Grumpy Coworker

Author: Grumpy110

  • Why Isn’t “The Process” Followed?

    “We have a ticketing process for all of these things. Anything you do needs to go through that.”

    The assumption is that, by going through a proper ticketing process, every request will be funneled through some sort of prioritizing and that that will minimize disruption.

    Imagined scenario–total support/development time, 30 minutes:

    • Person needing a change to something files a ticket.
    • Magical “prioritization” takes place.
    • Technical worker executes in perfect order from off the queue.

    Real attempt at following the process, 2 days:

    • Person needing a change contacts a random technical person.
    • Some effort to redirect or funnel through ticketing process is made.
    • Urgency communicated.
    • Another manager included on email chain, all the while missing managers who also need to be involved.
    • Random forwarding of emails to managers who also need to be involved.
    • Restart of the story from the beginning.
    • Someone else is left out of the loop.
    • .
    • .
    • .
    • Something blows up in production and things have to be reset to where they were before.
    • Crisis averted.
    • Technical person tries to remember where they left off.
    • Technical person spends time reorienting to the original task.
    • .
    • .
    • Technical person takes care of what should have been a 30 minute task in the first place.

     

  • I Didn’t Get Any Cake

    Milton Waddams in Office Space:

    Nina: Now Milton, don’t be greedy, let’s pass it along and make sure everyone gets a piece.
    Milton Waddams: Yeah, but last time I didn’t receive a piece. And I was told…
    Nina: Just pass.
    [while the cake passes Milton mutters – eventually everybody but Milton gets a piece]
    Milton Waddams: [muttering] I could set the building on fire.

    When you start getting your meetings bumped, your invitations dumped, and not receiving cake–is there any other conclusion than Milton’s underlying suspicion that he’s intentionally being choked off?

    I understand that the time of one person at a higher level is more valuable, but one wasted hour of a higher level employee can erode hours worth of productivity. Bump people sparingly. Respect their time.

  • Crash the Project Plan

    Crash Closed
    Image by Fabio.com.ar via Flickr

    Why in the world would you want to “crash” a project plan? The very use of the word “crash” seems to purvey a sense of doom.

    If you’re not familiar with the “crashing” process, it involves taking a current project plan’s Gantt chart and looking for opportunities to make the chart predict an earlier completion date.

    In some cases, this is a completely legitimate practice.  If you have tasks that can be done at the same time by two different people or tasks that are erroneously dependent upon each other, you can possibly shorten the timeline by crashing.

    However, I’ve also observed the practice of having an already promised date set for a project, and then having your project managers actually figure out how long it will actually take. When realistic expectations are inevitably longer than promised, the discrepancy will either be:

    1. Allowed to slip for the time being if comfortably close to the original promised date.
    2. Immediately scrutinized for tasks that take “too long”.  (Build a highway: 1 year…  Change that to 2 days.)

    Ultimately, there will be a process of crashing either at the start of the project or in the middle of the project. Unfortunately, response to reality taking longer than promised is often to redefine what reality should be instead of actually trying to accept reality.

    The end result becomes a crashing of the project instead of the project plan.

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  • Inbox Trolling

    A fun game to play when you have a completely unmanageable inbox is to start replying to long email threads that you were included on but never participated in. It helps if the administrators of your mail system allow messages to stick around for about 3 months–usually long enough to potentially impact a decision, but way too late to do so without tremendous cost.

    The key is to remain inconspicuous about your trolling. You must raise legitimate concerns, but not be too adamant about decisions being changed. The best policy is to plant little nagging doubts in everyone’s minds, then walk away.

    Start with the oldest threads first, resurrecting them in mid-discussion, then sit back and watch the discussion re-ignite.

    Repeat in sequence with newer threads in your inbox once the entertainment value of the current thread dies away.

  • Friday Distraction: Venice Beach Palm Trees

    Source: pdphoto.org

    Venice Beach Palm Trees

  • Look Out for the Cubicle Police

    I’m curious what the ROI of enforcing rules such as these are:
    • No more than 3 personal items on your desk.
    • No obscuring the translucent partitions.
    • No whiteboards.

    Rules like these require either a system put in place to snitch on your fellow coworkers or someone to watch for violations as part of their job.

    This isn’t to mention rules such as the following:

    • No window seats below a certain pay grade.
    • No cubes above a certain shape and size below a certain pay grade.
    • No non-fixed tables for certain cube types.
    • Only one chair per cube.
    • Contractors can only have a single desk and not a cube.

    These rules often require a lot of effort, such as tearing down and rebuilding all of the cubes, just to be in compliance.

     

     

  • The Styles of Crisis Management

    Mountain out of a Molehill Crisis Management – There’s a problem. Maybe, it’s not really a problem. Maybe, something arrived five minutes late one time. This crisis manager is on the phone and mass emailing everybody at the first sign of imperfection.

    It’s Your Fault I Screwed Up Crisis Management – This time, there really *is* a problem. However, the true cause of the problem escapes this crisis manager. Every team that interacts with this crisis manager is emailed, called, or blamed for causing the problem. Sometime later, this crisis manager’s crazed emails stop with a minimal admission of actual guilt.

    Screaming the Loudest Crisis Management – The above two crisis manager types generally resort to this method. Emails and phone calls escalate up organizational charts until the crisis manager is hit with the threat of termination or felony harassment charges, whichever comes first.

    Legit Crisis Manager – Stays cool, analyzes the problem objectively, makes key decisions and… *yawn*.  Let’s move on…

    Problem Creators – Like a workplace case of Münchausen by Proxy syndrome, this crisis manager creates problems that, while in theory should question competence, really call into question whether the person is creating the problem for attention or to “showcase their problem solving skills.”

    Ignore Problems Until They Become Crises – The procrastinating crisis manager. Doesn’t really care about a problem unless it is a crisis. This is possibly due to an inability to solve even the most basis of problems without an intense adrenaline rush.

    Too Understaffed To Address Any Issues That Are Not Crises – The source of the common complaint, “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” Examining the underlying issues that aren’t crises or staffing appropriately would involve risk, and therefore, nothing beyond crises actually gets worked on.

  • Email Violating Personalities

     

    Yes, Email is Still the Way to #fail in a Deep, Meaningful Way…

    However, there are some ways to fail in smaller ways on a daily basis:

    • General etiquette violators
      • bcc: everyone – There are times when bcc: is desirable, e.g., when sending out a broadcast email to a large group to limit the damage of those who are too quick with “Reply to All” button. In this case, however, a person is conducting a business transaction of some sort and not revealing who else is “in the know”. Results in a lot of, “I don’t know if you’ve seen this or not,” email forwards.
      • Thread trimmer – selectively deletes one or two people periodically from a large email chain, confusing every participant on the list.
      • Reply to All abuser – distinguished from the casual Reply to All user by the use of the button in replying to department-wide email distributions.
      • Subtle Humor User – keeps you guessing on whether the person is joking.
      • !???!! – really is enthusiastic and/or concerned.
      • Priorities are out-of-whack – uses high (or even stranger low) priority markers to try to get attention for what is generally little more than an FYI email.
      • Receipt requestor – Good grief, do you really need a read receipt from the 100 people you emailed about the pot luck on Friday?
    • Appearance violators
      • Pastels and Cute Fonts User – Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
      • Script kitty – uses a nearly illegible cursive font for a default font.
      • Noisy Backgrounder – uses a background that obscures the ability to read the text on top.
      • Reverse video – loves light on dark appearance settings, which completely wreck havoc with anyone else’s replies.
    • Signature violators
      • The signature that never ends – Really, if you need to be contacted so badly that you leave your mother-in-law’s home phone, you probably should have a company cell phone.
      • Motivation spreader – Puts motivational sayings in the signature.
      • Massive signature image – Uses an embedded image in the signature that often dwarfs the email body itself.
    • Attachment violators
      • Media mailer – Those who try to attach mp3s and videos and somehow manage to fly under the “attachment size limit” radar. Unaware that audio and video actually take up a lot of storage space.
      • Sender of abnormally large documents – Someone who manages to send “office” documents that somehow violate the normal proportions and end up hitting the attachment size limit after about 10 pages.
      • Image embedder – Someone who doesn’t realize that Outlook converts embedded images to the most inefficient format possible. May use PowerPoint as an email formatting tool.

  • Exclamation points necessary!!

    Once upon a time, in what people used to call “grammar school”, the exclamation point was a thing of mystery. It was generally something that seemed to never have a use in writing, with the exception of after an interjection or a strongly emphasized command.

    The Wikipedia article on the exclamation mark quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald:

    Cut out all those exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own jokes.

    So, when did exclamation points go from “to be used as sparingly as capsaicin extract in chili” to “like salt on french fries?” It seems as though any reply of gratitude via email, text, or instant message requires at least one exclamation point if you’re grateful, and two if it was a big help. Don’t underemphasize your gratitude with a period. It may come out as a forced “thank you”, similar to the way your parents made you thank an aunt for an ugly sweater.

    Some people even extend this required emphasis by put things in ALL CAPS.

    Maybe we should suspend coffee service to the office for a while.

    THANKS FOR READING!!

  • Wrong number … again

    I do not work in the Parts Department. I have never worked in the Parts Department. You would think after working in this office as long as I have, I would stop getting calls for the Parts Department.

    I can understand the need to reuse extension numbers within an office building. What I cannot understand is the frequency that I have the following conversation.

    “Hello, this is Mr. Grumpy, in Marketing. How may I help you?”
    “Yes…” <pause> “Is Denise there?”
    “What part of my greeting did you not understand, sir?”
    “Is this 111-1234?”
    “Yes.”
    <pause> “Well, I am looking for Denise in the Parts Department.
    This is the number I got from the phone listing.”
    “Sir, I can assure you that nobody named Denise is hiding in my cubicle. Just out of curiosity, is there a date on your phone listing?”
    <longer pause> “Uh, it looks like 1995.”
    “Gee, that’s a shock. Would you like me to transfer you to the Operator now?”