In my experience, most organization-wide attempts to use less paper have been pretty futile. The university where I work has perpetually been on a "Green Policy" of decreased paper use. The first thing they did was to do away with paper applications. Digitizing the admissions process was actually a pretty neat idea, and the advantages are numerous. But seeing how all the admissions officers still print out all the applications before reading them, conservation was obviously not one of those advantages.
This summer the paperless office movement was rejuvenated. This time, the idea is to decrease printing by decreasing the number of printers available in faculty and administrative offices, the theory being that having to walk an additional 30 seconds to get to a printer will act as a sufficient deterrent. Just yesterday I attended a meeting where I received a 45 page booklet outlining the details of this revolutionary new initiative.
aips
@aips
Best posts made by aips
Latest posts made by aips
-
RE: Conservation - in reverse
-
RE: WTF manager: Bob
@taylonr said:
As I read this, I kept asking myself, "Is this real, or are they trying to make the Office into a blog?" Which, to me, says it's pretty high quality. Because I could see these as plots to office episodes, and yet they don't come off as you trying to write episodes for the office.
A popular theory is that Bob watches "The Office," but because the show doesn't have a laugh track, he perceives it as a serious documentary about office etiquette and effective management, and not a comedy program.
-
RE: WTF manager: Bob
@adrianX said:
... so why do you think hat Bob won't read this?;)
Oh, I forgot to mention - Bob doesn't know how to use a computer. I guess I'll elaborate more on that in upcoming posts.
-
RE: WTF manager: Bob
Sorry about the blog pimping, but this seemed like the ideal forum for our troubles. Thanks for the feedback.
Initially we thought of putting everything in writing, and sending it off to the producers of The Office. It was almost a joke. But we realize now that they probably wouldn't believe it.
-
WTF manager: Bob
My name is Anna Shore, and I work as an engineer with the Small IT Group (SITG) at the Big Private University (BPU). We have a manager - Bob. Bob is incompetent, overweight, unattractive, uncouth, socially awkward, and generally, not a very nice person at all. Very soon after Bob became our manager, he began insisting that we (all eight of us) address him as Executive Director. When we realized that he wasn’t joking, we got together and did a lot of soul searching, trying to determine what evil deed in our past could have caused the unfair sequence of events that brought him into our professional lives. But, finally, after a great deal of introspection, we decided that no amount of collective evil was sufficient to justify such a brutal cosmic injustice.
For a while, we were convinced that Bob had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. But then, something happened - Bob stopped showing up for work on a regular basis. Several times a week Bob would take a vacation day, a personal day, a sick day. Sometimes he wouldn’t even bother explaining his absence, acting as if spontaneous five-day weekends were simply the norm. And that is how everyone came to wonder - where is Bob? The question became perpetual in the office and among the other people at BPU with whom we work. And that is when I took up my current hobby - keeping chronicles of Bob’s strangeness at the office, and away from it. What is lacking in facts has been more than made up for with an overactive imagination.
In an attempt to share our little inside joke with a wider audience, I started a blog about our small IT shop, the epitome of WTF management that is Bob, and the bizarre things that Bob does instead of coming to work.
http://whereisbob.wordpress.com
Putting it all in writing sort of helps us stay sane. Even though we are convinced that our predicament is unique, we acknowledge that other happy, pleasant, productive IT folk out there are sometimes confronted with a Bob-like managerial aberration, and because we subscribe to the "misery loves company" theory, would love to hear other Where's Bob rants.