Category Archives: Angst

Verbal Beatings by “Professionals”

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One of my pet peeves is the use of the word “Professional”.  It is the ultimate lever. Or, at least the ultimate big stick. Any given cube-kibbitzer can say “Well, that just doesn’t look professional” and their flatulent comment will somehow be imbued with a kind of transcendent credibility. Other cube-sitters will piously nod their heads in agreement- “We’re concerned that the chair just doesn’t look professional”.

Management or HR can proclaim that your attitude, presentation, or apparel isn’t “professional”. The word professional is a kind of wild card, a Joker in a stack of social cards that can mean anything you want it to mean.  It is a kind of peer pressure of the sort that the cool students in high school used to decide who was cool and who wasn’t.  It is an upgraded “ugly stick”.

What is amazing is the extent to which it works. It is like a phaser set to stun. It stops people in their tracks. This is why I keep saying that business is part of anthropology.

Creeping Featurism: Too much Software

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My big problem in life, other than being age 50 on a runaway train with the Grim Reaper, is a plurality of software.  It crept up on me while I was standing there, slack-jawed and admiring of all of the pretty colors and pull-down menu’s that were a mouse click away. What a wonderous stack of riches, says I.

In any given week, I can find myself at the console of a Bruker 300 MHz NMR, an HP GCMS, an older HP GC with stand alone integrator, a TA Instruments TGA, a Cecil UV/Vis, A Perkin Elmer FTIR, two GOD**MNED cell phones, an office voicemail system, the business MRP accounting system (&$^#!#!@!), office laptop with many applications in Word, Excel, Access, Contact, GoldMine, ChemDraw, SciFinder, a telescope driven by The Sky, numerous platforms on the internet, two home computers, two cars, and, oh yes, a family. And don’t forget my cruel mistress- Chemistry.

It all adds up to a bit too much. I use perhaps the top 5-10 % at most of nearly every software on the list.  The standardization imposed by Microsoft Windows does help with basic navigation, but the data workup and all of the particulars put me into an eternal state of “technological Alzheimers”. I keep asking “Now, how did that work again”?

Then there is the password issue.  All of the computers I work on have some level of security, and so passwords are required to get in. Blessedly, being a networked system, my network password usually works. But passwords expire and it is a constant battle to remember all of them. But if you log onto the Aldrich catalog, or any number of other on-line systems, entry requires a password.

Each of these computerized marvels is layered like an onion with hierarchies and taxonomies unique to the miserable cluster of sods who wrote the code. These sadistic canker blossoms … whoa! I’m getting carried away here. Easy does it, skippy.

Then there are the rules- business SOP’s, IATA, DOT regs, Customs issues, TSCA, policies, lab safety, Hazmat storage, respirator training, new Homeland Security regs, flash points, HMIS numbers, Haz Waste issues. 

This week I did bench chemistry, wrote an MSDS, issued and received inventory in the accounting system, defined SKU‘s, ran a few TGA‘s and FTIR’s, defined some product specifications, did competitive intelligence and worked out some costing and pricing, sent out some quotes, sat in mind-numbing meetings, took two long days to write a report, noodled through some patents, sent some products out the door that I made with my own hands, and received a few new orders.

It was a productive week in fabulous industry. They don’t call it industry for nuthin’.

Lost Comments

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Sorry to a couple of commenters whose cogent additions to the blog were lost. Their comments were somehow trapped in the spam gill net and then plinked into the 12th dimension. When the God Akismet is angry, even Th’ Gausslings superior left clicking skills begin to fail.

Feral Chemists. Gaussling’s 4th Epistle to the Bohemians.

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Like the house cat that returns to the wild state when it leaves the house, chemists can go feral when they get out into the world.  The process begins the morning after graduation from college.  No exams to study for, no lab writeups to hand in. Being enrolled in coursework has a kind of edifying effect; a kind of regimentation that keeps one true to the discipline.

Human behaviour resembles a gas in some ways- we expand to occupy the space available to us. If bench space is available, we’ll find something to put on it. If condensers are in abundance, we’ll find a way to hook them up to something. If other distractions are available, our consciousness will expand into that space.

Some chemists quit learning after graduation.  They lose their gusto for the subject.  They acquired their bag of tricks in grad school and are quite content to stick with those tools for the duration of their careers. They become an intellectual couch potato- a 9 to 5 technocrat. Some companies are unaware of the value of professional interaction and refresher coursework.  Other companies just do not care.

A wise chemist once told me that the worst thing you could do in your career was to be a chemist in a company where chemistry was not the main activity. He was an IBM chemist and he spoke from bitter experience.

One of the most valuable assets of a scientist is curiosity and keeping it well honed is crucial.  Industry can bleed you of all of your professional enthusiasm if you let it.  Or, it can tempt you to go to the dark side- the business end.  Industry can exhaust you with endless administrative requirements and supervisory duties.  Insane deadlines and fickle management can bind you to seemingly impossible projects like a modern Sisyphus.  You’ll wear leg irons bearing the letters SAP, and speak in tongues- TSCA, MSDS, ROI, and CYA.

Through the years, unopened journals stack up on the floor. You can’t remember what an ACS meeting was like.  The paper in your college textbooks begins to yellow, and you become aware of your prostate. 

But the feral chemist has to resist. You have to rage against the stupifying isolation and indifference. It is important to periodically experience that rush of adrenaline that you get when some new concept opens before your eyes.  Open a journal and don’t set it down until you learn something new!

On Getting Screwed. Gausslings 3rd Epistle to the Bohemians.

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At some point in you career, you’re going to get screwed. Either by an organization, a person, a cabal, or some dark force. It’s going to happen so you should give some thought as to how you’ll behave.  But what do I mean by “getting screwed”?

Getting screwed means that you’re career has taken some kind of a hit as the result of an aggressive or destructive act. Your reputation has been besmurched or soiled in a way to cause harm, or some damage has come to your credibility as the result of the posturing of another player.  Screwings as a result of your own stupid behaviour are self-imposed and are not addressed here.

To use the naval metaphor, a hit can happen above or below the waterline.  A hit above the waterline may be survivable, but one below the waterline means that you’re gonna sink. No matter what, you’re going to take some hits. The goal is to minimize the hits below the waterline.

When I was teaching, my rule of thumb was that about 10 % of the class will hate your guts no matter what, about 10 % will love you no matter what, and the 80 % in the middle were undecided. Turns out this may be generally true in polite society.  Call it the 10:80:10 Rule.  (Minimally, it is a comfortable illusion that I cling to… )

Nobody is universally loved; not Lassie, the Virgin Mary, or even Col. Sanders. In fact, the goal really shouldn’t be to find universal love and adoration. The goal should be to earn as much respect as you can.  It is possible for people to dislike you, but simultaneously respect you. That is probably as much as you can expect. Pay special attention to people who dislike you. You may learn something important about youself.

Whoever said “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” was a true seer and this should always be considered, distasteful as it may be.

Office politics are ubiquitous and you should learn to master it.  Put two people in a room and you have politics. There will always be competing interests and ego. Always. Pretending to be apolitical is just another form of politics- the politics of victimhood.  Your political stance should always include- BE HONEST, GENEROUS, and FAIR. This is a type of politics- don’t be shy in using it.

Always be honest. It is too hard to remember all of the intertwining lies and subterfuge.  Always seek the best for the company and your colleagues. Be fair and generous with credit for contributions to a project.  The politics of earnestness is hard to beat. Remember, you cannot fall off the floor.

If your career is being sabotaged, address it in a straighforward and open manner. To respond in kind is to abandon all hope of fair treatment later. It is always better to be guilty of being honest.

If you find yourself working with insufferable SOB’s who participate in fatal office politics, still, try to be fair and upbeat. It is better to have lost a position and be given the chance to move on than to sink to petty and crude behaviour.

Listening skills of the highly educated

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Like everyone else, Th’ Gaussling has been sailing through life, tacking to windward usually, but occasionally a breeze astern will fill my sails and I can unfurl the spinnaker and just enjoy the ride.  You know the sensation, one blunders forward smoothly in life only to run aground on an uncharted sand bar.   <<< end metaphor>>>

I was met with one of those sandbars recently when my spouse pointed out an observation she had made.  She observed that, in conversation, 

the more highly educated a person was, the more likely they were to spend their listening time formulating their next sentence, rather than actually … listening. 

Jeepers. It is hard to refute that one.  After she made the remark, I knew instantly that it was not just a random comment.  There I was.  Exposed.  Metaphysically naked. 

What I, Th’ Gaussling, find is that as time goes on, I tend to give answers to questions that I wish were asked, rather than those that were actually asked.  It is a poor habit, I’ll admit. But it stems from the notion that the best questions give the best answers.  If someone isn’t going to ask the best questions, then by George, I’ll give answers to the better questions.

Russia Goes Deep

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Our Russian friends have apparently “claimed” the seabed under the north pole by planting their specially crafted Deep Sea Flag.  (Is it still a flag when it is underwater or is it just a stick with a wet cloth on it?)  In the grand tradition of empirialist land grabbing, these folks believe that they have staked a claim to the vast untold, untapped mineral riches of the arctic floor. Of course, the Canucks were not impressed-

Peter Mackay, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, dismissed the voyage to the Arctic floor as “just a show.”

“Look, this isn’t the 15th century,” he said, according to the Web site of Canadian Television. “You can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say ‘We’re claiming this territory.'” 

According to Douglas Birch at Forbes magazine, the flag was planted in the sea floor 2 1/2 miles below the surface on what is called the Arctic Shelf.  [Th’ Gaussling didn’t realize that a shelf could be that deep. Sounds like an abyssal plain to me, but, hey… I’m not in real estate.]  The basis of the claim, Birch reports, is that the region is a part of the Eurasian continental shelf.  Russia’s public claim seems to be based on a kind of geographic tidiness.  But like all big issues today, it is really about resources.

In December 2001, Moscow claimed that the ridge was an extension of the Eurasian continent, and therefore part of Russia’s continental shelf under international law. The U.N. rejected Moscow’s claim, citing a lack of evidence, but Russia is set to resubmit it in 2009. 

The good news is that there won’t be any aboriginals to cruelly displace.  Seems to me that the Palestinians missed another big opportunity here- their sub must have been in the shop.  I would offer the suggestion that they give Putin an office on site there so he can keep an eye on the place.

National Aphorism Day

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Below are a few quotations that patch together is a particular way.  

Here is a great quote lifted from the internet. With any luck it is accurate-

 “They lied to you. The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came.” (Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose)

Here is another good one-

“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.” (Napoleon Bonaparte)

And then there is this-

“Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of shoes and he’ll come up with something that looks like the boxes that the shoes came in; ask him to make something that will massacre Germans, and he turns into Thomas F–king Edison.” (Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon)

Neal Stephenson’s book, Cryptonomicon, is quite good though ponderously large.