No, seriously, I don't know who you're talking about that used to come around all the time many years ago when you worked here and I didn't. And, really, I'm not interested in reminiscing about "the good old days" because a) they almost certainly weren't, and b) I wasn't here then.
Also? When it's ten years old and about people who aren't here anymore? With neither point nor punchline, it's not even gossip - it's just useless trivia.
26 July, 2010
Week Two
The only way this could be more painful is, conceivably, if we cloned Ted and had Clone-Ted filling in for himself ... but I'm not actually convinced that would be the case.
La Mondaine is now badgering staff who've only been here a year over whether the daughter of a long-retired workmate is still doing the same job in an entirely different part of the organisation we almost never deal with that they were doing five years ago ... identifying the daughter, naturally, by first name only, looking puzzled when the new staff have no idea who she was talking about ("How could you not know this person?"), and leaving the new staff with the uncomfortable feeling there's a gaping hole in their understanding of the organisation.
She's still waiting to get access to all the systems she needs, so at the moment she's lurking over the Stress Fiend's shoulder being shown (again) what she'll be expected to do. Ordinarily, asking questions is a sign of a healthy mind. In this case, though, the gradually rising tone of frustration in the Stress Fiend's voice suggests otherwise.
23 July, 2010
Lambs still screaming? Check...
It's bad enough dealing with Ted E., but when I have to explain the same things to clients repeatedly I find myself wondering whether I shouldn't just resort to telling them "It puts the lotion in the basket, or it gets the hose again."
It certainly couldn't make them any more confused.
It certainly couldn't make them any more confused.
La Mondaine: week one
The first day of our
La Mondaine arrived in a state of high excitement, eager to pick up where she'd left years ago, renew old friendships, and throw herself into the exciting social whirlwind that this place is all about (instead of that tedious, pesky "work" stuff that some of us spend our day grappling with).
Thus far it's been a deeply and horrifyingly painful experience. And that's before she's even begun trying to do any work yet. God knows what kind of agony we're in for once she actually has to start engaging her brain in the present rather than just leaving it idling noisily in the past.
(On a related note, I've never been so grateful for the delay in getting someone set up with computer and network access here. It meant she grew bored watching the Stress Fiend work and left early. Technically the Stress Fiend was trying to train her in how things are done these days, but in practice it was like watching someone take their nine-month-old to see Shakespeare: grizzling, intermittent crying fits, and constantly wondering why it's not yet time for the next meal).
Firstly, La Mondaine talks constantly. She's not exceptionally loud - she certainly doesn't boom out the way the Cow-Orker could - but her voice is pitched to penetrate, makes everything sound like a question, and just. doesn't. stop. Perhaps desensitisation will come with time, but for the moment she's impossible to tune out.
And then The Invertebrate decides in an apparent burst of sadism that we'll have a team afternoon tea just so we can have a chat about where things will be going over the next few months. I'd already given this some thought, but wasn't overly surprised when our visions diverged: his, for instance, seems to be a lot lighter on the bloody axes, straitjackets and padded cells that loomed prominently in mine.
The first day went roughly as follows:
"No, that system 's been gone for years, too. The staff club and the Friday afternoon 'lunches'? Well the club's been shut for a couple of years now..." (Coincidentally business declined as the number of hard-drinking oldtimers retired).
By day two she was repeating back to us as "news" the very things we'd told her the day before: that certain people had left, old systems had been replaced, work practices had changed, etc. Not that this prevented her from reacting to each new example of change with wide-eyed, breathless disbelief and a plaintive cry of "But what do you do now?" ... which was usually her response to having just been told what it was we did now.
Looking back at my increasingly desperate and angry private Tweets from Day Two, I find this:
"Please. F**k off before I have to kill you. Or myself. One of us has to go if you're going to keep this up."
Which pretty much sums up the experience: if gnawing off a limb to escape wasn't enough, and your only only way out was cutting your own head off using a pair of blunt nail scissors, you'd be begging for the opportunity.
Getting her set up with computer access also turned into another adventure in pain. To begin with it was just because it can take a while to get someone set up with all the appropriate email and network access they need.
"Who was that person who used to work here years ago, but isn't around anymore? They'd know what to do!"
Because apparently what they'd do is wave their magic wand and cause the electrons carrying La Mondaine's login details to propagate at faster-than-light speeds across all our systems, and Physics be damned.
Then we had to get her access to our primary database. I really wish we didn't. The things she's likely to do to it are the kind of things that made Skynet go bad, and while out our database might lack the capacity to start a nuclear war (as far as we know), it does have the ability to wipe all our software license records and recovering from that will make snacking on tumour-ridden mutant rats in a post-nuclear wasteland look like a picnic (albeit a picnic of two-headed, eight-eyed cancer rats). But I digress.
While one of the techs came around to configure the database client for her, she began wanting to know where the instructions were for setting up the old database. The old old database. She was here when the current incarnation was being phased in, was shown that we use a more highly-developed version of the same, and so should know the old one just doesn't exist anymore. Nevertheless, the tech clearly couldn't do his job without instructions that were nearly a decade old and unrelated to anything he'd seen in his time here.
La Mondaine disappeared into our storage room for several minutes and, somehow, emerged with a printed copy of the old instructions. Quite how she managed that ... well, bluntly, I'm f**ked if I know. I'm almost prepared to believe she brought them in from home with her but, more likely, Ted had a copy secreted away someplace in the hope that some day we'd return to the good old days.
She then tried to get access to a service desk tool that the organisation stopped using a few years before she left. More breathless surprise: "But what do you do now?" By now, even the Stress Fiend was starting to sound a little ragged. She showed La Mondaine the current service desk tool (only eight versions behind the current version and counting!) but emphasised that La Mondaine wouldn't be expected to deal with anything in there.
"But what if-"
"No. You won't need to."
"But we used to - with the old system, I used to - "
No. No, you don't touch that. Ever. I don't care what you used to do in the past, we don't work that way anymore. I will personally raze this building - this whole organisation - to the ground before I let you have access to any more systems than are strictly necessary.
So two days with La Mondaine filling in for Ted, and I think it's safe to say we've already lost all the gains in productivity - not to mention the lower stress levels - his absence has brought us.Next week the Stress Fiend hopes to turn her loose in our database, telling herself optimistically "She'll be fine once she gets all the old stuff out of her head."
And I agree with her. There's absolutely nothing there that a little trepanation wouldn't fix.
La Mondaine arrived in a state of high excitement, eager to pick up where she'd left years ago, renew old friendships, and throw herself into the exciting social whirlwind that this place is all about (instead of that tedious, pesky "work" stuff that some of us spend our day grappling with).
Thus far it's been a deeply and horrifyingly painful experience. And that's before she's even begun trying to do any work yet. God knows what kind of agony we're in for once she actually has to start engaging her brain in the present rather than just leaving it idling noisily in the past.
(On a related note, I've never been so grateful for the delay in getting someone set up with computer and network access here. It meant she grew bored watching the Stress Fiend work and left early. Technically the Stress Fiend was trying to train her in how things are done these days, but in practice it was like watching someone take their nine-month-old to see Shakespeare: grizzling, intermittent crying fits, and constantly wondering why it's not yet time for the next meal).
Firstly, La Mondaine talks constantly. She's not exceptionally loud - she certainly doesn't boom out the way the Cow-Orker could - but her voice is pitched to penetrate, makes everything sound like a question, and just. doesn't. stop. Perhaps desensitisation will come with time, but for the moment she's impossible to tune out.
And then The Invertebrate decides in an apparent burst of sadism that we'll have a team afternoon tea just so we can have a chat about where things will be going over the next few months. I'd already given this some thought, but wasn't overly surprised when our visions diverged: his, for instance, seems to be a lot lighter on the bloody axes, straitjackets and padded cells that loomed prominently in mine.
The first day went roughly as follows:
"No, that system 's been gone for years, too. The staff club and the Friday afternoon 'lunches'? Well the club's been shut for a couple of years now..." (Coincidentally business declined as the number of hard-drinking oldtimers retired).
"Is this person still here? How about this other person? How about all the other people I wanted to come back to socialise with?"
"You mean you don't leave stuff in the Inbox forever in case someone's on holiday when the email arrives? How do they know every little thing that happened while they weren't here? You still have weekly meetings to discuss every new email that's arrived, don't you?"
By day two she was repeating back to us as "news" the very things we'd told her the day before: that certain people had left, old systems had been replaced, work practices had changed, etc. Not that this prevented her from reacting to each new example of change with wide-eyed, breathless disbelief and a plaintive cry of "But what do you do now?" ... which was usually her response to having just been told what it was we did now.
Looking back at my increasingly desperate and angry private Tweets from Day Two, I find this:
"Please. F**k off before I have to kill you. Or myself. One of us has to go if you're going to keep this up."
Which pretty much sums up the experience: if gnawing off a limb to escape wasn't enough, and your only only way out was cutting your own head off using a pair of blunt nail scissors, you'd be begging for the opportunity.
Getting her set up with computer access also turned into another adventure in pain. To begin with it was just because it can take a while to get someone set up with all the appropriate email and network access they need.
"Who was that person who used to work here years ago, but isn't around anymore? They'd know what to do!"
Because apparently what they'd do is wave their magic wand and cause the electrons carrying La Mondaine's login details to propagate at faster-than-light speeds across all our systems, and Physics be damned.
Then we had to get her access to our primary database. I really wish we didn't. The things she's likely to do to it are the kind of things that made Skynet go bad, and while out our database might lack the capacity to start a nuclear war (as far as we know), it does have the ability to wipe all our software license records and recovering from that will make snacking on tumour-ridden mutant rats in a post-nuclear wasteland look like a picnic (albeit a picnic of two-headed, eight-eyed cancer rats). But I digress.
While one of the techs came around to configure the database client for her, she began wanting to know where the instructions were for setting up the old database. The old old database. She was here when the current incarnation was being phased in, was shown that we use a more highly-developed version of the same, and so should know the old one just doesn't exist anymore. Nevertheless, the tech clearly couldn't do his job without instructions that were nearly a decade old and unrelated to anything he'd seen in his time here.
La Mondaine disappeared into our storage room for several minutes and, somehow, emerged with a printed copy of the old instructions. Quite how she managed that ... well, bluntly, I'm f**ked if I know. I'm almost prepared to believe she brought them in from home with her but, more likely, Ted had a copy secreted away someplace in the hope that some day we'd return to the good old days.
She then tried to get access to a service desk tool that the organisation stopped using a few years before she left. More breathless surprise: "But what do you do now?" By now, even the Stress Fiend was starting to sound a little ragged. She showed La Mondaine the current service desk tool (only eight versions behind the current version and counting!) but emphasised that La Mondaine wouldn't be expected to deal with anything in there.
"But what if-"
"No. You won't need to."
"But we used to - with the old system, I used to - "
No. No, you don't touch that. Ever. I don't care what you used to do in the past, we don't work that way anymore. I will personally raze this building - this whole organisation - to the ground before I let you have access to any more systems than are strictly necessary.
So two days with La Mondaine filling in for Ted, and I think it's safe to say we've already lost all the gains in productivity - not to mention the lower stress levels - his absence has brought us.Next week the Stress Fiend hopes to turn her loose in our database, telling herself optimistically "She'll be fine once she gets all the old stuff out of her head."
And I agree with her. There's absolutely nothing there that a little trepanation wouldn't fix.
21 July, 2010
Housekeeping, grave-robbing and a bit of history.
So we're now several weeks into Ted's gentle cruise into retirement and (hopefully) out of my life. More on that eventually when I start to work through the backlog, but it hasn't actually been as bad as I'd feared.
It's worse. Oh, how it's worse.
A little over a year ago, The Invertebrate decided to let our one useful and competent team member go when their contract ran out. This was someone who could simultaneously perform both Ted's and the Stress Fiend's jobs to a higher standard than they could, and still have time to find ways to correct historical errors and fix broken processes; clearly, we just couldn't tolerate someone like that on our team especially when they did irresponsible things like recovering close to $100,000 in missing revenue.
I'm still in touch with them, and when I shared the happy news that Ted finally looked like he was moving on, they mentioned they'd be interested in some part-time work during that same period. On paper, it was a win/win situation: they get some work that suits the hours they're after, and we get someone who doesn't need to be trained from scratch, and we know we can rely on.
I broached the idea with The Invertebrate. He doesn't know about his nickname, but seems determined to defend it to the death and rejected the idea on the basis that:
Okay, perhaps that's a little harsh. On the other hand, after the last couple of days dealing with La Mondaine, I don't feel it's entirely undeserved.
In the closing years of the last century, this organisation was a very different place. The team leader had a crazy and morale-destroying obsession with trivial details, true, but this was offset by an organisational culture that celebrated long social lunches, lunchtime drinks, crashing as many vendors' Christmas parties as possible, and so on (somewhat paradoxically, the OCD team leader led the charge on all these). It was a happier, chattier, boozier time when the boundaries between work and social life bled into one another.
Personally I'd have hated it, but I think it's fairly well-established by now that I don't socialise well with certain kinds of people. But this was the environment La Mondaine lived and breathed in her time here.
Then came The Dawn of The Ted. To La Mondaine, the arrival of Ted E. quickly turned into a struggle of Darwinian proportions, as they competed to see who could be the most obsessive about insignificant details, the most strident in demanding that every conceivable contingency be thoroughly analysed and documented ... and the most bloody inefficient at actually doing their job. La Mondaine was outclassed when it came to simple bloody-minded treachery and malfeasance, though, and eventually opted for early retirement rather than deal with Ted on a daily basis.
And yet... she couldn't bring herself to say good-bye to the poisoned social ties of the workplace. Soon she came back as one of the small horde of casuals the old team leader loved to have around, and the old battles began anew, just in time for me to start working here. The weekly team meetings with Ted, La Mondaine, the old Team Leader were nightmarishly epic three-hour affairs where the three would bicker and argue and "But what if...?" endlessly while the rest of our large and unwieldy team would break into small protective huddles to work on pet projects under cover of the storm.
(This, incidentally, is Ted's fondly-remembered Golden Age).
Eventually La Mondaine couldn't take anymore. Ted continued to outflank her by virtue of simple ambient toxicity, and after a series of increasingly explosive exchanges with the old Team Leader she resigned for a second time in a dramatic huff, and a couple of us were finally able to get on with cleaning up all the mistakes she'd made in the database.
Now, with the old Team Leader long gone and Ted ambling slowly off into the sunset, she's realised once again that she misses the social life here and that it's time to stage yet another come back.She's remained in touch with the Stress Fiend throughout, the Stress Fiend pointed her at The Invertebrate ... and the rest is history. The kind of history you'd like to see expunged from the books. The kind that makes you want to send Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time to perform some selective adjustments.
But more on that later. La Mondaine has returned, and within two days she's already made Ted appear ... not exactly as the lesser of two evils, but certainly the more subtle.
There's also a punchline to all of this. La Mondaine is only interested in working casually, part-time, and probably only short-term (especially as reality begins to sink in) and we still have no longer-term fix for our staffing problems. The Invertebrate's solution is to find yet another casual that we'll need to train up from scratch, and then rotate them, La Mondaine and Ted E. through the week. If The Invertebrate deliberately set out to maximise the amount of confusion and inefficiency within the team, he couldn't have come up with a better plan.
It's worse. Oh, how it's worse.
A little over a year ago, The Invertebrate decided to let our one useful and competent team member go when their contract ran out. This was someone who could simultaneously perform both Ted's and the Stress Fiend's jobs to a higher standard than they could, and still have time to find ways to correct historical errors and fix broken processes; clearly, we just couldn't tolerate someone like that on our team especially when they did irresponsible things like recovering close to $100,000 in missing revenue.
I'm still in touch with them, and when I shared the happy news that Ted finally looked like he was moving on, they mentioned they'd be interested in some part-time work during that same period. On paper, it was a win/win situation: they get some work that suits the hours they're after, and we get someone who doesn't need to be trained from scratch, and we know we can rely on.
I broached the idea with The Invertebrate. He doesn't know about his nickname, but seems determined to defend it to the death and rejected the idea on the basis that:
- the Stress Fiend would feel threatened;
- the Stress Fiend won't give up any of the workload she can't handle, and won't relinquish control over any of it. Especially not to someone she knows will do it better;
- the Stress Fiend will be unhappy if we have someone who doesn't just see where things are broken, but actively works on coming up with and implementing solutions;
- the Stress Fiend doesn't want to work with someone more competent and capable of delivering all the changes she claims to be working on and would have had ready except someone else always finds a way to ruin things for her (curse those meddling kids!).
Okay, perhaps that's a little harsh. On the other hand, after the last couple of days dealing with La Mondaine, I don't feel it's entirely undeserved.
In the closing years of the last century, this organisation was a very different place. The team leader had a crazy and morale-destroying obsession with trivial details, true, but this was offset by an organisational culture that celebrated long social lunches, lunchtime drinks, crashing as many vendors' Christmas parties as possible, and so on (somewhat paradoxically, the OCD team leader led the charge on all these). It was a happier, chattier, boozier time when the boundaries between work and social life bled into one another.
Personally I'd have hated it, but I think it's fairly well-established by now that I don't socialise well with certain kinds of people. But this was the environment La Mondaine lived and breathed in her time here.
Then came The Dawn of The Ted. To La Mondaine, the arrival of Ted E. quickly turned into a struggle of Darwinian proportions, as they competed to see who could be the most obsessive about insignificant details, the most strident in demanding that every conceivable contingency be thoroughly analysed and documented ... and the most bloody inefficient at actually doing their job. La Mondaine was outclassed when it came to simple bloody-minded treachery and malfeasance, though, and eventually opted for early retirement rather than deal with Ted on a daily basis.
And yet... she couldn't bring herself to say good-bye to the poisoned social ties of the workplace. Soon she came back as one of the small horde of casuals the old team leader loved to have around, and the old battles began anew, just in time for me to start working here. The weekly team meetings with Ted, La Mondaine, the old Team Leader were nightmarishly epic three-hour affairs where the three would bicker and argue and "But what if...?" endlessly while the rest of our large and unwieldy team would break into small protective huddles to work on pet projects under cover of the storm.
(This, incidentally, is Ted's fondly-remembered Golden Age).
Eventually La Mondaine couldn't take anymore. Ted continued to outflank her by virtue of simple ambient toxicity, and after a series of increasingly explosive exchanges with the old Team Leader she resigned for a second time in a dramatic huff, and a couple of us were finally able to get on with cleaning up all the mistakes she'd made in the database.
Now, with the old Team Leader long gone and Ted ambling slowly off into the sunset, she's realised once again that she misses the social life here and that it's time to stage yet another come back.She's remained in touch with the Stress Fiend throughout, the Stress Fiend pointed her at The Invertebrate ... and the rest is history. The kind of history you'd like to see expunged from the books. The kind that makes you want to send Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time to perform some selective adjustments.
But more on that later. La Mondaine has returned, and within two days she's already made Ted appear ... not exactly as the lesser of two evils, but certainly the more subtle.
There's also a punchline to all of this. La Mondaine is only interested in working casually, part-time, and probably only short-term (especially as reality begins to sink in) and we still have no longer-term fix for our staffing problems. The Invertebrate's solution is to find yet another casual that we'll need to train up from scratch, and then rotate them, La Mondaine and Ted E. through the week. If The Invertebrate deliberately set out to maximise the amount of confusion and inefficiency within the team, he couldn't have come up with a better plan.
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