is beneath me, and for me to think otherwise is arrogant and disrespectful. (Not saying I don’t have moments or decades of ego, just saying how it should be)

But anybody can sweep a floor. Not anybody can write code. Or project manage. Or lead a team. Or glue servers together. Or reverse engineer 20 year old applications to keep them running when nobody knows how they work. And even fewer can do all of those things as one person. So if I’ve got that specialty work to do, it’s a waste of my time and the company’s money for me to be doing anything else.

Add to that the fact that I have other things to do. I’m on more than one project for my tanker client. I’ve got more than one client. I’ve got an array of personal projects. I’ve got articles to read, blogs to post, entries to write. For that matter, I’ve got chocolate to eat and TV to watch. There is always something I could be doing with my time, and frequently there are things that I would rather be doing.

At home, I’m just going to focus on the “Rather-be-doings” as much as I can. At work, I’ve sold my primacy over my own time and it grates. If I wasn’t doing anything else at work, I wouldn’t be so troubled, but I am overbooked so there’s plenty to do. On the other hand, I’m in executive level meetings, and it’s critical that I present as focused, clear, and effective, because those same executives are the ones who sign-off on the decision to extend my contract each year.

So I try to manage it. If a meeting doesn’t have clear relevance to me, either my tasks, my mission or at the very least my expertise, I don’t go. Where I can avoid it. I ask to be excused where I see the need. I fail to show up for some, on the theory that busy and important leader types always have other things they should be doing (though I let one of the other attendees know so they can excuse me to the host).

But some meetings have that executive focus. And my role is vaguer than usual. I asked if I could skip the meeting. The host said, “It’s really important, we need all the people to attend so we can plan the next piece.” I explained that I’d be late because she’d ignored another shorter meeting on my calendar and double-booked me. “Oh that’s okay, I’ve canceled my other meeting.” Well, I was going to be late to that one too, because you double-booked me for that one too. “Oh, well, we really need you to attend this meeting, all the team leads are critical for this.”

Alright, I’ve tried to get out of it. There’s senior leadership attending. The subject matter seems within my area of concern. So I go. And I sit. And I sit. And I sit. And I sit. For three hours. Three hours of my life tick by with me doing nothing at all. I’m not working, I’m not goofing off. I’m not really paying attention to the meeting because they lied and it’s not really relevant to me. Three hours. Of my life. Just… sitting. Three of the most excruciating hours in recent memory. I’ve never had a meeting go that *far* off the rails for me. Usually it’s “Well, at least I could add some information, or answer a question.” Sometimes it’s just that I was able to engage in the conversation. But this time…. nothing. Nothing at all.

I am so angry about it, I don’t know how to explain. It happened two weeks ago and I’m still seething about it. And I struggle to find an answer to the question of how to protect myself. How do I make sure I’m doing what’s important, rather than what’s asked without understanding. How do I make the clients understand that part of what they pay me for is to figure out how to be effective.

Or else, how do I reduce the amount of stupid that wastes my current day?

(Or else, how do I get out of this client.)