“Manic Depression” and 16 Plans
DOOM, badum badum DOOM, badum badum “Manic depression is a frustrating mess.”
So says Jimi, booming through the massive Charger woofers. The song is her daily morning mantra, blasted on the drive in to the agency.
Pulling into the parking garage, she sweeps into her front parking spot. The crouching car proves that every day she is consistently first in and last out, with no lunch run in between.
Today is Thursday. A long, manic depression-ish kind of day to be sure, given the obligatory cycle of weekly project plan updates. This ensured “success” for the Friday morning staffing meeting. If you didn’t have your staffing needs in your plans, you didn’t get staff. And if you didn’t get staff, well — maybe someone would notice and even fire you after a few weeks.
But here was the rub. Even if you had your needs in, your staff would quite often not get the work done during the subsequent week.
Thus, a sickly cycle emerged for this business: a company culture that revolved around prodding for progress. Without individual autonomy and accountability to deliver, no amount of time spent nudging was ever enough. Even an army of “Paid Worriers” (aka Project Managers) could not supply enough momentum during the week to break through the sludgy bog.
By Thursday there were so many backlogged project plans to update, the Worriers spent more time updating plans to push out dates than actually working on the projects to keep them moving forward per the original dates.
Today, the entire day flies by, gobbled by communications with staff on what was done and what work remained. By 7pm, nary a project plan was yet updated.
So it begins as the sun sets: a thuddish cadence of updating plan after plan — 16 in total — mirroring the roiling thump of “Manic Depression” itself. Tedious at best, maddening at worst.
The company’s online system fostered sluggish progress through the task. Click-click-clicking through buggy Waterfall project plans offered no room to employ Agile software development methodologies. The sad reality?: Agile may not have helped at this place.
By 9:30pm her work-addicted buddy still huddles in his cube. With plans all ready for the next morning, she exits a dark hallway into the muggy evening air. Back in the parking garage, only their 2 cars remain. She scans the shadows under her crouched beast, and then in its backseat, as her Chicagoland mother taught her.
As Beast roars to life, she knows she learned nothing from her devastating personal loss years prior. If anything, she is more like her colleague than ever: a work-addict herself in a way.
So what is left tonight, besides a hasty fast food meal and crashing into sleep?
Crank it up of course. She still had that “music, sweet music”…
This time a haunted harmonica echo screeches through the night air, foreshadowing the moment the levee will break, as a lone mosquito floats in through the car window. A moment later, gas surges and peels the beast out of the garage. A fitting outro narrates the drive home:
“If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
When the levee breaks, I’ll have no place to stay…”
She thinks, Well mama, maybe I’ve got to move.
Please “like” if you did on social media (@DigitalDeliria), share, and post your comments.
Don’t want to miss a future story? Be sure to sign up for our mailing list.