A Jeremiad about the Workplace

I haven't felt much like writing lately. I have been so tremendously miserable at work, and so much of my time is spent on work, that it feels impossible to write anything that anyone would enjoy reading, or that I'd actually enjoy looking back on in two years.

To give a summary:

We have ~14 new clients to 'integrate' and 200+ clients for whom we need to maintain service. In addition, our manpower is low.

One person is leaving the team and another person's role is changing. We are having trouble hiring new people, because the applicants' technical abilities or motivation don't seem high, except in one case, or they don't appear to know what they're really applying for. I can't in all fairness hire people who will suffer and wilt away in the hellhole of my team's work.

We did find one applicant we were enthusiastic about, but I was told immediately after the interview that we were only supposed to hire one new person. I'd thought it had been agreed that we needed two people and I'd been so happy that we could say yes to more than one applicant. I wrote a detailed letter explaining the team's workload to the CEO and manager, and they promptly and kindly agreed to let us hire a second person.

Then we sent the hiring offer to the first applicant. As we were finalizing the salary details, I was told that a colleague (not the CEO or manager) had said that we should only hire this applicant on a freelance basis. Much of our team's work would soon be automated anyway. [Note: I have not been told which task would be automated, nor how the data quality would be kept at a high standard, nor how much time this would save. The team that might do the automation doesn't have available resources. ... And I was told by a fellow team leader just a week or two earlier that I was being paranoid for saying that my team would soon be downsized.] (Fortunately that person was persuaded to change their mind and the person will be hired for a better contract.)

I was so furious at this that, to be honest, I have put off contacting that person about an unrelated topic. I don't want to be nice to them until I've reached the stage of forgiveness where it would be genuine-nice instead of fake-nice.

In the meantime, my team is overworked. For the first time I've started asking the team to self-assess on a scale of 0 to 10 how anxious they are, and there are lots of 5s and 7s.

Today they were touchingly helping each other out with some of their tasks with the last vestiges of their own strength.

In addition to this, I've been appalled by the Mass Exodus in other parts of the company. My direct supervisor is leaving the company, one funny data scientist colleague has left the company this week (abruptly for me, but I think it was expected to those in her team), and a graphic designer who is one of the longest-serving colleagues is also departing.

Then I heard at second hand that the CEO thinks that our team works hard, but has sloppy data quality standards.

In addition to this, I was told that our team needs to be restructured, and that the planning needs to be done by January 1st. This is the peak season and colleagues will be on holiday in December.

***

The news that the team would be restructured came out abruptly on Thursday the 15th.

In the management level, the idea of taking the four teams that specialize in Front End, Quality Assurance, etc. and remixing them into multi-specialized/cross-functional teams had been floating around for months, it seems. It was suggested by another team leader who does work directly with my team, but not that much. Then a colleague in one of the current mono-specialized teams — who has also been hugely overworked — seized on the idea in a conversation with the CEO in the first week of October, and thought it would be the solution to all their team's Black Friday season problems. Another colleague who also leads a group agreed that it might be a good idea.

Two weeks ago, I talked with the colleague who first suggested the idea. I mentioned that people were leaving my team, and the colleague was worried that it would affect their plan to work my team into the new groups. I said drily 'Oh, great. That'll really help with the knowledge-sharing,' and was cautiously pessimistic and sarcastically upbeat, but figured that due to the great reworking of our company, our being split up was inevitable. The person felt it was an idea that might be put forward soon by management and talked over with the team.

But I almost burst into tears afterward. It was so odd that these plans were being discussed without consulting me or my teammates. Did people think I was too incompetent? too stupid? to have valid ideas to offer? Then I did write to the person saying that although I knew that was not his intention by any means, I felt really disrespected at not having been consulted. And I asked if it was fine to let my team know about it at once, so that the team would not feel as I was feeling. The person offered to speak to management to get permission for me to discuss it, which I thought was a very open and principled way of going about it.

For a day I heard nothing. Then I received an email on Friday evening from the CEO saying, à propos of nothing, that I should appoint people from my team to join new teams that would handle all incoming clients. And at that point I knew this would all go to hell.

I sent an email back — @ing everyone in the email chain to let them all know that a massive communication fail was happening because, yes, I was a little mad — saying that I couldn't give a good opinion unless I had a better idea what the teams would be composed of and what their aim would be.

The team leader who loved the idea explained that events had moved too quickly to consult me in time, and they apologized. They also laid out the composition of the teams, to make it a bit clearer what exactly would be happening: the idea was that there would be one person from my team in each new team, 4 people in total, 1 person from QA, 2 people from their team, etc.

This plan clearly showed to me that practical problems hadn't been thought of. We have 14 clients in the team's pipeline now, as I mentioned earlier. A few people in the team have explained that they can only focus on one client at a time and still do a painstaking, accurate job. Which means that if we cut down the number who work with new clients to 4 people, they could only address an average of 2 clients each. What about the 6 clients for whom we wouldn't have time? What if someone goes on holiday or can't work on a client for other reasons?

On Monday, the CEO talked with the team project manager and me to show the new structure he wanted. I had no idea what to say. I didn't know if any opposition would be felt to be disrespectful, and it didn't feel as if our opinion was needed because the plan was happening anyway.

But then I let the other team leaders have it (which was perhaps unfair, because I should have really vented on the CEO if I was that annoyed). I tried to explain how impractical it looked from my team's perspective, how much stress this was putting on me during Black Friday season, and that my team was already in a precarious position.

It had mixed results. The person who originated the idea felt that my worries about the practicability were justified, expressed sympathy, and hoped for the best without being very optimistic. A new Agile coach colleague who was in the call seemed to be wondering what kind of menagerie he'd newly been hired into. And the team leader who loved the restructuring thought that I was completely overblowing things and that I needed to be humored. They'd talked to their team right away, and didn't appear to believe me when I said that the CEO had told the team project manager and me that he wanted himself and the manager to be part of the communication to our teammates.

If one or two technical details need to be ironed out, it wouldn't be so bad if the team leaders who like this plan were really taking the problems seriously and helping. But their 'it'll all work out' attitude baffles me — leaving all of the labour of considering the details to us, who didn't suggest the reconstruction in the first place. It is firstly really unfair and secondly it will likely lead to catastrophe.

Of course I really like the other team leaders. I just don't know why this is happening. They're nice people who surely don't like to rule by diktat. And if they were thinking coolly, they would not want to disrupt the functioning of my team and put timelines in danger by discarding badly-needed resources in a haphazard new hierarchy.

It is so senseless for my team. The team project manager for my team has redistributed the workload to more painlessly and quickly meet the practical and emotional needs of teammates. This workflow is far better than what we had before, and I see how much effort the project manager puts into it maintaining it every day. If we need to take into account 4 new teams, then we will need to destroy this workflow and rebuild it.

Now the team project manager and I are now trying to design a new workflow before January. It is the peak season. The team project manager is also trying to retrain for other work. I am overworked from the regular workload already and also emotionally stressed. It is so unfair and so illogical it makes me want to thump my head against the wall.

Lastly, given our company's professed new adherence to Agile ideals, I do not understand why so many decisions are being taken without input (or 'buy-in') from most of the people directly affected. Even I find this far too undemocratic for my tastes. And I'm not sure why the team leader who is enthusiastic about the restructuring doesn't recognize that it's a bit cruel to make huge decisions on behalf of eleven other people whom they barely work with.

*

The next problem, after talking with management (I owe a life debt to our manager for talking me off the ledge, but still feel that I need to figure out better how to work with the CEO) and admittedly wrangling a bit with the team leaders, was to figure out how to let my team know what was going on. This stressed me out so much that, I woke up in the middle of the night before this Thursday and couldn't get back to sleep for a while.

In the end the team project manager and I anxiously went for this idea: On Thursday we asked the team to participate in an exercise to plot out all of the workflows we currently have. Then we'd inform them about the changes and work out the new team structure in the next meeting.

In practice, it did not work as we'd hoped. A few of the teammates had a hard time getting used to the tool we were using to chart the workflow, the meeting overran the time limit, a few teammates were cranky and one was just exhausted because they had felt ill that day anyway, and they were all in a hurry to get back to their work. At the end of it I tried to explain what was going on and what the purpose of the exercise really was. Silence. I felt really inept.

I still have no idea what the team thinks.

In a leadership training earlier this year, the HR manager who coached other team leaders and me said that when a large change takes place, it's really important to go through all of the stages of resistance and anger. If this is repressed, it will lead to years-long resentments and difficulties. So I think I will need to prod genuine reactions out of my team, only give my opinion when asked (then I think I have to give genuine reactions too, because they will know if I'm not being truthful and would be skeptical of any neutral, evasive thing I say anyway), and still let them know that eventually we'll need to get around to the implementation and that they need to have their say now because in a few months it'll be unprofessional.

*

Even outside of this — and the meetings regarding this change have swallowed up a lot of time — I've been working eleven-hour days for weeks...

My private life is worse, too. I could be doing things I love like cooking and baking and looking at art and learning new music. I could be practicing Greek and Spanish and other languages, making Christmas cards and shopping, tending plants and buying flowers, researching French history or reading new books. I could be writing emails or other messages to friends and relatives. The weather will be grey and cheerless soon enough, and I want to see the yellow trees.

My work problems are creeping into lots of private conversations; admittedly this is my fault.

My siblings and mother have also been comforting me for hours and hours, for weeks now. So has an ex-colleague, who very kindly reassured me that I was a good person who really did try to do right, and that I can't 'save' everyone.

In the meantime...

I feel too exhausted to ask more bluntly what's intended for me, although perhaps I should. But it appears likely that I'll be removed from a middle-management position before the end of next year. 

Likely until November 27th and beyond, I will be working 11 hour days. I will not be taking a holiday except if, for the third time this autumn, I feel so stressed that a half day is needed.

After that, perhaps I can expect a demotion. And I might see the dissolution of a team — either through further restructuring, or through people leaving due to overwork without the sense of unity and autonomy to make it better — where — for 4.5 years — I'd tried so hard to build up trust, humane management, and a feeling of true personal fulfillment in the workplace.

What I just wonder is, how does this serve the company; why do we need to stare common sense in the face but then ignore it; and what did I do to deserve this? Have I not represented my team well enough?  Is it bad if I mention that the team or I are stressed, because people will think I'm fragile and irrational and that the problems I mention lie in me and not in the workload or in poor decisions? Have I let the team down? In the end I know that I tried not to let them down, but it is so hard to know why this is happening and I feel so unhappy.

Rambles on a Hermit's Escapes to Berlin-Friedrichshain

Yesterday afternoon, T. and I cycled through a quiet Berlin-Mitte to Volkspark Friedrichshain to meet with a colleague. It was greyish weather, and light drops felt like the harbinger of a proper rainfall, but the weather forecast had insisted that at most 0.2 L of precipitation would fall per square metre for the next hour.

We reached the corner of the Volkspark where the plane trees and others embowered the pale brown stone and frothing white waters of the Märchenbrunnen, then pedalled along the sidewalk outside the park, then through the fence along the dirt paths into the park itself.

In the park there were throngs of pedestrians, joggers and cyclists that flirted with the boundaries of social distancing.

There were brooding lines of shadow underneath the old trees, dark red berries glowed from the underbrush; and in the flower gardens, a few roses in yellow or pink still flowered. The first touches of yellow and orange and even brown were tinging the foliage.

Then we reached the area where a sunken swimming pool has been reused for beach volleyball courts — the sands were deserted that day. The crown of a bouldering ring rises above it like the footprint of a modern megalith, and children were climbing all over it.

At the side of the park, the berry-dark brick of a church tower rose above the old, tired autumn green of the trees. It might have been a village church if it were not for the pale grey and white street lamp posts, bus stop, apartment house façades, cars, etc. between the tree trunks.

T. and I passed the time armchair-critiquing two parents, a twenty- or thirty-something gentleman in a black hoodie and a baseball cap and a lady in a rainbow woven poncho and blonde hair. They let a boy barely two or three years old ride a mechanical scooter in his size down an asphalt hill, and a girl who was two or three years older rode a bicycle. Other people were coming and going on the path, and it can be chaotic with cyclists, joggers, dogs, etc. It's true that the girl-cyclist was wearing a helmet and a puffer jacket and gloves, and the toddler-scooter driver was also padded, although I think he had no gloves. The parents stood at the top and bottom of the hill and didn't take their eyes off the children... But I think I've developed a pretty good radar for Playtime Ideas We Will Regret, as the eldest of five children; and this pinged the radar. Of course the children fell off their vehicles, nearly tripped over their machinery, and burst into tears at least twice, then cheered up again, while T. and I tut-tutted.

Then playtime was over. The father lifted his boy-toddler under his right arm like a sack of potatoes (or like a disgruntled gnome), as the infant screamed. The two adults retreated in defeat, the girl riding her bicycle more philosophically ahead of the others. As an armchair critic, I felt that this illustrated the virtue of parents who are willing to say no when it's in a good cause.

Working-class Berliners in their forties were sitting on a bench near ours and they were undoubtedly German. A thin man in a metal-studded jacket pedalled up on a bicycle with a wagon behind it, as a wolfish-looking black dog trotted alongside. We heard American-accented English from a few 20- or 30-somethings nearby. And a French-looking lady in an elegant red coat was throwing something to another dog who might have been a Jack Russell terrier and who galloped across the knotweed and grasses with the grace (but fortunately not the purpose) of a fox-hunter.

It began to rain more and more, until a large-dropping silvery torrent poured out of the clouds that looked like a shower in early spring; the park looked more English than ever and it was a little like being submerged into a storybook. A glimpse of blue sky kept beckoning, and lingering off to the side.

We took shelter underneath an oak tree — the ground was peppered with dark brown acorns, which have been noisily falling from other trees where we live still this past week — alongside the French-looking lady.

As the thickest rain subsided, the weather forecast on T.'s smartphone changed and suggested belatedly that the precipitation would amount to over 1 L per square metre...

Then we saw the colleague and began talking and walking through the park, past a white pillar with a greenish-black bronze bust that must have been from the Napoleonic era judging by the three-cornered hat, over slopes and down slopes and over the gravel. Finally we reached the restaurant.

It was crowded to an irresponsible-looking degree, but we waited patiently. The tables were smallish so that I felt like I was risking the health of the other two a bit by directly speaking across ours, but I was happy to remove my scarf... Sparrows were almost as plentiful as the people. There were larger ones that I _think_ were males, and littler, spryer ones that may have been females. They were not impertinent, I think. Aside from gathering on one tabletop as if it were a birdhouse full of fresh seeds, they skipped and pecked at the blotchy ground that the rain had wetted.

We ordered Kaiserschmarrn, fried chicken, and — because the kitchen had run out of their pumpkin crème brûlée — a salad. I thought the menu was hipster-Teutonic-Bavarian-Austrian, to which I have no objection.

My salad: baby red beet leaves, lamb's lettuce drenched in the vinaigrette, and purple carrot cut into long pale ribbons; deep orange, roasted pumpkin with a rich, salty flavour, wedges of plump fig, and golden-brown pine nuts. Maybe also arugula. It was nice, filling, seasonal, and definitely a dish I would not really want to go to the trouble of making myself.

I also peeked at what the others ate. T.'s fried chicken was presented almost as if it were molecular gastronomy. But it just had three little dabs of lemon mayonnaise spread along the rectangular serving dish, so I figured the kitchen hadn't gone too wild. And P.'s Kaiserschmarrn seemed to consist of halved cooked plums, the fluffy golden pancake itself, snow-clouds worth of powdered sugar, and a vanilla ice cream that looked like it might be the lighter (some might say, less indulgent) kind that tastes like it's made of quark or something similar. I had non-traditional ice cream of that sort when I went to München in 2008, and felt that it was a little like eating flavored scrapings of a freezer box; but that may just be because I'm a philistine.

It became really cold later on, and the terrace was more sparsely attended; the waiter still ran back and forth.

*

T. and I had a little adventure as we were cycling both to the park and back, as the chain jumped off the sprockets of my bicycle — well, Mama's bicycle — when I hit two bumps. (I guess it's another time one could misquote Oscar Wilde: To lose the chain once may be counted a misfortune, to lose it twice begins to look like carelessness.) It was useful to find out how to fix the problem and I felt like a skilled handyman for once.

When we arrived at home, I ate a few (as much as I could manage under the circumstances) leftovers from the Oktoberfest dinner that the brothers and Mama had been eating: two or more sausage varieties roasted in the oven, sauerkraut, red cabbage, mashed potatoes with carrot, malt beer and regular beer.

Then I baked vegan cookies, two different types; and rather regretted not making a cake, which seems like a grander and more elaborate gesture; for a cake-eating today.

***

Today I went on a bicycle tour to the office again. I felt silly keeping on my scarf as a mask inside the office; but as I'd felt a bit sniffly earlier in the day, did so anyway. In retrospect I probably felt sniffly because the corner room I was working in at home was extremely cold; before I left the coal stove had been turned on and I 'magically' felt much better. Another case of the triumph of hypochondria over common sense! I feel a little exhausted, but to be honest really welcome a break from just thinking about work all the time. Meeting with colleagues again and eating nice food and talking made me realize that there is more to life: serious things that are also enjoyable.

Far Afield Twice on the Bicycle

Earlier this week I felt sleepy, properly sleepy, which was great except that it was before 10 p.m., which felt too early in the day. It was a nice change from having the feeling that there is more, and more left to do, and not being able to rest as a result. But I've also been late to start working twice this week, which is awkward.

*

Most of this can probably be attributed not just to the workload being smaller, but also to T. hauling me out of the apartment to go on bicycle trips with her. First it was the Drachenberg, a mound that is respectably like a hill for Berlin's geography, where despite the cloudy day there was a vast view of windmills, a radio tower, the Fernsehturm and Potsdamer Platz and City Hall grouped together, the green dome of the Berliner Dom, then the buildings near the Technical University at Ernst-Reuter-Platz, etc. The wildflowers have mostly shriveled and turned brown, but green crept underneath near the roots of the grass, it was not too cold, and the foliage on the adjacent Teufelsberg was still thriving. The only thing that disgruntled me (because I am that petty) was that the silhouette of people against the crest of the hill was reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich's paintings.

Then, in the middle of the week, we went through a settlement near Tempelhofer Feld and to the airfield itself. The acacia trees with their dark, deeply grooved trees (like twisted and split bread crust) looked like a Claude Lorrain painting, and the evening sunlight had a bronze colour that looked like aged varnish; the sky had washes of cloud in pastel colours that had the kitsch of nature; and the sun itself dissolved behind the trees in a glowing globe of dark orange.

T. bought a currywurst to eat near the basketball court, and I took one of her French fries. While we talked, the person at the stand kept yelling that halloumi was done, to the people gathered at the picnic tables.

Across from Tempelhofer Feld, on the way there and back, the rush-hour vehicular traffic took ages to stop flowing, and to leave enough of a gap so that we could cross the Columbiadamm.

But altogether it was still relaxing, and leaving the apartment (insofar as it is my place of work) appears to do wonders for my mood.