Ill-defined Job Titles
What in the hell do half of the people you work with actually do? I mean what does the Account Coordinator actually coordinate? What exactly does the Chief Operations Officer operate? And what in gods name does a Senior Vice President preside over?
To clear up a lot of ambiguity- I’d like to suggest that we just dispense with the formalities and print up what these people spend their time doing onto their business cards. For example Mr. ____; Head of meddling, micromanaging, delegating and holding meetings to talk about what we can talk about in the next meeting without actually accomplishing anything but impeding others pseudo-productivity. Or how about, Ms. ____; Record holder in personal calls made on the company dime, frivolous web surfing for clothes that could never actually fit her frame, and asking other people to send faxes that other people asked her to send yesterday.
I mean I realize this might blow some of the mystique these people have created for their positions out of the water, and it certainly would take up more space on their resume. But if I knew what these people actually did, maybe I’d have a better idea of what to go back to school for. Currently my card would read: File, phone, door, coffee, hand-holding, babysitting, ass-wiping, janitorial upkeep and any other sort of debasing miscellany- Bitch.
However, not to anyone's surprise, I would much rather be the one whose title includes: Gets to work late, leaves early and fits some golf in between long extravagant lunches on an expense account, and quitting time…. Oh, wait, I guess I already know the answer, I want to be a CEO.
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I work for a large media organisation, but fortunately there are only four of us on our 'team' and we produce a technology digest every month as well as supplying material to that magazine's website.
My commute is just under forty five minutes by bus, slightly longer by car - my colleagues are about the same although one has to travel an hour and some change every day by car and cannot use public transport without making at least two changes of mode.
So we put a proposal to our managers - we're all on Skype at home, we all have PCs or notebooks, we can connect to the server remotely, cost savings, energy savings, blah blah, so why don't we just work from home three or four days a week..?
Sounded reasonable to us - hell, we don't talk to each other that much at work anyway and never lunch together or any of that nonsense.
The idea was rejected without consideration.
And we know why - without us grunts there in the trenches doing the actual work that drives the company forward, there'd be no-one to observe all those fatuous marketing Barbies and suchlike unnecessary pondlife as they march into another important meeting to strategise and synergise and whatever the hell it is they do to make our lives less meaningful...