The above is the imagined conversation George Costanza might have if he were asked directly how his progress on the Penske file was coming along. I think during one scene that even happened, and I think George tried to overstate the amount of effort it took for him to transfer the papers from the original single folder Penske file, and put them into a new accordion style file folder. Big whoop, the audience laughs at George's flailing attempts to pull the wool over his boss's eyes and make him think that a task that would take a normal person roughly about 15 minutes could excuse several weeks of full-time work. How ridiculous! In regards to the job I'm in right now, my so-called coworkers have been pulling this shit non-stop for years!
How could this be possible in the real world? Well, in the post a few weeks back that I made roasting my current co-workers, a former member of this team, and the big boss, it may well be that everyone on some level is either inhaling their own fumes from their non-stop gaslighting attempts and becoming ditzy from it, or they're all in cahoots because it's a scheme to basically milk the government bodies that pay for these services. And, as I suspected from the beginning, it doesn't stop in my department; the thread runs through the whole agency!
Here's a great example of the craziness of this all...
So as I mentioned, there's Mike, the dude who used to be the head of the department and then decided to go part-time because at age 65 he's just counting down the months until his expected retirement date. When that comes he's already said without any compunction he'll gladly retire and take his family back to Michigan. He stated on more than one occasion that he gets migraines from too much sunshine. Does he have some kind of accommodation, ironically enough, based on his own disability, regarding migraines caused by too much sun, to do the majority of his part-time work in the same fashion that I've already carved out for myself, that is, staying in my home and telecommuting the job that is ostensibly designed to be "out in the field," so to speak?
So last week, Kathleen pulls me into her office and as usual she's all over the place like a kid with ADHD flitting about with all the different ideas that are floating around in her head. Most of them positive pie-in-the-sky visions for the future. But she got a little bit grave as she approached the subject of Mike and his caseload. Apparently, she popped her head out of the sand for a bit last week and realized that Mike has a caseload of four, three of which he's had virtually no contact for at least 6 months and only one follow-along, one hour per week. (And we know he doesn't do the full hour, if he even does it at all.)
She tells me that not only has she figured it out that his 25 to 30 hours, whatever he actually works, on the clock doesn't add up to the documentation of what he does on a week to week basis, but also that she bumped into the parents of one of the consumers on his caseload recently and they expressed their disappointment with the department saying that no one worked with their son and he eventually found a job on his own.
(So this fact will be interesting in that Mike verbally "talks the talk" about his folks that he's working on, "getting employment" for them on the back end, "meeting with potential employers" and he's talked to Maddie and me about this individual saying he was currently working on this well, lo and behold, he doesn't even know this person has a job elsewhere, so that, in reality, if he really were working on getting this person a job, how does he not know that they already have a job?)
So Kathleen makes the analogy of "putting a Band-Aid" on this. Now I sat there trying to interpret what that meant and I just thought, naturally, that she really meant the more common metaphor of "ripping a Band-Aid off, " you know, a brief instant of pain, but ultimately, "it has to be done." In other words, I sat there thinking, "Okay, the gig's up for him, she's going to fire him."
But, lo and behold, here it is now Wednesday, almost a full week from that conversation, and I think he's still employed! I don't think anything concrete has been done. I know that she met with him because he popped into the office later that day and seemed nervous because, he said, Kathleen called him in to meet with her. Of course, I didn't let on that I figured I knew what the meeting was going to be about, but the next day, some of the end of the month activities that needed to be processed on his caseload were conducted. In other words, he actually did his job and submitted invoices and reports so this meant he didn't get fired! Dang it, I thought, this smooth talker was able to continue his gaslighting despite the fact that Kathleen had him, dead to rights!
So this week, I'm testing the waters big time. I basically haven't done anything other than clock in from home, eat, nap, watch TV, play video games, you know, the same shit I've been doing for years, and now I'm getting paid for it. And yes, like Mike, I can "talk the talk" with the best of them. If asked what I've been doing, I've got plenty of backup stories to mesmerize the listener with.
My version of the Penske report? Ah yes, well here's what I've done x, y, and z, and it's all documented (and non-corroboratable -- a made-up word meaning you can't ask around about my tasks since there are no witnesses).. Oh, you're good with that? I'm doing a great job you say? Wonderful, thanks so much.
The thing is though, I won't be asked to make a report anytime soon. We know that. And by the time I am, I will make transferring papers from a single file folder to an accordion folder seem like the most Herculean effort ever in the history of the Great American Modern Day Workforce!
Heck, nowadays, if you read these articles, this bullshit is actually embraced as the new way of working!
https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2022/01/05/slow-work-rest
https://www.careercontessa.com/advice/work-smarter-not-harder-slow-work/