These days any time spent in meetings is overload for me. It wasn’t always this way, but over the years I’ve come to abhor going to work meetings as nothing tends to be accomplished in them. This morning I sat through the 2 hour annual company overview meeting. I won’t go into details, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that we’re in a tough economy. This afternoon I get to attend a meeting to set metrics for the annual performance reviews for the department I’m in for the current year. I’ve already posted my thoughts on that process in the past.

My head cold is clearing up a bit, at least.

Last week my boss scheduled a meeting for this afternoon between 3 and 4 PM for us (the managers in the group) to discuss the elements for the 2009 performance measures for the group. I frowned upon receiving the meeting notification. I normally leave at around 3:30, having arrived in the office before 6:30 in the morning, and the topic of the meeting is a bit farcical. The measurements for individual and group performance have been rather pointless for the majority of the last dozen years that we’ve been using the process. In theory, the front line people would have very focused and specific elements by which their performance can be measured. A base and goal are set and at various points in the year, we can check on progress. The measurements for me should include specific items to measure me and at least one or two that reflect the performance of the people reporting to me. Moving up the line, the measurement for the VP would track items that are company/department wide measures from a very high level, but every single person’s review would feed upwards. In practice, the process is miserably broken. The corporate measures are defined and then we need to work our way down the line to select measurements that are representative of the corporate goals in several specific categories. In this way, everyone’s review tends to be pretty similar since the measurements are not specific to the person being measured.

In any event, moments ago I received a cancellation notice for today’s meeting. I' know it is only a temporary retrieve, but since I’m going on vacation for a week, I don’t care about the longer term prospect of a rescheduled meeting. I’ll simply do the happy dance because I get to leave on time today!

It’s 3 PM. That means I’m out of here in just about 1/2 hour, barring any unforeseen issues. Whew! I do think that the second hand on the clock has slowed down some today, particularly as it is getting closer to the end of the work day. All I can say is - “Thank goodness for coffee!”

The day hasn’t been a bad one, just a slow one. I’ll be glad to get home.

I suppose that I’ll never understand the stock market. This morning UPS announced the 4th quarter earnings for 2008 and they were in line with projections made a few months ago. Apparently, this was good enough news to cause the stock price to rise today. Of course, the price is terrible compared to the price last year at this time and even compared to early January, but with the entire market down it is nice to see some “green” numbers today. Yesterday we were called into the office for a briefing on 3 cost containment initiatives. First, no raises this year, which we traditionally see in March. Although the raises for years have barely kept pace with cost of living, a raise is a raise. Second, the 401K match for up to 3% of our own contributions is being suspended. That’s painful, but not terribly so. And, third, the employee discount stock purchase plan is changing from a 10% discount to a 5% discount effective at the end of the current quarter and the price is going to be calculated differently. This last one isn’t painful, particularly in light of the current trends in the market. Let’s hope that the economy turns around sooner than later or I’m afraid that more actions will be taken in efforts to cut costs.

It’s only Tuesday, but it is actually the middle of the work week. It’s dead quiet at work, with many people on vacation this week. Thankfully, there haven’t been any system issues to deal with and I’m hoping that this is indicative of what I can expect through our “peak season” that traditionally starts with Thanksgiving. With the state of the economy, I suspect it will not be busier than last year, though it will still be busy with Christmas related shipping. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that all systems remain up an operational throughout the season.

Apparently UPS announced yesterday evening that the earnings estimate for the 2nd quarter was expected to be lower than projected initially due to rising fuel prices and lower volume. And this seems to have come as a surprise to some investors as the market continued to decline and UPS stock is down almost $3.00 per share right now. Basically, the stock price has dropped more than $10 in just a few months. Why this announcement would surprise anyone is beyond me. Prices are up across the board – fuel, food, utilities, taxes – and it appears that they will continue to increase for the foreseeable future. I thought that war-time economies were supposed to be strong. Oh, well, it is a good thing I am not a gambler, er, investor.

Oh, well.

One day we may see the economy stabilize and grow. I can’t worry about it.

I've been a bit cranky today. Hopefully, my mood will change when I head out of the office in a little over 1/2 hour. I was doing fine, not counting the wish for more sleep and that I had gotten to bed earlier, until the 9 am meeting. That made me very cranky. I won't go into details other than to say that it was an hour I could have spent much more constructively. Sleeping at my desk would have been more constructive!

Today seemed to be a day full of dealing with stupid people at work. There was an endless stream of them. Let's just say that I was glad when it was time to leave. Who knows, maybe I was one of them for at least part of the day!

My boss is retiring at the end of February, but with vacation time, this Friday is his last day of work. We'll be having a retirement party for him in February, but today our new boss was introduced. I've worked with the person named to take over for him since 1998, when she came to Paramus to the larger department that we were both a part of. I think that she'll be a good boss and I don't expect any significant changed in the immediate future. That's a good thing!

Moments after I posted the previous entry, I overheard a discussion that they would be letting those who needed to get something from inside the building enter with a fire department escort. I hastily made my way to the person who appeared to be in charge and announced that I needed to get my stuff from inside as soon as they could get me in. I was the first one taken upstairs. Now, let me get this straight... The building is not on fire, nor is it in danger of burning. The alarm is screaming because the water pressure in the sprinkler system dropped due to a malfunction on the first floor. There are workmen inside repairing the sprinkler system and others cleaning up the water that is apparently in the area of the malfunction. Why on earth do I need to be escorted into the building and then made to quickly get my things and exit once again? If the building suddenly burst into flames, there are two fire trucks and a slew of trained firefighters milling around outside. I would think that I am capable of exiting the building on any number of stairways unassisted as they run in with hoses and extinguish the inferno.

Anyway, I got my laptop and the rest of my things and headed back outside. I got in my car and drove down to Paramus where I hooked up the laptop and got the reports processed and posted. The building was deemed safe a short time later and I headed back up to Ramsey where I am now, having gotten here shortly before noon.

I really didn't need this excitement today.

I just had a fascinating discussion with someone at work. There is a process for customers who choose to send their data to us using a particular method have to go through for validation. The data that they send to us is formatted based on a defined data structure. Once it arrives, it needs to be reformatted for further use. Customers who give us their data via a slew of other methods have to conform to the data structure that the data gets reformatted to. There are systems that are sold to customers which create the file and transmit to us. Those systems need to be approved before they can communicate with our side. Larger customers may have a custom solution in place, so they need to be individually certified. Long ago, someone had the foresight to build a self-service process for customers to test their upload and receive back a report of what went wrong so that they can fix it. It is pretty fast. If they pass the required testing, they are certified. Well, the person I was talking to wants to provide a method for the customers using the other structure to do the same thing. I tried to explain the following, but after 10 minutes of discussion I realized he wasn't going to understand. They already have it, only the process is slow and requires manual intervention. There is absolutely nothing, short of eliminating the intermediate reformatting, that can be done to magically speed up the process. The individual parts of the process that receives the special data and reformats it for upstream submission need to be optimized. Unfortunately, the person I was speaking with wants a magic bullet and he thinks he found it by having the customers simply use the other certification process. Of course, if they did this, they wouldn't be certified for the special format. Amazing.

Today my employer celebrated 100 years as a company. There were all kinds of celebrations at all locations. It still seemed much like any other day to me. I'm proud to work for UPS and I hope to finish my career there. I've been in the same position, doing pretty much the same thing, with some minor variation, for over 10 years now. I'm hoping that things change - for the better, of course. Things are very different from what they were 10 to 11 years ago. In 1997 I was shuffled from one manager to another and my visibility diminished quite a bit. I was in NJ and changes to corporate travel policies made it such that lower level managers weren't involved in the monthly program reviews in Atlanta, Maryland, and NJ any longer. I don't know that I want to travel to meetings all the time, but I do feel rather removed, especially since this past December when I was moved to another building. I do want a change, though, and the opportunity to advance once again. We'll see.

What more can I say? I've got off tomorrow and I'm very happy about it even after only 2 days of work after a week of "Vacation."

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My workday is wrapping up soon and I've got a few minutes to "play" before going home. I noticed that the stock market is up today. Apparently, oil prices have fallen and tensions between Iran and the UK are easing. I haven't heard or read any news today, but that little bit I did gather from some blogs I read. However, UPS stock continues to lose money, down 9 more cents as I write this. It was up earlier, along with our rival Fedex, but here we are heading down and Fedex is up dramatically. I have no clue what drives the markets.

It sure was hard to get up today and head to work. I wasn't sleepy when I went to bed at 10:30 last night, but managed to fall asleep pretty quickly anyway. Unfortunately, I was awake many times throughout the night and at 4:00 EDT, when the alarm sounded to get me out of bed, I was ready for a good night's sleep. A few days before, that would have been 1:00 am for me, a little later than I went to bed each night in Seattle, but certainly long before I got out of bed. I didn't do too badly getting ready for work and even for the first part of the day, but I was exhausted by the time noon rolled around. I was pretty busy most of the morning and a little slower in the afternoon, so I'm sure that was a contributing factor. I'm heading to bed soon and hope for a full night of sleep tonight!

Yesterday I was in the Paramus building for a 2 PM get together. It was Bob G's last day and his manager had organized a little party for him. Bob had 13 years at UPS and decided at the last minute that he would take the offered buyout and then try his hand at something else. Bob worked for me a number of times over the years. He was challenging to manage at times, but Bob was always a good friend. Along with Pete, whose party was last week, that's two people who worked for me that took the buy-out. The landscape is changing.

I'm beat. Work was insane today. I'll try to write more tomorrow. Otherwise, all is okay.

I've been in the Ramsey building for a week now. I moved in last Friday afternoon. It is now Friday morning, so a week has gone by. The commute is better.  I've taken a few different routes so far and have a few more to check out. The morning drive is about 10 minutes less and the evening drive can be as much as 20 minutes or so less. Parking is pretty good. I haven't yet availed myself of one of the coveted spaces under the building, but I'm in early enough each morning to get a spot there if I want. I might do that next week, though that means walking around the building to enter using the code to unlock the door or entering through the courtyard using the strange lock jimmying method that is apparently used by all of the rest of the early arriving people. I like my cubicle, but I'm not thrilled with my desk. The corner piece where the  PC sits is not lowered to optimal keyboard level and is fastened in such a way that it slopes down and to the right rear ever so slightly. I originally thought that I was imagining things, but closer inspection revealed the slope. The building is pretty nice overall, but the floor is a little springy, so heavy walkers can cause a disconcerting bounce as they walk around. My new chair is excellent. I really haven't had any back issues this week, so the chair I had in Paramus must have been pretty bad. Today my boss is taking the day off, so it's a quiet day here.  If all of our systems can stay up and running, it should remain quiet. There have been a few too many incidents to log this week for my liking. I could use a quiet day.