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A Quest for Quality – Not an Obsession |
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I recently had a phone interview and the interviewer said, "Well, to be honest, this is not a forty-hour week; it's fifty." For me, this was an immediate turn off and the first of several "signs" during our conversation that this job/environment was not for me (at least not at this time). I enjoy my free time and don't want to go into a position where the norm is fifty-hours a week. I certainly don't mind putting in extra hours as needed. But I don't won't to enter a job where they say upfront that it's a fifty-hour week. A couple of days later, a woman on my vanpool was talking about her boss. (She's a proposal writer.) Part of her comments had to do with all the overtime she puts in and the little, if any, compensation that she gets in return. Leaving early or going to a doctor appointment are allowed grudgingly. He commented to her, "well, forty-hour work weeks are a thing of the past." Is this true? Do many of you experience over forty-plus hour workweeks as a norm? I've only been at my current job for a few months, but I have rarely had to do any work from home. If I did, it was only because I wanted to get ahead on a project. A forty-hour week provides plenty of time and that seems the same with my coworkers. In my previous job, we would have light periods and crunch periods. The light periods usually came at the start of a project and the crunch periods came at the end, when we were preparing for the release of the product. During the crunch time, longer days or weekends were not unusual, but it balanced with the light periods. During the phone interview, the interviewer also said, "We produce really quality documentation. Jane (a former coworker of mine while at another company) was surprised at the high-quality documentation we deliver." OK. Well, to me, I thought the documentation that came from the company where Jane and I used to work was quality, too. As I mentioned this phone interview to several friends, I found that all but one of them agreed with my perception of this perspective employer. One person commented that they worked her friend to death. "Her husband would pick her up for dinner, where she would usually be in tears (from work stress, not the husband or the dinner), then take her back to work." This particular company did not have a lot of products and it sounded as if they had enough writer's to each have their own product. However, this company used a "collective" writing method where you worked on whatever project needed work. Thus, your time was always allocated. Not that it shouldn't be, but can someone really perform when working non-stop through fifty-hour workweeks? In putting these various comments (fifty-hour work week, "they worked her to death," "really quality documentation") together, I wondered if the quest for quality had gotten out of hand. Had quality become an obsession that lead to stressed workers who were "working to live" but "living at work"? I have always prided myself on high standards for the work I produce. I don't care what comments a person might have about me, but if their comments are on my work then I want justification on those comments. Being in the technical writing field for many years, I've also learned that you can work and work and review and review a document only to find a glaring error (at least to you) when it comes out. When I first handled layout/production on an STC chapter newsletter, I learned this lesson the hard way. One December I opened the newsletter only to find that the month was listed as November. I wanted to crawl under a rock. I was horrified. However, if anybody noticed, they kept it to themselves. Crisis averted. In producing communication items, we should strive for quality while meeting our deadlines and time constraints. One should not out way the other. Content should prevail over aesthetics. I'm certainly not advocating misspelled and typo-ridden documentation. Those items should be handled with the aid of spell checkers and an editor or peer reviewers. However, let's not let a quest for quality rid us of personal downtime. Recent events in the world should show that lives can change in an instant. Do we want our extra time to be perfecting a document that already provides quality information for the user? After all, it's documentation, not life or death. And from what we hear (at least from development) "nobody reads the doc" anyway. Certainly, not words to follow (or to be believed). Let's just keep our focus on a quest for quality, not an obsession. |
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About the Author: Jeff Staples STC Senior Member, Houston Chapter |