We create our own hells

The new year is the time to start fresh. You'd think....

So no one likes bureaucracy and paperwork and the crap that gets in the way of "doing the job." (Slight correction required here: there are entire departments consigned to those tasks, but they are peopled by demons, succubi and angels fallen from grace.)

Focus, Cube: No one likes it - and the new year, with its new projects and schedules and programs, is the perfect opportunity clean the slate and set things up right. Right?

Ri...

The Cube has fallen into the role of administrator the past couple of years - a non-management, "support" person with zero authority and only a few ways to help "behind the scenes" - but an admin-in-part nevertheless. This gives The Cube a cat's eye seat watching the managers recreate the same complex bureaucratic bongles that bungle their conscientiously conceived creative programs year after year.

We don't have to make every activity and sub-activity into a fully-reportable, Gantt-charted "project" --- but we do --- even though, last year, that Byzantine structure resulted in three projects getting singled out by the regulatory agencies as "improperly documented." "Improperly" because - and The Cube bears True Witness - no one can figure out Who reports What to Where.

And now here we are again today, rebuilding that same Tower of Babel-To-Be for a new year and a new project leader.

I like the Nimrod manager who is designing this Tower for his new-hire project leader, but I don't know how to talk to him. He looks at me with expectant wet eyes, like a puppy dog proud that he has peed on the newspaper as trained, unaware that it was today's edition. I want power to cut off heads.

But, thanks to this newly-created mini-hell, I will have job security for the next year "supporting" its incoherency.