This is a weird time on the job. I work in the financial services industry, which gets hammered daily by new layoffs -- jobs that have disappeared and won't be back for many years, if ever.
And yet, right now there is a labor surplus. Because of all the uncertainty, many people don't have projects to work on, or their manager has been canned and no one's setting priorities.
Usually, people take an opportunity like this to relax. Phone's ringing? There's 3 other guys who can get it. New work request? I'll take a look after a long lunch, or maybe tomorrow since I'm leaving early.
Not these days.
Everyone senses that their job is tenuous. And for the first time in many of these people's careers, there's nothing to jump to.
So, instead, when the phone rings, it gets picked up during the first half-ring. I put in a PC service request that would usually take a few days to get responded to, much less resolved, and someone called me within a half hour, and then sat at my desk for the next 3 hours to solve the problem. People are helpful and polite.
Not to say that it was a bad work environment before. Just that people were very busy, and things often took a long time to get through the sausage grinder.
Just noticing the irony that the appearance of things getting done quickly and working especially well is actually being driven by things not working well.
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