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.

Client Service

Ted E.'s long-used excuse for flinging rubbish information at clients like an incontinent caged monkey, and for randomly attacking everyone that fails to do likewise is that it's good client service, where "good" = "something, anything, as long as I don't have to think about it".

A member of another team has just told Ted E. that a client needs something by close of business today.

Ted E.'s response?  "Stiff shit."

Ted E's considered response? Walk over to the Stress Fiend, tell her that she'll need to look after it, and that the client "has written all this shit over his request, and he can't have it. You'll need to tell him that."

Mice can "scroll" - perhaps you've heard of this term?

No, I didn't just fling off some made-up, random reply to a client's enquiry.

Yes, I know there's a standard response to that query, and of course I used it.  I rewrote the damn thing from scratch, remember, to replace the abomination you copy-and-pasted together from a dozen differenty-formatted sources without understanding anything you were talking about. 

I'm hardly likely to forget anything associated with something that would have made small children weep and goats go blind simply from looking at it, now, am I?

(I'd have been less annoyed if he'd actually looked at the text right below the client's reply where he would have seen exactly what I sent them.)

Perhaps the Mafia are on to something here.

I'm running late for work, and arrive to find Ted E. taking advantage of my absence by pinning The Invertebrate down to continue his complaint about the issue from the other day; the same one he didn't want to discuss in a meeting yesterday (because then someone might actually be on hand to refute his craziness), and one of the same issue he's been arguing against on the general principle of "I don't like it" for the past year now.

I'm polite and don't butt in until The Invertebrate asks me to come over to clarify something about how things are supposed to work (partly because Ted E.'s argument in favour of his solution doesn't  - and can't - make any sense; and partly, I suspect, so that even Ted E. can see that his madness is given a fair hearing).

I only last a few minutes before snapping. Ted E. is suggesting different ways of doing things that he thinks are better, each of which (in typical Ted E. fashion) generates its own problems by either creating extra manual tasks for someone else, cutting off information to users and other teams, or creating scope for more errors to creep in unnoticed. At no point is he ever actually able to say what's wrong with the model we've been running with or explain why it needs to be replaced.

(Actually I know why he thinks it needs to be replaced - because the current system requires him to check something that comes up about once a fortnight, and which is flagged in our systems so that it almost literally says "Hey, Ted - check me! There's something here you need to look at!"  It's not something he even has to remember to do, and at most he has to tick a check-box - but the fact he has to do anything at all bothers him deeply.)

And then he tries to claim that the convoluted, patchwork processes he's suggesting and making up on the spot are perfectly manageable because of his masterful attention to detail and ability to flawlessly execute the instructions on the "Do" and "Don't" list everyone else has to prepare for him.

"Well, no," I snap, "It won't work that way, because that's exactly what you don't do."

And I proceed to rattle off several examples of the things I've been finding while covering the Stress Fiend's work, because I'm cranky, ill and tired of revisiting this argument and so many others every time Ted E. thinks he has a chance to get someone else to help him roll things back to the good old days before people worried about things like accountability, accuracy and him doing the job he's being overpaid to do.

Ted E. rocks back slightly. The Invertebrate looks off somewhere in the middle distance. There's the conversational equivalent of a tumbleweeds blowing past.

"Anyway," says The Invertebrate brightly, "that all makes sense to me, so we'll stick with that."

So now Ted E. isn't talking to me again, and probably won't until next week now. Publicly biting his head off within a few minutes of arriving at work might not be the most professional way to manage him, but it probably goes down a treat in Mafia circles. The verbal equivalent of punching him on the nose every morning when I walk through the door seems to be the only way to actually make him behave.

Still ... I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of pre-emptive beatings as a team management strategy. It seems a little bit too much like something Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld would come up with. Except for the part about it actually working.

The "How Not To" Guide to Weaseling

After yesterday's exchange with Ted E. I was expecting him to do his usual trick when he gets told something he doesn't want to hear - ignore what he's been told and go over my head.  I could hear him typing busily away yesterday afternoon, and considering this clearly had nothing to do with his actual job (one of the dubious perks of covering for the Stress Fiend's absence is that it lets me see firsthand a lot more of Ted E.'s malfeasance in action)  it seemed a pretty safe bet that only one thing could motivate him this much: seeing how much trouble he can make for someone else. 

So it didn't really come as much of a surprise today when he approached The Invertebrate to ask if we could have a team meeting, because there were some things he felt we should be discussing. What he meant he wanted to discuss was that he thought "someone" (i.e. not him) should be taking over the Stress Fiend's duties while she was away, and to take an opportunity to point out things he doesn't like about the way she does her job.

What he got instead was The Invertebrate cheerfully announcing (and I'm paraphrasing a little) "Oh, right - you'll want to talk about that email you sent me yesterday afternoon about the other stuff you don't like the way we're doing and were told to leave alone, and aren't happy about?"

Panic flashes across Ted E.'s face. Apparently I wasn't supposed to know about that.

He actually babbles as he tries to distance himself from his own email.  "Oh, uh, oh ... no.  I didn't mean that at all. I didn't actually want to talk about ... I ... uh ... no, I meant about who's going to do the Stress Fiend's job, not umm..."

And The Invertebrate continues on so obliviously that I'm almost tempted to suspect him of doing this on purpose. "Because that's something we'd probably need to look at as a group if you think there's a serious problem with it, just to make sure we get it resolved in a way that makes sure it does what we want it to do."

"Uh, no ... really ... I was just - I'm not. No, I'm happy with it. It's just, uh ...."

I mean, honestly, did he really think he was being stealthy and subtle? That I wouldn't know what he was up to, and that The Invertebrate would agree with everything he said and say nothing to me about it? It hasn't been a great week, and the panicky backpedaling as he tried to avoid painting himself as a weasel nearly made me laugh aloud.

No "Time Out" corner when you need one.

Ted E. is sulking. He came over to check whether something I'd done had been cleared by The Invertebrate first (where "check" = "I don't like how you've done this, don't understand it, and I'm sure you've got it wrong").

Yes, he's seen it.

Yes, we talked about it.

Yes, he's fine with it.

No, don't mess with it.

No, really. Don't touch it. At all.

No, I don't care if you don't understand it. It's not part of your job and never will be, so leave it alone.

Yes, this is the same way we did it last year that you didn't like.

No, seriously. I'm not kidding. Don't screw around with this. When you did it last time without telling anyone what you were up to, you sent the money into all the wrong accounts and it  took months to find and fix it.

Yes, I do know about that. Was I not supposed to?

No, I don't care that I've hurt your feelings.

Yes, you may return to your desk and sulk now.

(Apparently I have no patience today.  Possibly this has something to do with having just gone through a sample of his work over the last week to identify all the bits of his job that he either isn't doing correctly, or simply isn't interested in doing at all).

It's early onset Alzheimers, I swear...

Yes, you idiot.  For the fourth time in a week, just as we've been doing for the last eight months, and as we've written down for you repeatedly in the "Do" and "Don't" list you keep requesting and then steadfastly ignoring ... yes, everyone gets charged for that and no, you're not allowed to keep giving it out for free.

When it's written in black and white - when it's been written in black and white, expressly for you, for the better part of a year! - why is that so hard to remember?

Plague season

I wish I'd brought in a hammer and some nails today, because Ted E. is going to want to do his martyr act in an hour or so when reality begins to penetrate his skull (it's a slow process, akin to fossilisation).

The Invertebrate has phoned in sick, which means Ted E. will be even less manageable than usual   (he only ignores what The Invertebrate tells him 30% of the time, compared to 90% with me).  By itself that's not a huge issue, though, because over the last year we've progressively pulled away most of the real work from him because he simply can't be relied on to do any of it consistently or accurately. The only real challenge with managing Ted E.'s workload is to keep him from messing up everyone else's work, because not understanding any of it has never stopped him disliking how it's done and trying to change it without telling anyone what he's up to.

However, there's a message on The Invertebrate's phone that I can't access (because he's never shared his voicemail password) which I suspect will be the Stress Fiend saying she's sick today, too.  Ted E. was already grumbling because she took two rec. days last week after he'd been on holiday for a week and a half, so the thought of her having another day off appears to be more than he can bear.  He has strong philisophical issues with the concept of other people having time off, presumably because he can't answer any questions without someone to tell him the answers first and ends up having to admit that to the clients he's trying so hard to impress.

I have to leave early today to collect a child from school (one of my own, rather than a random selection).  I told him this an hour ago, but that was before he realised the Stress Fiend probably wasn't going to show.  Whether it's actually sunk in yet that he'll be here alone for an hour and a half this afternoon is doubtful, but when it does his reaction will be neither graceful nor mature.