Turning into one of those days

The Stress Fiend celebrates another week of her return to full-time work by not coming in again. I think she might have managed one full week since the start of the year but don't quote me on that.

---

Fortunately we still have Ted here to fill the breach. Unfortunately it's only in the Henry V "close the wall up with our English dead!" way.

"Invertebrate, I've got a voicemail message here you might want to have a look at." (Yes, I know).

"Did you want to transfer it through to my phone, then?" (He knows that otherwise Ted will just - eventually - repeat it to him, full of errors)  "No, wait! What's it about?"

Too late. Ted happily transfers the call.  About two mintues after that he finally answers: "I just thought it was a weird one, and you might like to have a listen to see how you want to handle it."

The Invertebrate duly checks his voicemail. "The one that just asks can we give him a call back in an hour, but doesn't say who they are or what their number is? That one?"

Ted is either blissfully unaware of the underlying echoes of disbelief in the Invertebrate's voice or, more likely, assumes it's disbelief at the message, rather than the fact Ted just wasted several minutes of his time while he's dealing with a political bunfight that's erupted in the last fortnight and shows no signs of abating soon.

"Yes, yes... That's the one. Some people just know how to waste our time, don't they?"

Ted E. does not compute.

Ted's still struggling with the idea that a local support-oriented database isn't the same as the HR database that underpins most of the organisation. Kicking things off, he starts tormenting our long-suffering database developer for answers, and they've reminded him yet again they don't work in that area, can't tell him why it behaves in certain ways, and that he needs to direct those kind of questions towards the team that manage that system. I think the number of times he's been told this is now well into triple figures.

The Invertebrate's turn comes next: "I need an explanation for this."

The Invertebrate tries futiley to give the same explanation he's given Ted a couple of dozen times before (here, for instance) but quickly, if unsurprisingly, hits the infamous Ted E. brick wall.

"Wait, wait. Sorry, Ted, you've lost me. How does what you're showing me now relate to the problem you're having?"

"Oh, it doesn't. This is something else."

The Invertebrate limps away from the conversation after, in effect, telling Ted to try using his brain a little.

Ted decides that's a fool's game, and finally rings the team he should have called months ago for some answers about this. Luck or foresight were on their side, however (alternatively, and equally plausibly, they may have been trying frantically to stave off a system crash), and he had to content himself with leaving a petulant message.

I'm not optimistic they'll call him back, though. Any call that whines "I want to know how this works", without actually stating whether there's any reason other than idle curiosity tends to settle at the bottom of the call-back list.

Sometimes it's too easy

For a variety of reasons we don't support Windows Vista here. In hindsight this seems like an especially obvious decision to make but, in reality, it owes more to extended procrastination by senior management afraid to make a decision one way or the other.

In Ted's world, this means that Vista doesn't exist. (I imagine there a lot of people who'd like to live in that world, too, but they should bear in in mind they'd be sharing it with Ted). So when a relatively important client calls with problems with a software installation on their home computer, and the increasingly desperate support person calls my area looking for advice, Ted manages to combine a little bit of knowledge (overhearing me mention some Vista users were having trouble with this particular piece of software) with ontological anxiety when, first, he tells the support tech that "Oh, they must be using Vista!" and then realises he's entered paradox country and starts to babble down the phone.

"Oh, wait. There isn't any Vista. They can't be running it, because no-one has it. But if no-one has it, how can people be having problems with it? Uhhh... I'm going to transfer you to someone else now."

From the "I know it shouldn't surprise me, but..." file

Ted E. has a really unique way of looking at the world. Well, I'd like to think it's unique but it almost certainly isn't. However he's the only person I know who does this.

We're under some political pressure at the moment to justify the way we operate. This has come about because the way we work was dictated to us by senior management several years ago and we haven't been allowed to deviate from it sense. In the lastyear or so, though, virtually everylevel of management from this unit's team leader up to the director and his boss has resigned or moved on, and now no-one knows why we're forced to work this way. But they still won't let us change, or provide us with the resources we need to operate differently.

The Invertebrate has been asked to prepare a brief, large-print explanation of what we do, how we do it, and why we do it the way we do. What we really need for this is to dig through the morass and find documentation from the upper echelons explaining this.

Ted, on the other hand, has decided that what we need are the semi-literate* email templates he sends to suppliers saying, in effect, "We buy stuff for this organisation, and we're special, so you should give us cheap prices", because they'll demonstrate to the higer powers that we operate this way because that's the way.

The Invertebrate makes a foolish attempt to explain that what he needs is something official from our management showing the rules their predecessors have laid down.

"But this is official. We send this to suppliers. Look, I even have a shortcut that will past it into an email automatically."**

"We write it, and it's automated. It doesn't get much more official than that!"  [paraphrasing]

The Invertebrate has had a rough couple of weeks and folds quickly. "Err, yeah, Ted. Thanks for that."

Ted all but wags his tail and goes back to drinking out of the toilet.

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* I think they manage to be semi-literate by virture of being based on an original written several years ago by someone else, which Ted E. has been attempting to plagiarise ever since.

** This isn't a bit of technical cleverness on Ted's part. It's the result of some crap little piece of software that the unit tried to use in lieu of actually documenting how things needed to be done or using actual template stationery. Ted's the only one still using it, because it ended up being so over-used that no-one knows the two thousand different keyboard combinations needed to insert the right text (and because a combination like Shift-S causes it to embed a chunk of irrelevant text right into the middle of whatever you're typing. Ted doesn't use punctuation or capitalisation at all, so this problem never affects him), and no-one ever documented what the various combinations are.

Instant nastiness

"I'm not a technical person," says the creature who's only technically a person.

Who supports the support staff?

Oh, it looks like he's decided to cram in as much as he can before he goes. A passing phone-support tech was on a desperate run for coffee when Ted stopped just short of physically dragging him to the phone to help one of our clients that Ted (unsurprisingly) was struggling with.

"My coffee break!" gasps the increasingly desperate tech when he finally manages to escape the phone call, "It's almost over! You're killing me, man!"

He makes a break for the door.

"Wait up," calls Ted, "I'll come with you." And vanishes yet again.

Unconfirmed rumours

The Stress Fiend (who has yet to manage a full working week since returning to full-time duties and is already claiming mounting levels of stress) tells me that Ted E. will be going part-time from the middle of the year (will anyone notice?) and then retiring at the end of they year.

Around ten minutes after this, Ted trundles in over an hour after his advertised starting time without a word, turns his computer on, and goes wandering off someplace for over half an hour.

I don't want to get my hopes up until I hear something a bit more definite or authoritative, but there have been a growing number of hints that something like this might be coming.

Of course if it does happen I'll be at a bit of a loss for material to write about, but I'm sure my organisation can solve that by poaching the idiot from some other village.

Idiot Season has started early this year, I see.

Some clients have a singular talent for asking the most staggeringly inane questions that leave you wanting to do nothing more than beat them about the head with a sack of bricks.

"Why is the information you sent me in this email different from the information you sent me in the previous one?"

Because, you misbegotten wretch, you told us the information in the previous one didn't seem to be correct. We checked into it, found that was the case, and sent you the correct details.  And if that still wasn't enough of a clue as to why they were different, the explanation at the start of the second email should have been a hint.

A normal person might be content to attain that level of stupidity or, at least, rest on their laurels for a few hours. Not this individual, however. He then follows it up with a phone call minutes later to repeat the question, trapping Ted E. on the phone for many long minutes (demonstrating again that it's an ill wind that blows no good), before being passed through to me with another riddle for the ages.

"This email I've received about these external training courses... there are prices listed next to them. Does that mean they cost money?"

Yes. Yes, it does.

"So that means they're not free, then?"

Advertised starting times are approximate only

Ted always likes to maintain that he starts at 8am or earlier every day. It's part of his justification for leaving early on Fridays, and one of the excuses he uses for accumulating ludicrous amounts of flex time considering how much work he actually does during those hours of seat warming.

I know from when I was acting as team leader that he lies on his timesheets, because I could see the hours he was claiming and I was getting reliable reports from others as to what time he was actually turning up in the morning. And, of course, there were the surly glares I received anytime he arrived and found me already at my desk. That was probably the last time he had to at least be at his desk during the hours he claimed.

I arrived early this morning to beat the heat. No Ted. No surprise either, really.

Half an hour after his advertised starting time he finally wanders in, and then promptely disappears for another fifteen minutes to collect a coffee and exchange gossip. Then he calls up the traffic section to report another employee for putting rubbish in a garbage bin. "No, no. I asked them and they said they'd brought it in from home."

He stopped to ask someone where they got their rubbish from. Following a previous conversation where it emerged he stared into his neighbours' houses at night, this surprised me much less than it once might have done.

"Yes, I took their licence plate number down."

Presumably he'll claim the defense of our garbage bins on his timesheet. In fairness, though, it's probably the closest he's come in some time to legitimately doing something for the organisation.

"She brought it in from home, can you believe?" repeats the person who once tried to bring his old computer in from home to dispose of it here because it had a virus.

It would be comforting to dismiss him as a freak of nature, but these days I'm not so sure he is.

Something dimwitted this way comes.

Ted has returned from his month-long holiday and isn't wasting any time. Figuratively speaking, that is:

• Despite being having just come back from holiday, he's already angling for an extra long weekend (a plan that was swiftly sunk when I staked my claim to the day he was eyeing up. Honestly, I was already aiming for that day before he even started checking the calendar for his next day off. Even money says he calls in sick that day now, instead);
  
  
• a client rings up with a problem that they've been having trouble getting someone to look at. It's within Ted's area of responsopility, the fix is easy ... but rather than actually doing anything about it (even with The Invertebrate telling him "It doesn't matter, just fix them up") he begins stalking the area, piece of scrap paper in hand, questioning everyone as to whether they're the ones who left this for him to sort out;
  
  
• another client rings up for some information. Ted pulls out one of his traditional spiels and redirects them to our website (presumably one of the parts he hasn't been in sabotaging) where "you'll be able to read a little story about that". Ted doesn't believe in things as modern as blurbs or information. Everything that relays information in writing is a story to him. Which, really, says some pretty fundamental things about his ambiguous relationship with things like "facts", "truth" and "honesty";
  
  
• offering to take The Invertebrate to coffee to pump him for information on what's been going on while he's been away. The Invertebrate looked hopeful for a second, misinterpreting Ted's Pidgin English invitation as meaning that Ted had some important news for him (you could practically see the "Yippee! He's going to tell me he's retiring!" thought bubble appear over his head until he actually realised what had been said;
  
  
• "Have my duties changed while I was away?" No, Ted, you're still expected to do at least a token amount of work while you're here. You don't get out of them that easily.

Sadly, it's like he never went away. He's now busy combing through everything that everyone else did while he was away looking for things to complain about.

New Year, old tricks.

Today was supposed to be the Stress Fiend's first full week back at work since her breakdown and reduced hours last year.

She's phoned in sick.