a confused post on bullying

Further to my post on the car driving into the IRD and Taniwha’s response that this could be seen as an extreme case of workplace bullying.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it.

Firstly, I must reiterate that I know nothing about the dispute between the driver and his manager. I am also assuming that his actions were a deliberate plan, rather than something that seemed a good idea at the time and then rationalized later.

I think that driving the car through the lobby could be seen more as protest. It was done at a time when no staff or public were near and it seemed to indicate that his problem was with the organization as a whole.

If he had driven his car through his manager’s (or human resource person’s house)…well, firstly, it wouldn’t have been as funny and secondly, it would have personalized the issue and put other people into danger.

The nearest equivalent I can think of is the local father’s group. They started off protesting outside the family court (and IRD, because of child support) chanting and waving placards. An annoyance, yes, but still a legitimate protest.
Then they started the same action outside the private homes of family court judges and solicitors. THAT, I would consider as bullying. it’s the difference between protesting against an organization/policy and protesting against a person.

The other issue, I guess, is the money that it will cost the IRD to fix the building. Again, I guess you could call this as bullying, but this is an increasing method of protesting. For instance, the latest protest against Hell Pizza involves not only protesting outside its outlets, but clogging up its website, and costing them money by ringing their 0800 number and not ordering.

The difference, you could argue that these actions are all legal, whereas driving a car through a building is not. I agree and while I may sympathize with his actions as a protest, I am pleased that he has had to face the consequences of his actions in court.

join the war

One of the things I do when I’m training new comers to the organization is that I tell them what I did that day, using all the jargon and acronyms I can think of. After I finish my spiel, I ask the recruits if they knew what I said, inevitably, I get met with blank looks and nervous giggles.

The point is that each organization has its own dialect and that once you know what you’re doing, its easy to talk almost exclusively in that jargon. Which is fine if the people you are talking to know that jargon, but less than useless if you’re talking to a customer. It’s all very well for me to say “if you fill in a 490, I’ll be able to distill the Maguffin from the slimy tove” and know what I mean, but the customer will not have a clue what I’m going to do or, more importantly what they are supposed to do. My lesson to the recruits is one of the most fundamental pieces of advice about communication I know

Its not what you say that’s important, its what people hear

And added to this

How you say something sends a message that you may not want received

The worst example of this is management speak. It is a dialect that is particularly annoying-unnessarcarily verbose, filled with empty phrases, buzzwords and phrases, spin and so on.

When our organization was going through its last restructuring, management promised clear communication. When the report of the review came out, it was five pages long. Grabbing a metaphorical machete, I went looking for the key messages. After about quarter of an hour, I found that the five pages were concealing the following messages:

1) because we are short of money, 50 of you will be unemployed by next Tuesday
b) its not our fault. Honestly.

I know why management does this. Firstly to hide bad new (as in that example) but more importantly to send the message “We are smarter than you. Look at all the words we know. Some of them are really long, too. And so because we know these words, we really are smarter than you. That’s why we get the big bucks. So you can be sure that we know what are doing. Did you see that four syllable word in paragraph five? Only someone who knows what they are doing could use that. That’s why we’re here and you’re going to be looking for a new job. Remember to use of lots of big words on your resume”
(Sorry, got carried away there.)

The real fun part is when they make words do things that they are not supposed to. For example for the last few years I have been fighting managers who insist on using “learnings” as a noun. I guess that they think it sounds “cool” from a managerial perspective. I just think it sounds illiterate, a point I’ve made repeatedly, along with the notion that there is already a perfectly acceptable noun available for use. I have had limited success, because while “lessons” is a word that anyone can use, “learnings” is clearly a word used by people who really now what is going on.

About a year ago, radio live’s weekend host (and former able tasman) Graeme Hill declared war on the phrase “going forward” claiming that it is a completely redundant phrase. Yes, it’s designed to make the speaker sound dynamic, but its been used so often that its passed through being a cliché, to being really annoying, especially when its over used. In her last presentation to us, our manager used it fifteen times in thirty minutes (yes, I counted)

I’m with Graeme on this. Do not allow management speak to continue. If a speaker continues to use it, all them out on it. The strategic use of mockery can be effective. Don’t forget the value of irony.

Make a stand for clear communication. Lets stamp out Management speak in our life time.
Going Forward

beatles for sale

News is out that the entire Beatles back catalogue has been remastered and will released on 9 September. Apparently, the sound has really been cleared up and the question is whether its worth getting the brand new sparkling versions

Most of my Beatles stuff is on vinyl, so I guess I could use an upgrade. The question is, which ones? The box set is going to be around the $200 mark, and I don’t really care for the early stuff, so I guess I’ll just be getting the crucial ones.

Well, the white album is a given, as is revolver. I don’t think I’ll bother with sgt pepper, at least at this stage

If I was to buy a third, which do you reckon, rubber soul, or abbey road? My instincts tell me abbey road, but there is some good stuff on rubber soul

More importantly, when is the kinks back catalogue going to get the same treatment?

cashed out

dead-kashin the elephant-euthanised on monday 24 august after a long illness

there hasn't been a time that i remember that kashin wasn't at the auckland zoo. and yeah, i had the kashin money box that was issued in the early seventies to help kids get used to the idea of saving (i wonder if i've still got an asb account somewhere)

i mourn him, noy for himself but because another piece of my past has been lost and gone forever

r.i.p kashin

time drives

i had to renew my drivers licence the other day

thats ten years that's passed

three cars
four pairs of glasses
sixty-four dislysis sessions
five thousand, four hundred and twenty cofeee spoons (thanks, ts)
seventy-two thousand, six hunded and forty-eight cigarettes (and isn't that a sobering thought)

ten years ago, there was no grey in my hair

unfortunatly, it was a post-dialysis day when i got the renewal. so for the next ten years, my photo will make me look as if i've been dead for two days. still as i look like that three days out of every seven anyway, i guess that's ok.

oh, and now? 72,639

lost in the supermarket

they've changed the layout of my local supermarket. its like exploring a brand new store with all the exasperation of trying to find somwething that you need

it was very confusing to someone still suffering the after effects of dialysis, and what's worse when i was in there on sunday, i felt mayself starting to go flat and had to cut my shopping early so that i could go and lie down before i fainted

so i collapsed in front of sky movies and saw shine a light, the rolling stones film. i was never a fan of the rolling stones and still aren't, but i was amazed that these guys in their sixties still
a) have extremely bushy heads of hair, and
2) are so energetic

an hour of watching them run around made me even more tired, and so i also watched the house bunny, which....no. just no.

stupid supermarket

may be funny

from the dominion post

A taxman driven around the bend by continuing work woes drove his car through the building where he had worked for 25 years.

David Jerrold Theobald, 47, drove his Mazda 626 through the foyer of the Christchurch Inland Revenue building on Cashel St at 6.30am on Saturday after a three-year employment dispute.

He crashed through two sets of glass doors and smashed a third on the other side of the foyer before coming to a stop.

Mr Theobald said he had gone to great lengths to avoid risk to any staff.

"I checked with the cleaners the night before to make sure no-one would be in the building. I drove right up to the doors, looked both ways, then slowly pushed forward till the doors broke."

Mr Theobald said he was fed up with what he saw as concealment of workplace bullying and incompetent management at Inland Revenue.

"This has been going on for three years, and now I've got four official information requests in with them and they're making that as onerous as possible ... This was just a way to make a gesture."

He also wanted to highlight how easy it would be for someone with terrorist intentions to ramraid the building with a truck full of explosives. "It's just another 9/11 waiting to happen."

Mr Theobald is a fixture of the Christchurch music scene. He is known as Mick Elborado when he plays with his band The Axemen and in other groups.

He appeared in Christchurch District Court yesterday charged with intentional damage and reckless driving and was remanded on bail till August 31.

He told The Dominion Post he had not decided how he would plead, but was prepared to accept the consequences of his actions.

Inland Revenue would not comment on the incident as it was before the court, but Mr Theobald has received a letter from human resources head Patrick Crawford.

In it, Mr Crawford said: "Information has come to my attention which indicates that you may have intentionally driven a car through Inland Revenue's Christchurch building ... I am concerned that your conduct may be inconsistent with the Code of Conduct."

Mr Theobald could face up to seven years in prison if found guilty of criminal damage.

what made this story for me was the letter from hr advising that his "conduct may be inconsistent with the code of conduct"

may? may??

but then, think about it. he did this in his own time,and having seen the IRD's code of conduct, I'm reasonable sure that it doesn't say that you're not allowed to drive your car into the builsing.

mugged by nostalgia

today, tv 3 are holding the first telethon in 16 years
i remember the community spirit
i remember seeing people on tv who only came out for telethons
i remember the hype

i'd forgotten how cheesy the whole thing is

still, it could be worse. i missed the beginning as i was at dialysis and the people prefered the tv2 alternative-a double feature of high school musical and high school miracle 2.

john hughes is dead

sixteen candles, pretty in pink, some kind of wonderful,weird science, planes, trains and automobiles. these films are the cinematic equivilant of a big mac and fries, but they were kind of appealing. ok they were basically standard teenage romcoms, but the differnce was that hughes didn't assume that teenagers were a homogenous bunch, but that there were a large group of sub-cultures in theage group. he got a fair bit of praise for this, and his view of teenagers has informed teenage cinema since (see 10 things i hate about you, for instance)

nontheless they're not bad films and ok for a mindless 90 minutes

the two films he will be best remembered for (at least according to the media) were ferris buellers day off and the breakfast club.. both of them screened on tv last year. ferris bueller held up pretty well, but i was surprised how much the breakfast club irritated me.
when i first saw it in the mid eighties, i actually liked it a lot as an attempt to take young people seriously. i did notice that hughes seemed to be indulging in SIGNIFICANT WRITING, but the performances managed to overcome this and actually make a quiet and effecting film.
however, when i saw it last year, the characters all seemed to be a bunch of selfish whining brats and i couldn't help muttering "wait till you get out into the real world, you little snots"
i guess its a movie you should see when you're fifteen and then never see again.

if hughes was one of the giants of eighties cinema, then we must remember the duff films. john hughes, you are accused of making:
uncle buck
home alone
home alone 2
101 and 102 dalmations
(most of these have the same plot)

he hadn't make a film in some years, but his films (and their soundtracks) still strike a chord in the teemagers of the eighties

woodsmoke

it is said by ....somebody, that the sense of smell is the most powerful of senses and a simple odour can trigger a memory long gone

someone around here has an old fashioned fireplace and they use it in winter. and the smell of woodsmoke drifts through the neighbourhood, mingled with the chill of winter air.

and i am sitting at my window at 5.30 on a 10 degree sunday evening listening to a warren zevon cd playing softly and wondering whether i have the energy to make a full dinner, or if only a sandwich would do and i smell the woodsmoke.

and i am sent back thirty years or more:

to the pile of woodblocks in the box in the lean-to by the passionfruit vine
to using the small axe to cut kindling
to the pine cones collected from the trees behind our place
to the lighting of the fire and the sibling critics who were alwys sure you'd got it wrong
to the secret timing of putting on the first big blocks so that they would feed rather than smother the flames.
to staring at the fire which was often more hypnotic and interesting than the images flickering on the tv screen.
to burning bread over the embers and calling it toast

i remembered all of this and started to cry.

these happy pills are doing me no good at all

the question

got my referendum question in the post today and have three weeks to decide which way to vote. the qestion is, of course

should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in new zealand?

i have all kinds of problems with this question. first of all, it assumes that a smack is a part of good parental correction. isn't this, in part, what the debate is about?
the battle over the repeal of section 59 of the crimes act began because parents were beating their children and getting away with it.
rather than trying to fully stop the cases of child abuse in new zealand, sue bradford was actually trying to send the message that new zealanders do not tolerate violence against children.
unfortunately, this was not the message that came across.
itt was hijacked by people who claimed that the governement was trying to tell them how to raise their kids, and the claims that a smack on the hand or a swat on the bum was exactly the same as bashing the kids head in with a piece of 4 x 2, did not help.
it was one of those issues where dealing with serious child abuse was so difficult that the easier thing to do was to make everyone feel guilty. so the message received was that nz parents cannot be trusted not to beat their kids, so the governement reserves the right to imprision them if they get it wrong.

this proves the fundamental factor of communication. its not what you say that is important, its what people hear.

in the meantime, people on both sides of the argument ae getting shriller and shriller.

given that the question is stupid, the referendum is non binding, and the prime minister has already announced that he will not be making a law change no matter what the esult, this referendum seems particularly pointless.

as i don't have children, and probably never will, the whole question is rather academic to me, but as i beleive in democracy, i really should vote. shouldn't i?

worth checking out

phil judd's new album, love is a moron. closer to the swingers than his split enz years. the track tha is earworming me is hanging by a thread

oh, and i'm still looking for the first schnell fenster album

ambience

out of the blue is a beautiful terrifying film. it depicts the 24 spree killing undertaken by david grey in aramoana in 1998. i remember seeing the events on television, especially, the asinine tvnz reporter asking one of the residents, whose partner had been killed by grey "who do you feel?

the film is srongley effective, focusing more on the residents, than the killer. there is no music on the soundtrack for the bulk of the film, which helps draw you into the whole atmosphere. the first time i saw it on tv last year, i deeply resented the commercial breaks which pretty much destroyed the flow and feel of the film

the place not to watch it is a crowded dialysis ward