So easily offended...

I bumped into Ted E. in the corridor on the way into the office this morning.  Being polite, and because he's been known to turn it into an issue if people don't, I said "Good morning" and was rewarded with pure surliness in exchange. Which actually doesn't bother me, as I'm much happier when Ted E. doesn't try to make small talk, but I was puzzled by the sheer belligerence he radiated at the sight of me.

Then I get inside and discover why.

No-one else is here yet, and I've turned up early for a meeting. And, suddenly noticing Ted E. is still wearing his backpack, he's running half an hour late (even later if you believe his much-boasted and often-disproved unofficial starting time) and presumably I've thwarted his planned fudging of his hours.

Mr Helpful

Volunteering to look after a task, Ted E. style:

1. volunteer to take over a task;
2. use the help desk tool to assign each instance of that task against The Invertebrate because you've decided because he mentioned it last, it's clearly his responsibility now;
3. forget how to use the help desk software to do this;
4. ask The Invertebrate for help in assigning the Ted-tasks to him;
   
5. realise The Invertebrate is in fact your team leader and wasn't meant to know about this;
6. prevaricate madly in a feeble attempt to salvage an illusion of credibility. 

Meanwhile, on Planet Ted...

A parting email from Ted E. today, complaining about changes made to a function within our database. The trouble is ... it's never worked the way he seems to think it used to in the previous version.  I've even gone back five versions and checked.

And for it to have ever worked the way he clearly remembers it used to would invalidate the whole purpose of having that function in the first place.

"It used to let us do something it was specifically introduced to stop us doing. This is an urgent problem in need of fixing!"

I don't think so.

Mr Unreliability

Oh dear. Now he's trying to overcompensate by inventing "what if?" scenarios to get out of doing actual work. I thought he was supposed to be getting sick and leaving early?

The Friday Entertainment

Ted E. is struggling (visibly struggling, for once, instead of quietly hiding the debris of his fumblings under the electronic rug).

First, his laptop has crashed. Ted E. lacks the basic technical competence to troubleshoot what's gone wrong or even take an educated guess. There's not actually anything wrong with that and,  realistically, it's how we'd prefer non-technical staff deal with their problems. It's just Ted's bad luck that everyone else in the team has sufficient technical skills that they don't need to run for help as soon as something fails and, when they do, they have sufficient knowledge to be able to explain the problem.

So he's had to switch computers to the one that's been left free since we lost our fixed-term person (and it feels vaguely blasphemous to see Ted sitting in their chair - I keep wanting to tell him to move before he contaminates all the good work she did), and now both the Invertebrate and I can, quite literally, look over his shoulder to see what he's actually working on.

He doesn't like that.

While using this computer, he's also been expected to set up his basic software access himself, as everyone else in the team is more than capable of doing. Ted E., I strongly suspect, has never had to do anything of the sort and he's floundering noisily. Every minor thing, where a normal person would think to, I don't know, actually look for information or a file that isn't where he's used to finding it on his laptop threatens to turn into a major drama production.

The only thing that's restraining him, I think, is that he's aware the "problems" stem from his limitations and unwillingness (or inability) to acquire the same skills as the rest of the team, because he doesn't feel he's paid enough. And that's making him increasingly ill-tempered, so that he's started claiming he's feeling sick and will need to leave early today.

Not a bad day at all, really.

He's on a roll today! Now he's complaining to The Invertebrate about a terribly complicated part of his job that he does once a week, and takes him three hours to do (three hours seems to be his magic number), but which the Stress Fiend can normally do in about half an hour.

It's a process I was arguing last year we shouldn't be doing at all because this team isn't resourced or positioned to manage the particular system. Ted E. enjoys doing it, though, because he can pretend he's working and can highlight all the mistakes people in other teams have made in entering data.

The Invertebrate has taken exactly my point of view (that we're the last area that should be trying to manage this, and the responsibility lies with another team entirely) and Ted E. is now watching with horror at the prospect of a lot of his make-work vanishing. He's back-pedaling furiously, trying to claim it's not that much work, doesn't take up much of his time, and it's worth hanging onto even though it's not part of what we do.

The sixty-year old spoiled child

Ted E. is having a sulk. There's been a part of his job he spontaneously stopped doing several weeks ago because he didn't see the point. The Stress Fiend tried explaining several times that there was a point, because it saved her interrupting the flow of her work further down the line when she had to go look up the information Ted E. had decided he didn't feel like including when he was doing related work in that system.

Ted E., naturally, didn't consider this relevant and ignored her.

The Stress Fiend has been more strident about this in the last week or two and finally mentioned it to The Invertebrate, who's recently been growing more aware of Ted E .'s shiftless ways.  This morning, he got Ted E. to walk him through what Ted E. actually did, including why it wasn't worth him doing this bit of his job that he'd dropped without bothering to tell anyone.

Like a lot of Ted's "labour-saving" exercises, it collapsed pretty much immediately upon examination because the only person it makes less work for is himself, while adding to others' workload exponentially as they try to work around it. He tried to bargain his way out of having to do it by showing The Invertebrate examples of the kind of entries he didn't think were necessary, and got progressively more ill-tempered as The Invertebrate (who, on current trends, is probably in line for a name change) pointed out why it was necessary to spend 30 seconds updating those records.

"But that will take me three hours! I've got hundreds to do!" complains Ted, gearing up for a tirade before realising that:

1. someone might point out he only has hundreds because he hasn't been doing them at all; and
2. he's just started to complain about the injustice of being asked to do the job he's paid for.

But dignified withdrawals are apparently for lesser men.

"Fine, then, I"ll just do them all, shall I?"

Reflex action

Instinctively mauled Ted E. for asking exactly the same question he tried to fob off on to everyone else last week and turned into a major production when we wouldn't let him have his way. Possibly shouldn't have but, hell, it's not like he didn't have it coming.

Honestly, who'd be a team leader anyway?

Ted E. has been in a bad mood all morning, trying to pass work and phone calls off on to everyone else and getting rebuffed pretty much every time (generally in the form of "Fine, if you claim you don't know anything about it, this is how you do it - go through it with the client and remember it for next time"). 

Then he decided to pick through what he decided must have been an error by a departed team-member, only to be told by me it was a typo and had been corrected. Then he decides that the answer is still wrong, ignores the subsequent explanation as to why the answer is still right but the issue will be obsolete in two weeks anyway and there's no need to waste more of his time (or my life) trying to score points.

"I explained all this when I replied to your email," I tell him after he comes over to my desk to harangue me about it.

"I haven't read it yet. But I think I'm right" he claims, and rushes back to his desk to begin burrowing into the database he can't use to look up information he doesn't understand in order to argue against someone else's decision that he won't accept.

I tell him again (across the room this time) that he's wasting time on something that isn't an issue now and won't even exist in a fortnight. Thankfully, the Stress Fiend and The Invertebrate actually chime in to support that.

Ted E. sulks. Very conspicuously.

So The Invertebrate then has to begin the slow and painful task of smoothing Ted E.'s ruffled, mangy, lice-riddled feathers.  I can't decide whether that makes him a better team leader than I would have been, or if he just hasn't had enough Ted E. exposure to have lost all patience with the wretch.

(Hah! Now he's complaining about not feeling well - he already leaves early on Fridays, so maybe this means he's planning on having Monday off. Again. I can only hope).