Issue # 126

Another Friend Died

Another friend died. He was my friend from a job I had in the 1990's. We were both civil engineers at the same place doing the same type of work. Other than being civil engineers doing the same thing at the same place we had nothing in common.

Yet we were friends. I loved talking to him and I will miss him.

We worked at the kind of place where people did a lot of talking or at least tried to until we got into trouble.

Part of the problem was that the work was extremely boring.

There was rarely any pressure to get work done either. There was a screwed up budgeting system where we could only work on projects in certain quarters. If the work on those projects were completed before the end of the quarter, there was nothing to work on until the next quarter.

Like I said, it was a stupid system, built to bore people out of their minds instead of engaging and challenging us by working productively getting things done.

The type of projects were boring and un-glamorous too.

So there was quite a bit of chatting in the office. Much more than the upper management wanted.

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