Areas of Unrest

23 July 2000 - Things I Shouldn't Have To Say

QOTD: "Sacred cows make the best burgers." - book title quoted by an Air Force officer at a meeting I was at this week

Reading: James Lee Burke, In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead

Listening to: the original cast recording of Closer Than Ever

I have once again spent a week dealing with all sorts of things that fall into the general category of "people should know better than to do that." I'm actually in a far better mood now than I was on Friday, when I was seething most of the day and muttering obscenities under my breath, but I still wanted to write this list.

1. If you are dry running a presentation and somebody asks you why you chose to include or exclude certain information, it is not a good idea to say, "I'm sorry, I hadn't considered who my audience would be."

2. Blue lettering on a green background is hard to read.

3. Where there are too many pastel colors, particularly when they blend in a rainbow manner, a unicorn is far too likely to show up soon.

4. If you and your fourteen closest friends need to have an intimate huddle, you should wait until you are somewhere other than in front of (and, therefore, blocking access to) the only escalator from the security checkpoint at Denver International Airport and the train that takes people to the concourse.

5. An on-time goal of 55% is not very encouraging. A more appropriate number would be 85-90%. That United's actual performance is under 30% is particularly appalling. I should not find myself thinking "and then a miracle happened" when my flight is on time.

6. Airlines should strive to provide accurate information about delays. If it is 3:15 and the plane has not yet left Las Vegas, the 4:00 flight from Los Angeles to Oakland cannot possibly be on time. Some of us can look at arrival boards and figure this out, so don't think you're fooling me. This applies even when you charge as little as Southwest Airlines does.

7. Modular furniture does not belong in offices. If your goal is to avoid moving furniture by putting in modular stuff, you have to make the modules identical in all offices.

8. A fourteen inch gap between my (modular) desk and the wall is unacceptable. I don't care how you fix it, but fix it.

9. If you send me email telling me to fill out a particular form to get something done, you should not then go and scream at me for having filled out that form because it wasn't the right one.

10. When we have 20 hours to get a major task done, filling 7 of those hours with meetings is not likely to help.

11. Only Bill Gates would think it makes sense for meeting announcements to come from conference rooms, instead of people. Anybody else would design the software so that your meeting acceptance went to the person asking you to attend.

12. Traffic laws apply to everyone. Even people driving SUVs.

13. Exceeding the speed of light is more important news than who got kicked off Survivor. (I saw the story in the Rocky Mountain News on Thursday and have been astonished at how little press this has gotten. It's all very preliminary, but it's the most important science news of our times if it pans out.)

14. If you are going to get annoyed at my writing about my reaction to something you said, you should be more careful about what you say.

15. If I write about what somebody said on the night they said it, my recollection is considerably more likely to be accurate than that person's recollection a year and a half later.

16. You can dislike things about an organization without it reflecting anything about the people who are involved in it. Most people are intelligent enough to recognize this and not take it personally.

17. People doing web searches should consider the source on any site they turn up. The New York Times is far more likely to be authoritative than an individual crank, for example.

18. Coming in for a half day every few days to avoid a corporate requirement to get a doctor's note for too much sick time shouldn't work. Especially not if you do it for an entire month.

19. The Van Harris routine is called "blowing out the licht," not "gimme da valise." And he hasn't told the punchline in a good 30 years since he figures anyone who cares already knows it.

20. People who can't tell jokes, shouldn't. Even my mother.

21. A hug from the right person helps. A lot.