Tuesday 21 October 2008

Motivation

Sometimes I find it hard to get out of bed and go and do something. This morning I found it hard not to get into bed and do nothing (the first night shift will do that to you). I didn't last long. An early start yesterday and a trip across the country for a meeting with Epic Cycles in Tenbury meant by mid-morning today I'd already been awake for 30 hours. Sleep was needed. Sleep is good.

It seems I'm not the only one lacking motivation at the moment either. Work is in chaos and showing no signs of improvement. I won't go into full details but the brief background is my department was outsourced last year and a plan started to relocate in June 2008 - missed that deadline. The relocation to Chiswick involves working somewhere nobody wants to work, doing a job nobody wants to do, working for a company nobody wants to work for. So much so that in this current climate of economical turmoil and unemployment, most staff are actually thinking of leaving. (They're offering us a 'finders bonus' if we recommend a new member of staff for God's sake!)

So with this in mind, and the fact that staff morale is similar to the FTSE100 (just when you think it can't go any lower, it drops a few more points) and stress levels at an all time high, (8 months ago we had 30 engineers running the place, now we have about 12) this was a scenario that came about the other day:

- The Vice-President of the company was standing with a group of managers at the new location. Deadlines are whizzing by like traffic on the M4 outside - you know it's there but it comes and goes without any real impact. A new deadline is approaching and, remembering everything I've just said, the VP comes out with these motivating, inspiring, pearls of management wisdom, "If we don't get this place up and running in two weeks, we're pulling the plug!"

Apparently the minor management were seen giggling in the corner and the staff let out a loud cheer; the biggest improvement in morale and staff solidarity that has been seen in many months. With this renewed vigour for the ailing project, they then went and put the kettle on...

I do love the people I work with sometimes.

Monday 13 October 2008

October Already

It's been a busy couple of weeks, really busy. And it doesn't look like slowing down any time soon. So, in brief:
Dusk til Dawn - wet, muddy, dark, miserable. One lap. Lots of chocolate.
Work - dusk til dawn. Overtime-tastic. Yay!
Shopping - bath suite, lights, electrical bits and pieces, tiles, paint, tools, I could go on, but this list is exceptionally long - I never realised a bathroom contained so many bits.
London Cycle Show - 2 days, 25 sponsor proposals for a new event we're running next year. Lots of patter and a sore throat.
A new iMac Intel Core Duo - yay!
An iPhone - double yay!!
Riding - today, 20 miles.

That's October so far in a nutshell. It's nice to be busy and finding time to ride. There's lots of work to be done over the next few months, both on and off the bike. Exciting though.