My boss Dick Lumbergh is five years older than me, makes twice my salary and should probably not be allowed to use an electric toaster, much less be in charge of a technology department for a mid-sized company.

Yes, it looks like a dunce cap for a reason.

You see, Dick likes to change his Instant Messenger icon. Not once a month. Not once a week. No, Dick changes his IM icon every…single…day.

At first I think I’m going crazy. Every time I chat with him it seems as though I’m asked if I want to download his new icon. But that doesn’t make any sense. My boss is in charge of millions of dollars in computer equipment, a staff of programmers and support people and attaches more electronic gizmos to his belt than Batman.

This morning curiosity gets the better of me. The moment he turns on his PC I send him a quick IM…

“Dick, did you get that email I sent you yesterday confirming that you received that phone message I forwarded to you?”

“Yes, I think so,” he types.

“Thanks!”

And the trap is set. Instead of closing my IM window, I leave it open and sit back to watch the show. Sure enough, a moment later I’m asked if I want to download his icon and I, of course, answer “yes.”

It’s a white guitar this morning. I sip some coffee and twirl around in my chair. One spin later my PC is again asking me if I want to download his icon again.

I click “yes” again and wait. If he has the free time to change his icon repeatedly, then I can certainly find the time to download it.

Now it’s a red electric guitar.

I go to work on paperclip animal to add to the little aluminum zoo on my desk, but I barely have time to make a shiny metal snake before I’m asked about the next icon.

He picks a baseball with a New York Mets logo. I toss an eraser over my cube wall and hear an “Ow…”

I have another sip of coffee and we’re back to musical instruments.

This time it’s a blue sparkly electric guitar. I am obviously watching a genius at work. I fiddle with the color on my monitor.

He chooses a Dilbert head. I start bending the paperclip snake into something with legs.

We’re on the same wavelength. He chooses an icon of a frog. I clean out my mouse.

Finally he seems to settle on a white guitar icon which I’m sure I’ve seen before. I check the clock and notice that I’ve been watching him bounce through icons for nearly ten minutes. I pull up the calculator and figure he just got paid a little over $4.00 to to do that and I just got paid a little under $2.00 to watch it.

The conclusion of my experiment: my boss not only has the time to fiddle with his Instant Messenger icon for ten minutes every day, but he also is so technically inept that he has to apply each icon and look at his own little window before deciding if he likes it or not.

Secondary conclusion: my boss is really into musical instruments, especially electric guitars, and hopeless baseball teams.

That’s good, I suppose. Someone who works as hard as he does needs a hobby.

And it’s probably safer than playing with the toaster.

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Now that I’m a manager I’m seeing more “things” going on in my company that I never knew about before. I see the pains they take to do things the right way by layering on bureaucratic procedure after bureaucratic procedure in an attempt to do things the right way. I see how they work to make sure everyone is treated fairly to the point where skill and talent no longer matter because they’re so afraid of being unfair that they refuse to recognize that some workers are actually *gasp* better than others. I see some of the complex issues in decision making that go on in the boardrooms and back halls and I’m starting to get a great appreciation for some of the subtleties of office politics I hadn’t been aware of before.

I am also much more aware of some of the “not quite kosher” things my company does now. I’ve found some legitimate “problems” with some of our processes and expressed that concern to my own managers. I’ve gotten a lot of head nodding and “Yes, we’ll have to look into that…” but seen little real action.

Don’t get me wrong: I think most companies probably take some liberties with the thousands of legal rules and laws established for running every aspect of a large company. I don’t think my company, or most companies, set out to break the letter of the law intentionally. Rather, the laws in question are often open to interpretation, purposely vague, or simply too complex and onerous for any one person or department in a company to fully understand or follow.

I take comfort in the fact that the “issues” I’ve discovered are relatively small. No one is getting hurt, no one is dying and very little real “harm” is being done to anyone due to these small indiscretions that my company is engaging in.

I really like my job and I really think my employer provides a good product. I promote them in my personal life whenever I can. But seeing these little blemishes on my company has slightly change my perspective. I now realize that an organization can continue to work for the greater good while sometimes making small errors along the way. All in all, these infractions are minor.

But, man, they annoy the heck out of me.

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