Category: Work
-
Bureaucracy: Belgium’s greatest export
I thought that I’d left all of the bureaucracy behind when I left Belgium earlier this year, but no. It seems that not content with foisting their arcane machinations on the rest of Europe, the Belgians have now set their sights on the global stage. On July 15th, a new law will come into effect in Belgium whereby any non-residents who work in Belgium for more than five days in any calendar month are required to obtain an L-1 LIMOSA declaration. Given that there’s an extremely good chance I’ll be sent back to Belgium on a business trip at some… Read more
-
Disowning Dumbing-down
I swore I’d never do this, but I’ve been suckered into reading ‘management’ self-improvement books. Last week I saw a copy of the ubiquitous Who Moved My Cheese? on a colleague’s desk, and scoffed at the ‘wacky’ title. “Well, have you read it?” he asked. Um, no. “Well, it’s about managing change. As you’re in Change Management, maybe you should give it a go.” Never one to resist a ‘challenge’ I borrowed the book and dutifully read it. And it’s alright… It doesn’t offer any great insights or points of view (how could it in a mere 100 pages of… Read more
-
Go Texan! Go, Texan!
It could only happen here. (Here being Texas.) Today is officially ‘Go Texan Day’, an annual event where everyone in Texas is wholeheartedly encouraged to ‘be as Texan as possible’. The most immediate impact of this is that everyone is wearing cowboy outfits at work. (Well, perhaps not everyone, but at least half the men on my floor are wearing Stetsons and/or checked shirts.) Now Friday is ‘casual day’ anyway (something I’ve never seen the point in), but when one of your office buddies comes in wearing chaps, and without a hint of irony – or at least a policeman,… Read more
-
Hangin’ On The Telephone
OK, today’s pet peeve is the piped music you get when you’re put on hold on the telephone. I’m in work, it’s 2:15 AM, and we’re working a serious system issue. There are about two dozen of us, physically located everywhere from Guatemala through USA to Belgium, and several points inbetween, and all on the same conference call. Now some idiot has put the call ‘on hold’ which means that the rest of us get piped music blaring out. And because the cheapo conference call system we have here hands the ‘talking stick’ to one person at a time, and… Read more
-
Wow, I feel safer already!
Well, that’s another near-death experience narrowly avoided. Someone from PC Support just came round to my desk and started fiddling around the back of my PC. I asked him what he was doing, and he pointed out that he had been ‘disabling’ the voltage selector on the back of the PC. [For the uninitiated, most PCs these days have a voltage selector on the back that allows you to switch (with the aid of a starightened-out paperclip) between 110v (used in the U.S.) and 240v (used just about everywhere else in the World) – it means that the PC manufacturers… Read more