RM update (drama level: low)

Just when I thought we were getting somewhere! But isn't it always just when I think we're getting somewhere?

He comes in; we exchange greetings. He says, "Fourteen hour days! You must think all I ever do is work."

I shrugged.

He repeated, "you must think I just spend all my time working."

I mean, first of all, I don't give much thought at all to what he does. That's really the key issue here.

The second point is, dude needs to get over himself. We all work long days sometimes. I got home from work around 8pm on Monday night (and had left around 6:30am). Also got home late last night-- Food, Inc. was a work field trip (that I organized... upon strong suggestion from the director on my last project). But who the f* cares? Sometimes I leave early, sometimes I work late. I get my work done and feel no particular need to broadcast it when I work long hours.

But whatever. I've known other people to pull look-at-my-hours stunts (you know those people--who send e-mails at odd hours just so people know they're in the office?), and I find them highly unimpressive. It's like the National Security Advisor said: if you're organized, you can get a lot done without pulling hours that necessarily render you useless. A high-level person at my agency was talking about this (in general) and her take on it was similar: if you're regularly working at midnight, you have time management issues. This is why mom's laments of having been up until 3am packing for something or another (the trip to China, for example; the trip to my house, for another) don't have what I imagine to be the desired effect: I know how disorganized she is, and I can't see why packing for anything should take that long unless you're surrounded by clutter. In the office, that can be proverbial clutter.

I (continue to) digress; I don't know much about RM's job, and I don't care. I don't respect him more or less because he works long hours sometimes, although his need to broadcast it does strike me as insecure. The issue here is his assumption, presumption that I must be thinking anything one way or another about what he does with most of his time, when I don't give it a second thought. And even as I've just spent ten minutes blogging about it, I still haven't given a second thought to how he spends his time; I just don't understand why he'd think I think about it.