Grumpy Coworker

Author: Grumpy100

  • Features in Microsoft Outlook that would do some *good*.

    (Outlook client and Exchange server are lumped together here.)

    “Reply to all” goggles.

    Test Mail Goggles
    Test Mail Goggles (Photo credit: tchuntfr)

    GMail once offered “mail googles” in Google Labs that would require you to solve 5 basic arithmetic problems in a certain amount of time in order to send a late night email. You were able to preset the difficulty and hours that it was active.

    In an Outlook version, the mail server administrator could set the difficulty and type of problems required and possibility a minimum threshold of participants before it was required, so that a team of 3 people could “Reply to All”, but someone couldn’t reply to everyone on an email about health benefits with a question about their preexisting condition without at least jumping through a few hoops first.

    Automatic large image converter and scaler.

    Does Outlook still by default embed images from Windows as .bmp files? Being able to email screenshots is nice, but 1024×768 bitmaps will quickly eat up a stingy mail quota. The more tech-savvy users can quickly figure out how to emails as a web page and images as a lighter weight image format, but the users sending you screenshots of something that “isn’t working” aren’t as likely to be Outlook power users.

    Split large attachments in Calendar invites into a separate mail message.

    How often do you receive party or big event invitations that have an embedded 8.5″x11″ bitmap file that was exported from a PowerPoint slide in which the invitation was drawn? Isn’t it lovely that *everyone’s calendars* by default have that 3+ MB file in their Calendar, and when you look in Outlook folders for the messages that are eating up your [ridiculously small] mail quota, you can’t find them because they’re in your calendar?

    At the expense of adding duplicate emails to my inbox, I’d rather have the message with attachment split off as a separate email that I could send immediately to my trash than a Calendar invite that I have to modify to save space.

    Out-of-office replies only to original sender on an email chain

    Out-of-office replies only get sent one time to a sender, but nothing is more annoying than having to reply-to-all on an email chain, only to get blasted by “out-of-office” replies.

    “Unsubscribe” for email chains.

    Imagine that someone included you on a email about a topic because they thought you were a stakeholder, or maybe that people are replying to all on an email list that has wide distribution and are committing all sorts of faux pas as part of their replies. Wouldn’t it be nice to just be able to reply with “unsubscribe” like you could do with listserv and magically have the email replies stop appearing in your inbox?

    “Me too” for email chains.

    Seems like 80% of an email chain’s replies are saying the exact same thing that someone else said two replies ago. Wouldn’t it be nice if Outlook could figure out that those were “me too” replies and tally them up for the original sender like the poll functionality can do and leave everyone else’s email clean?

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  • Here’s an Email to Justify My Existence…

    “Stay tuned for another email on this topic!”

    Nuvola-like mail internet
    Nuvola-like mail internet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    Do you ever find yourself thinking, “Gee, I don’t get enough email these days.” Me neither. Yet, it seems as though any time someone wants you to pay attention to something that they’re doing, they send out not only emails telling you about it, but also emails notifying you about upcoming emails.

    I tune into TV series if I want additional suspense in my life. How many of those do I actually watch? Approximately zero, unless I’m coerced by someone else into watching them.

    Regardless, I don’t want extra emails in my inbox, especially if they’re emails notifying me of upcoming emails. At some point, you’re going to make me train my spam filter to throw away all emails. Oops. Too late.

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  • Requirements Confusion, the Last Refuge of a Developer Slacker

    Imagine that you, as a developer, are at some stage of the project cycle in a large corporation in which you find yourself not “on time” with your planned “project deliverables.”

    You find yourself in a project meeting, and everyone is giving their updates. Then, just like a freak snowstorm for a kid who didn’t study for a big test at school, key project stakeholders get into a heated discussion about a key project requirement.

    All of a sudden, you are now able to justify, if only to yourself, that your inability to get to project milestones downstream from this contentious requirement was actually a saving grace of the project. You didn’t burn yourself out on a piece of the puzzle that was going to ultimately be made useless. YOU CAN GO OUT AND PLAY IN THE SNOW BECAUSE SCHOOL IS CANCELED!

    But wait…  You still have that test you didn’t study for, or back in the real world, new project requirements that are to be made downstream from the updated requirements being discussed, and the ultimate release date still won’t budge.

    Congratulations. You’ll now have to work 80 hours/week to make up for the major requirements shift. At least you didn’t waste any effort on the original requirements, right?

     

  • Time Bullshitting

    Are you in charge of budgeting and/or balance sheet management?

    Has the thought ever occurred to you, that if your knowledge workers just tracked the time they spent on projects, you could capitalize projects and get a better feel for return on investment?

    Well, stop.

    The primary things that disrupt my “working” activities are anything related to entering my time on a timesheet.

    I bitch about the time spent entering my time.

    I bitch about the 100 project codes I have to choose from. I doubt you have any clue how any of these projects remotely affect the bottom line.

    I bitch about the fact that I have to find a 5 year old Windows machine with only IE 6/Flash/etc. installed on it because Gates forbid you ever purchase a solution that runs on a modern machine, doesn’t look like malware, and wasn’t written by the dropout nephews of a bunch of CEOs.

    I bitch about the subclassification of every one of these project codes. How can you figure out what the “work type” means when we’ve established that you don’t know how the project itself hurt…  I mean helps the company’s bottom line. What’s the “work type” for “that website that I need for my work is blocked because our web filtering software classifies it as a ‘personal blog’”?

    Ultimately, I bitch about the fact that there’s no relation between what I actually do for a job, how much time I spent doing it and what I enter on the timesheet.

  • I Hope Our Business Doesn’t Rely on You Supporting the Customer

    On technical forums, this attitude often exposes itself:

    Someone else might have an easy answer, yet what leaps out at me, when I read this, is that we have no code. Nor do we have a way to ensure you are, indeed, sending the correct auth data to the Web Server. As you might imagine, this makes it difficult to help you debug.

    Can you write and run a simple “test case”, just enough code to test out the NTLM auth bits? If that breaks, feel free to edit your post with the code, removing the actual login and password info, of course.

    How’s that sound?

    —-Asim, known to some as Woodrow.

    Thanks for the help…  Honestly, it took this person a lot of effort to say, in a sarcastic/belittling tone, “We need more information (or we need a, b, and c) to help you.”

    Maybe these two people know each other, and therefore, the jab is of a friendly nature. However, 5 years later, the reply is still available for all to see.

    I really hope that no one’s business depends on this person interacting with the customer. Maybe this person’s usual tone in dealing with support is better, but if practice makes perfect, this person will quickly become skilled in dragging down your business relationships.

    We get it: You’re a genius, and no one has the skills you do. Wouldn’t life be a little more tolerable for you if you’d teach people to be a little more competent instead of scaring them away from learning with your attitude.

     

  • If Not Talking on the Phone While Using the Restroom Impacts Your Performance

    …you need either considerably more or considerably less fiber in your diet.

    I can only imagine the horror of the person on the other end of the line as you’re working through a problem and an automatic power flusher goes off.

    Worse yet, imagine this being a conference call that someone has on speakerphone. Half of the office will experience the joy of every restroom sound.

    I may just have to intentionally set off the power flusher a few times while I’m the stall next time.

  • Embrace Your Inner Lackey

    Have you been given a crappy assignment?

    Is your job your field’s equivalent of disassembling the drainage pipes in the building and cleaning them?  Is it beneath your skill set?

    Pride goeth before the fall.

    News flash: No one’s hiring people with PhDs in operating an abacus anymore. The same may go for your skill set, too.

    The key thing to remember about crappy assignments is that very few people embrace them well enough to get good at them.  Yes, it’s true that if you get really good at a job that nobody else wants, you might be assigned to that job for a very long time. Unfortunately, if you do a mediocre or bad job at it, you may not have any job for very long.

    Maybe you’ve been assigned this crappy job because people believe that you can turn things around. Do you want to prove people who believe in you wrong?

    Maybe you’ve been assigned this crappy job because people expect you to fail. Do you want to prove those people right?

    Embrace your inner lackey.

    Find the angle that you can own and attack it.

  • The “I don’t want to risk taking action” Blockade

    Iceberg floating in Lago Argentina broken off ...
    Image via Wikipedia

    Apparently, conventional wisdom has decided that if you don’t take action, you can’t be blamed for anything:

    Sure, you’re about to hit an iceberg. However, if you try to steer the ship, and it ruptures, you’ll be at fault. If you hit the iceberg head on and your ship withstands the hit, you’ll have warded off disaster. If your ship starts going down, well, you can possibly pretend you were unaware of the problem. If you take action, you have to acknowledge the problem.

    Why must departmental silos treat problems like toothaches: Because there’s a fear of going to the dentist, everyone waits until the tooth abscesses and a trip to the emergency room and an emergency extraction is needed. A little infection or cavity turned into a week-long course of top-tier antibiotics and a missing tooth.

    Maybe everyone’s hoping they’ll be laid off before having to take responsibility for a problem.  After all, being laid off assumes far less personal responsibility than possibly failing when attempting a fix.

    Let’s all be powerless.

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  • Automate Blatantly Repetitive Bureaucratic Tasks

    AutoHotkey Logo png version
    Image via Wikipedia

    (No, this isn’t a paid advertisement, unless they decide to pay after the fact.)

    Ever have one of those tasks on your computer that you feel like you could get a robot to do? I found that AutoHotkey works well for this purpose.

    You can record tasks in specific windows that you have open and have them repeat the next time you need them.  Recording tracks mouse clicks and keyboard presses and records them to a readable script file.  You can then edit the generated script and add delays.

    This sometimes proves useful when you have to set up detailed time sheets through a slow interface.  You can record what you need, press the button, and let things go.

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  • How to Make Coffee

    Obviously, automatic coffee makers with hot water supply are too challenging, so here is a step-by-step guide:

    1) Pull filter basket out
    2) Put a new coffee filter in the basket.
    3) Open coffee packet.
    4) Pour coffee in basket.
    5) Put filter basket back in place.
    6) Rinse out near empty carafe.
    7) Put carafe back.
    8) Hit green/start/brew/on button.