I’ve been doing this adlark for quite a long time.
In that time I’ve seen and heard some major incidents and arguments that culminated in some of the following:
Pissing in the bosses fax machine.
Chopping a boardroom table in half with a chainsaw.
A full on fist-fight in a client meeting.
And while those are pretty extreme reactions – driven by a whole range os issues and circumstances – there has been one thing that has continuously raised the ire of every person I’ve worked with.
Can you guess what it is?
Yes, that’s right … timesheets.
I have seen grown men and women literally cry over timesheets.
CRY!
For fucks sake.
Yes, I know they’re a pain and an annoyance, but it’s hardly the most tasking of jobs is it.
Seriously, how long do they take to do?
10 seconds? 20 seconds?
It’s certainly less than the time most of us take to check out Facebook during office hours. [Except in my case, it’s classed as research]
I remember Andy once getting a “call” from the accounts department because it had come to their attention he had failed to fill in his timesheet for almost 2 years.
TWO YEARS.
I was quite proud of him when I heard that … that’s overachieving in underachieving to the extreme.
And when they told him he had to do them, he told them “if you’ve not needed it for 2 years, you don’t need them now”.
But they did and he did.
104 weeks worth … all under an ‘internal miscellaneous job’ code.
Evil genius bastard.
[N.B. He joined me in starting cynic shortly after this event, which I now know was no coincidence]
Of course the timesheet model of remuneration is inherently flawed and outdated – and many companies have found alternative ways to charge – however for many, it’s still the only method that is accepted for billing and while it’s annoying, the reaction it generates in people is far greater than it deserves.
There’s anger … real, undiluted, unfiltered anger.
You can make people work at the weekend, rob them of promotion, take away any overtime payment but order them to do their timesheet and it’s like all out war.
So here’s the question: Why?
Why do you think taking 2 minutes a day to fill a timesheet is met with such anger and distain.
It’s a serious question and one that I [think] I know the answer to, but I’d love to hear your thoughts and – if you can be arsed – your idea of what could be done to change it, without a complete revamp of the whole timesheet system.
Yes I know I asked you to give me your thoughts on yesterdays post and I’m only allowed to do this once a decade, but go on, tell me what you’d say – and recommend – if Sir Martin called you up and demanded you help him stamp out the anti timesheet uprising.
Think of it as an A[P]SOTW pre-cursor/training assignment.
Right, now it’s over to you.