The forty percent solution.

We've been having a lot of trouble lately with a particular vendor: their account rep won't return our calls, they sat on a $200,000 order for a week because they were confused by something that could have been cleared up if they'd actually bothered to ask us, and now we're still struggling to get their damn software to work because they have a licensing system so stupidly cryptic you could be excused for suspecting the involvement of some covert, quasi-military intelligence agency and they still can't give us the right codes to make things work.

So there's a fair bit of ill-feeling towards this company at the moment. In fact nearly everyone who has to deal with them and their product (except the Amazing Toad Man, who wants to lock us into a three-year contract with them, but he lives in a parallel world to the rest of us) would gladly be rid of them both and are starting to explore alternatives.

And then Gimli comes stumping through, fresh from a presentaion by this vendor and their "partner" (a certain hardware vendor who also like to dabble in software sales and invariably messes it up), all fired up on how we should buy yet more stuff from them.

And why?

Because their hardware-selling "partner" owns forty percent of them. 

Why is this a good thing?

They own forty percent!

Will the stuff Gimli thinks we should buy actually do what we want it to do? Do we even need it?

Forty percent, mate! Forty. Per. Cent!

And that's what the argument boils down to. We should buy more stuff from a loathed and unreliable supplier because they're part-owned by another supplier that provides average service on its core business products, and lacklustre service on the stuff Gimli thinks we should be interested in. To make it worse, we'd have to order the stuff we don't need from the vendor we can't stand through the partner; in effect, multiplying their inefficiencies and poor service.

Gimli only makes it out of the room without being stoned because it's late in the day, we're too tired to realise that trying to figure out any logic in this is completely futile ... and we're fresh out of stones.

Evolution: not for everyone.

The Stress Fiend updated our group email signature yesterday, replacing our aging plain text monstrosity that consumed half a page with a leaner, more legible, html version. This combined two of Ted E.'s great, pathological fears: change, and html files. We don't really know why he hates them so much, but he does. It has nothing to do with compatibility, standards, or readability. He just hates them with the kind of visceral loathing normal people reserves for someone hitting a bag of kittens with a hammer.

Ted wrote an email. The new signature came up. He ran straight to The Invertebrate to complain.

"Look what Someone's done!* This is something we should have discussed as a group, instead of just going ahead with it and not telling anyone!"

The Invertebrate: "Actually, I reckon that looks pretty good."

"No, they shouldn't be doing this at all! There's a standard format we're supposed to use, with block capitals and stuff."

"I've been here eleven years, and if there's a standard format, I've never seen anyone use it. And I can tell you no-one is using it now."

Ted changes tack: "It's making our email run slower."**

"Well, I'll tell you what. You open and close a few emails with the old signature and the new one, time how long it takes for them to open, and then we'll see if it's a problem."

So Ted goes off to dutifully open and close emails.

"See? Look how fast this one opens with the old signature! I told you!"

"Dude, you already had it open in the preview pane. That doesn't count."

Crestfallen, Ted returns to opening and closing emails (which sounds wasteful, but actually lifts the net productivity of the team by keeping him engaged in something useless and pointless). Finally he's forced to concede that new signature is grinding our email system to a halt, and we get to keep the new signature until he can come up with something else that's wrong with it.

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* When it's a capital "s" Someone, he always means me. I think it's his idea of being subtle, but now everyone tends to snigger or roll their eyes when he says it. I don't think he's worked out why yet.

** We use Lotus Notes. It doesn't do "slower", only "paralysed with fear and indecision" and "sudden death".

The General Pointlessness of Ted

Another fine Ted moment. He's been quite prolific lately. One might almost say incontinently so.

Now he's complaining about the fact that The Invertebrate and I often don't start until 9am. Somehow it escapes his highly-selective world view that just because he slinks away at 3 or 4pm(or earlier if people are mean to him and he gets a headache) doesn't mean everyone else packs up and goes home because they can't go on without him. The Invertebrate's hours are a little rubbery (one of the perks of a middle-management position), but I'm routinely here until 5 or later on most days.

On an unrelated note, we have an internal auditor lurking in our area at the moment, and there was a particularly telling moment yesterday after he'd finished grilling The Invertebrate and the Stress Fiend. Ted E. was lurking hopefully, waiting to be included so he could complain about something,  but at the end of the conversation all he got was a quizzical look from the auditor and the rather pointed question: "So what is it you actually do?"

Introducing The Amazing Toad Man

The Amazing Toad Man haunts the upper levels of middle management or, at least, seems to think he does. It's not actually clear from outside his area exactly where he sits on the corporate ladder, and it's entirely possible he sits no higher than The Invertebrate. But he doesn't let that hold him back, or keep him from trying to throw his weight around in other areas' operations. The Amazing Toad Man isn't the name I came up with. I think a friend with the misfortune to work under him came up with that title, or one very similar to it, and the name has stuck in my mind.

The first time I met him he was attempting to pick the lock on the toilet cubicle door while the cubicle was still occupied. I know this because I was the occupant.

"Oh," he said, looking surprised when I opened the door. He gestured at the lock with the bent paperclip he was holding. "It was locked."

Because apparently that somehow made it all perfectly normal.

That's more or less set the tone for my dealings with him ever since. In fact it turned out to be somewhat symbolic, as ever since then he's consistently tried to insert himself into other areas' business without ever thinking to ask ahead of time whether his input is relevant, required or desirable. His specialty is ignoring information and requests for input right up until a deadline occurs, then trying to throw a spanner in the works because he thinks he's been slighted somehow or had his requirements overlooked, and then sulking when the spanner gets thrown back at him because (a) there's no possible room in the deadline to accomodate his last-minute demands, and (b) when you're a minority stakeholder, you don't get to derail the entire process just because you didn't want to talk to anyone earlier when they asked you for input.

He's also presided over an impressive drop in his team's numbers, experience and morale. But it makes his salary budget look good, so in his mind it all balances out.

He's currently plotting and scheming behind our back to lock us into a three-year agreement with a lacklustre supplier everyone else would be happy to move away from. Again, the bulk of our organisation's business with this supplier is ours rather than his, but why let that get in the way of pretending he's the man to see? So expect the Amazing Toad Man to appear again in future when The Invertebrate returns and discovers what's going on.

Semantics: Crisis Mode

"Crisis" (normal person's definition):

matter in dire need of attention; something critical has/is going to fail / blow up / sterilise half the population*; bone^.

"Crisis" (abnormal person's definition. No need for names by this point, is there?):

hoping someone else would answer an email you could have handled three days ago, finally realising no-one has because they all knew you were capable of answering it and it fell into the category of things you're responsible for, and suddenly trying to escalate it as evidence of a major systems failure.

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* Although there are times, most of them at work, when I have trouble considering this to necessarily be a bad thing.

 

^ Bone: "Bollocks, naff. Not. Very. Good." (Dog Soldiers)

Daring to subvert the paradigm

You're familiar with the GIGO principle: Garbage In, Garbage Out?  It's not so much a principle here as a way of life, but you get the idea.

Ted E. has boldly gone where no man has gone before, reversed the polarity, and embraced the GOGI principle instead (Garbage Out, Gabage In).  Or, as he prefers to call it without a trace of irony whatsoever, "good customer service".

"I think there must be something wrong with out processes. I keep sending emails out to clients, and they keep sending replies back saying that they don't understand what they're supposed to do. We must be making it too hard for them."

Forest meets trees

Ted E.: "I think there's something wrong with our processes. I send the clients incomplete gibberish in an email, and they keep writing back to say they don't understand."

Talking in Manglish

The Invertebrate is talking to the Stress Fiend about converting some information over to web documents. I'm only half-listening, because the Stress Fiend and I are pretty much in agreement on what we need to do with the information, but then The Invertebrate says something that catches my attention and makes me snort with badly-suppressed laughter.

"What? Did I say something?"

Nod.  The Invertebrate plays back the last parts of the conversation.

"It was html-erise, wasn't it?"

* snort *

The Fear

Working party statements you should be grateful aren't aimed at your team: maximising synergies to provide improved service delivery.

It's all in the presentation.

Thirty minutes after stating that there was something he wanted to check with us, Ted E. finally unveils the small but crucial fact that actually gives the long, meandering rant a smattering of relevance. Unfortunately he chooses this long after the point where everyones' eyes have glazed over and they've given up hope of there ever being a point.

This is what I imagine it feels like to be slowly devoured from the feet up by diseased gerbils with bad breath.

Word for the day

lunger, n. a person suffering from a chronic disease of the lungs ; especially: one who is tubercular.
(Merriam-Webster online)

We seriously have to quarantine the team located a couple of partitions over: plastic floor-coverings, floor-to-ceiling drop sheets, biohazard suits, disinfectant spray... the works. It was bad enough they've been sounding like a tuberculosis clinic for the last fortnight, but now one of them has just returned from an overseas holiday and brought something nasty back with them. A large dog concealed in their chest cavity, perhaps.

I half-expect to hear screams of terror from over the walls as an Alien erupts from their ribcage and goes on a  rampage.