Fatigue Rating

So I still haven't managed to work existential angst into a field safety form yet, but I've recently encountered a new avenue for expressing myself through interpretive safety form-ing and I'm really pumped for it: a client company wants field staff to assign themselves a fatigue rating of 1-7 each day, with 7 being extreme fatigue and 1 being so foreign to me at this point that I'm not entirely sure what it might mean... Anyway, the tricky thing is that if you rate yourself as anything 3 or over you're to stop work immediately and call your project manager to discuss how to mitigate your compromised condition. Naturally, this means no one can ever actually disclose their true fatigue rating because they're all too fatigued to fuck around with nonsense like that, and it is in this procedural grey area where I feel an exciting opportunity for creative self-expression lies. 

My proposed new fatigue scale lies outside numbers, and indeed outside of logic. One simply senses how fatigued they are, and expresses that sense through brief, evocative tales. The scale is thus deeply personal, unique to each individual, and cannot be interpreted in a way that would require additional paperwork. Wins all around! 

I invite you to join me in my own non-numerical exploration of field-season fatigue:

- gosh, why can't I remember the words for anything today?

- closed cattle gate with self on wrong side

- huh, that's not a cool new sedge at all, it's just a beetle standing on a piece of grass 

- sat on an ant hill

- NO. CLUE. where I was when I woke up this morning

- propositioned hotel clerk

- drooled lightly on fieldsheet during microsleep

If there happen to be seven levels here it is purely coincidental - like how the 1-4 on your child's report card definitely doesn't translate into actual grades at all, wink wink. And I won't go confessing that I'm running at a solid 4 or 5 these days because that just wouldn't be safe, winkwinkwink, but I can tell you that I had to get Emergency Naked on the prairie at one point this week because my clothes suddenly got REALLY full of ants for some reason. Oh, and I was staying in Consort. It only took me like five minutes, tops, to figure that out every morning.

In unrelated news, I've got a bunch of plants here that I have to look up the names of, so I guess I'll sign off and get back to work. G'night, and godspeed!    

Anti-Résumé

So I've been working on this concept lately that I've taken to calling the anti-résumé. I think it came out of sheer hatred of LinkedIn and all its nonsense and posturing. Wouldn't we rather be real for a change? Like, really real? Maybe painfully real??

Enter the anti-résumé. Think of it as a place to document all your failures and failings, to be handed around freely and discussed at will. It would be nicely formatted and spell-checked, obv. Updated regularly, say annually, or as needed to capture any spectacular new fiascos you've managed to accomplish (uncomplish?) since the last update. And I know regular résumés tend to stick mainly to worky stuff but I envision the anti-résumé really blurring the boundaries between the personal and professional, 'cause isn't that like half the problem in the first place? This would also give it a broad applicability not achieved by a regular résumé - you could include it in job applications and your online dating profile. Honestly, I think it would be liberating to do things this way - just rip that band-aid right off, get the dealbreakers out of the way now rather than a couple of kids and a mortgage into things. (Or for the younger folks out there, a dog and a two-year lease agreement.)

Speaking of which, I haven't fully fleshed out how to include any salient external feedback - just build it right into your bullet points? That would really speak to ownership of your own bullshit, but on the other hand a separate friends/family/colleagues/etc. quotes section might pack more editorial punch. Do you think the "references" should be people who will happily smack talk you? Or maybe a more traditional "references" section would be better, complete with pers. comm's and literature cited... either way you'll definitely need an Appendix or two to include any documentation, because if you fucked up big enough to make the paper it's 100% gotta be in your anti-résumé.

I'm still polishing mine up - having a bit of trouble with the verb agreement TBH - but in the spirit of really-realness I'll give you some highlights to tide you over until the finished product is ready:

• Easily distracted by more interesting tasks.
• Chronic procrastinator-slash-workplace adrenaline junkie.
  
• Conflates oversharing with emotional intimacy.
• Thoroughly convinced of my own genius and unwilling to take conflicting evidence into consideration.
  
• Elevated cholesterol.

Feel free to use as inspo for your own anti-résumé, but definitely don't limit yourself to my examples - make your failure flavour fully your own!

Successful implementation of the anti-résumé will obviously rely heavily on individual self-evaluation and honesty, but for workplace applications I think it will also require prospective employers to be fully open about the limitations of their organizations. Given my nearly 30 years of employment and subcontracting experience, plus (let's be honest) probably a titch of bullet point #4 above, I've got a few ideas on this topic as well:

• Old boys club galore.
• Pays poorly.
• We have no idea what we're doing.  
  
• Will shove work down your throat like we're planning to eat your liver on crackers for Christmas.
  
• Shitty coffee.

Again with the verb agreement, but you get the gist. If both parties believe they can deal with the other's crap, well then you've got a deal! Let's share a toast to the start of a beautiful decent hopefully mutually not-terribly-disagreeable relationship. Santé!  

Someone Else

Holy moley, everyone. You've heard me whining about them for years, and I think I've finally discovered the root of the problem: my children seem to believe that they are union employees.

Let that sink in a minute. Let it marinate. They believe they are union employees. 

I recall working in a lab at one point where a lightbulb had burned out. The replacement lightbulb was in the room with us, but could we just... replace the bulb ourselves? No. No we could not. What we could do was fill in a requisition form; schlep it down to the maintenance office; and work in the dark for five days until someone whose job description specifically and explicitly included the screwing-in of lightbulbs had time to screw in our particular lightbulb.

And my children believe our household operates on a similar system - for themselves, at least. 

From this perspective, anything that has not been specifically and explicitly spelled out in their collective agreement in watertight legalese is Not Their Job. Following this logic, it must therefore be Someone Else's Job. Who is this mysterious Someone Else, you might ask? Why that, my friends, is absolutely none of their unionized fucking concern. I suppose if forced to consider the question they might shrug and say, "I dunno. Some contract staff or something?"

When unionized, I've observed that not only are things Not Your Job and therefore may be summarily ignored, you can also blithely announce the need for "downtime" or "me time" or simply "I'm on spring break" and lie in bed staring at a screen for literal days on end with nary a care while Someone Else magicks your cushy lifestyle into existence outside of - below, even - your notice. 

Downtime? Downtime?! FROM. FUCKING. WHAT.

Like, pardon my French, but honestly. These are real true questions, asked in 100% sincerity as the lowly contract staff-slash-magic household entropy reduction elf who is genuinely trying to comprehend the privileged lives led by the union employees of the home: What is it, exactly, that you need downtime from? Is it the hard work of half-assing everything and leaving the fallout from said half-assery for Someone Else to deal with? Is that what you find so wearying? Was it really that hard for you to walk away from the food you dumped in the cupboard around the compost bin in your hasty pursuit of pressing the start button on the dishwasher after eating the supper that Someone Else cooked? Golly, I hope you were able to recover from all that. Please, allow me to do some more work on your behalf that you actually directly caused me to have to do, while you grab a little me time - no need to thank me.  

Y'know, I used to believe lightbulb guy just plodded along from ticket to ticket all day, but now I wonder if he didn't go have a bit of a lie down after each one instead. Probably drove his mom insane. Speaking of, this rant has been downright exhausting - I think I'll take my glass of wine and go have a little downtime myself. If anyone deserves it around here, it's this Someone Else person I keep hearing about.