[blhack]

Lunch is also a really important part of my job. I run the IT department for a fairly small company (~200 employees).

Going to lunch with people affords me the opportunity to hear them complain about their job. Sometimes, although they might not realize, their complaints are things that I can fix for them. They're my best source of ideas for projects.

"GUH! I keep asking $so_and_so for new $office_supply, but I guess we're out of it, WTF!?"

Hmm...maybe we need an inventory tracking system for the office supplies?

"$so_and_so is gone today, and she is the only one with the $excel_spreadsheet on her computer. It sucks because I can't get ahold of her and I need $excel_spreadsheet!"

Well how can we solve this? Why aren't they using the file server for this stuff?

And so on.

[rodh257]

While the ideas for projects is a good one, do you ever get sick of hearing peoples complaints in social situations? Nothing is more annoying than when you are having a few Friday beers and all people want to do is tell you how crap their computer is expecting you to promise them a new one by Monday.

[ora600]

Oh, that was my favorite thing about working at HP. The conversations!

"Where do you work?"

"HP"

"Oh, I have a problem with my printer/laptop"

"Actually, I work on superdome specific optimizations for the HPUX compiler."

"So why does printer ink cost so much?"

....

[vacri]

heh, 200 = 'small' :)