Snapshots

Between a slew of public holidays and simple workload, I've been a bit remiss in updates for the last few weeks. So here are some snapshots of recent events, culled and compiled from random howls of despair into the abyss that is Twitter:


Something In The Air

• On learning that a friend's career-pathing documentation is being recommended for use across similar organisations nationwide: "Does it include an option advising staff to just shoot themselves in the head if they work here? Also: congratulations. Plus, I appear to be having a morale problem today."
• My cynicism appears to be expanding to occupy the morale vacuum.
• Internal email: onoz! The evil smokerz have breached the organisation's security perimeter and, more importantly, organisational policy! (Possibly it's actually the smell of burning morale, in which case I'm probably to blame.)
• This bodes well: Lotus Notes couldn't even launch this morning without falling over and dying.
• Really, why am I providing tech support for home-use installations on peoples' personal PCs? It's an endemic problem amongst clients, desktop support, and my teammates: the organisation's official policy is "Home Use Is Good", but no-one actually wants to provide the resources to support it. It's all part of the warm, fuzzy aura of enabling staff development while allowing them to work unpaid using their own resources.
• Cynicism buffer has now melted.
• Lotus Notes fail! Haven't had one of those in, oooh, nearly 15 working hours... That must be some kind of record!
• "Mailfile has failed over" ... really, that's a phrase that should just never appear in any software interface for any reason.

Team Efforts

• Client: "It says I can use this software on my home computer, too, but I can't get it to run."
  La Mondaine: "Try installing the newer version on your work PC. That will help."
  Client: "WTF?"
• "LONG TIME NO HEAR!" the Stress Fiend bellows down the phone. Yes, I'm sure it will be...
• Stress Fiend says: "I'm going to lunch now."
  Stress Fiend means: "I'm going to dither for the next hour while you starve to death."
• Team planning day of doom awaits. Send rescue teams... Or airstrikes if rescue teams are unavailable.
• Feel slightly grubby at being the one who came up with the team's mission statement today.
• Experiencing the traditional start-of-week horror that I may end up on the same bus to work as La Mondaine.
• Oh, and it's just me covering all the operational stuff again today. Really, for all the opportunity I have to actually do my job they'd be better just scrapping my position and replacing me with one and a half grunts.
• You know, this whole "Let's not hire competent replacement staff" thing is really starting to wear a bit thin...
• As amusing as La Mondaine with no voice is in principle, it would still be nice to have someone else here to answer the phone.
• Thank you, subhuman teammates, for once more deciding that rather than choose the simple way, you'll try the complex, breakable way first.
• Has anyone else noticed how much despair sounds like bitterness?

Clients: A Superstitious And Cowardly Lot

• Dear client: how about instead of asking me what lies at the other end of that link on our website, you click it and find out. It's only a URL, after all, not a wormhole through space and time.
• Silly client. Of course if you give me the wrong email address you aren't going to get the stuff I send you...
• "No, sir, I'm afraid your version of MacOS has actually become more obsolete in the last year rather than less. Yes, I'm afraid it was very much on the cards that this was going to happen."
• No, you idiot client - just because you've added something to a shopping cart doesn't mean you've actually submitted an order.
• "The clients don't know which version of the software suits their computer at home." If they can't even use Google to check some basic information about their own property, why are we letting them log in to our systems?