"By the way...job!"

Stick with me on this one, there's a morale.

After the Christmas holiday the stock market takes some time off, shuts down, slows trading.

Unfortunately, I don't get the same time off, but at least there are a couple of slow days that give a leg up on recuperating from the holiday hangover, and, of course, fixing any outstanding issues on the funds.

For you non-finance types: This isn't new. The holiday slow-down is an expected part winter. If you work in finance, the days after Christmas are as good as vacation days; you take it easy, fix some things, take your time.

Which brings me to the email we received from my block-hammer-head manager Dec. 26th:

Subject: Trade activities

Hi All,

Hope every one had a happy holiday. Looks like a very light day today. Let's use this time to clear custody, position and pricing breaks. Please book all your trades then work on breaks.

Thanks,

It's a slow day? Book trades, work on breaks? No kidding. Why not just send an email that says "Hey, friendly reminder, please do those things that you're supposed to do every day." or "Hey, by the way, you should keep doing those things you do, and that we pay you to do, normally."

Or, send these emails the two following days:

Subject: Trade activities

Hi All,

Today is another slow day for us. Please have all your trades booked as early as possible so we can work on breaks. We have a lot of cleaning up to do. If you don't know what needs to be done, please let me or Scott know.

Thanks,


Subject: Re: Trade activities

Hi All,

Today looks to be another slow day for us ( with we can really us to clean up our breaks and other outstanding items ). Let get all of our trades booked in the next hour. Currently a total of 60 trades has been booked. Again, please let me or Scott know if you are not sure on what to work on.

Thanks,

I tend to get a little upset at this type of email. We, the employed, should not need reminders to do what we're being employed to do; and if we do need reminders, or prompting, then clearly management is doing a poor job training/motivating/instructing and should, at the very least, identify specific problem elements (procedures, people, outside distractions (hello, internet)) and take directed action to fix the problem.

But, in the guise of a friendly email, which could probably be reduced to

"Job!"

this motivational tactic certainly doesn't spur me to increased productivity, but does, in fact, the opposite, promptin zero productivity while I stew and post to my blog.

Hilarious, right? Getting an email from your boss that says job, exclamation point. A real side-splitter.

Though, after a week away, it might be nice to get an email from a guy on another team like this:

Subject:Hurry up and come back!!!!!

You can never go on vacation again! God, that was the absolute most painful week of my life!

-Chris

I guess it's nice to be appreciated.