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    Being Thankful to Those with Thankless Jobs

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    Holiday Madness: Five Ways Managers Can Help Employees and the Business

    As we ramp down here in the U.S. for one of our most important holidays, the time when we give thanks, I think it is time for us to take a moment and give thanks to the folks who have our backs throughout the year. We are all working so hard that we often forget the people who put in the extra time to keep us operating and put in that extra little effort that makes our own jobs easier.

    The PC Tech

    Thank you for being there for us when we do stupid things like click on links from dubious sources or because we can’t resist what appears to be the latest foolish naked picture of a celebrity and get a virus instead. Thanks for not calling us idiots when we explore sites with our company equipment we have no business being on during working hours and turn our PCs into a rolling mess of viruses and malware.

    Thanks for spending hours with us trying to fix a problem we could have likely fixed ourselves if we’d just looked at the self-help files or spent a little time on the forum. Thanks for helping us move our files from an old machine to a new machine and not feeling the need to comment on the fact that we were hording stuff we would likely never need or even look at. And thanks for not picking up the phone and saying the words “What have you broken now?”

    The Network Tech

    Thanks for keeping the network up and running and for not alerting management about the number of times we’ve sent huge pictures of cute animals to way too many people inside the company. Thanks for not flagging us for watching videos of crazy Russian drivers when we are forced to work late hours because some crazy executive got a bug up their butt on a project and needed it done “yesterday.” Thanks for letting us play music to drown out the mass of voices coming out of the hell they call “cubical farms;” it keeps us  from going insane listening to our neighbors take hours speaking loudly about anything but work-related projects and who couldn’t spell the world “brief” if their lives depended on it.

    Thanks for not beating us senseless with the unauthorized hardware we have asked you to help us connect to the network or for trying to sneak in one or two unauthorized access points because we figured, “what harm could it do?”

    The CIO

    Thanks for not having us drawn and quartered for expensing Amazon Web Services when we likely could have used IT resources and figured IP and security policies didn’t apply to us. Thanks for not publicly referring us as “those idiots that run the company” when we constantly cut your budget and ask you to do more stuff like manage our mobile devices for us. Thanks for taking what has likely been a thankless job with high stress and for not going postal when we let you go after you’ve only been in the job six to eight quarters because we never gave you the support or funds you needed to do it.

    Thanks

    The Security Guard

    Thanks for not shooting us with your taser when we let people we don’t know tailgate through the door after we’ve used our card to open it. Thanks for not beating us to a pulp when we comment under our breaths about your mental health, IQ, or parentage when you’re only doing your job by making us follow policy. Thanks for not keying our cars for parking in visitor-only spots, handicapped spots (when we clearly aren’t handicapped), or taking up several spaces with our brand-new Porsche (or some other car you can’t afford).

    Wrapping Up: Where Would We Be Without Them?

    This is a good time to take a look around your company and recognize that we depend on a lot of people who work long hours in largely thankless jobs. It might be a good week to thank them because, as I’ve pointed out, many could really be total jerks if they wanted to be. This week may be a good week to remember their alternative path and be thankful they haven’t taken it.

    Rob Enderle is President and Principal Analyst of the Enderle Group, a forward-looking emerging technology advisory firm.  With over 30 years’ experience in emerging technologies, he has provided regional and global companies with guidance in how to better target customer needs; create new business opportunities; anticipate technology changes; select vendors and products; and present their products in the best possible light. Rob covers the technology industry broadly. Before founding the Enderle Group, Rob was the Senior Research Fellow for Forrester Research and the Giga Information Group, and held senior positions at IBM and ROLM. Follow Rob on Twitter @enderle, on Facebook and on Google+

    Rob Enderle
    Rob Enderle
    As President and Principal Analyst of the Enderle Group, Rob provides regional and global companies with guidance in how to create credible dialogue with the market, target customer needs, create new business opportunities, anticipate technology changes, select vendors and products, and practice zero dollar marketing. For over 20 years Rob has worked for and with companies like Microsoft, HP, IBM, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway, Sony, USAA, Texas Instruments, AMD, Intel, Credit Suisse First Boston, ROLM, and Siemens.

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