23 March, 2012

Slappable clients: best of breed?

Our clients bewilder me sometimes. Not because they don't seem terribly bright, or even because they're paid decent money to work here. No, it's more a general bewilderment that they're even able to find their way here each day without getting lost or somehow maiming themselves en route.

I have one at the moment who's submitted repeated requests over the last couple of days to have a free upgrade to some very expensive software that he's not actually entitled to. This has been explained to him when his requests have been returned to him, along with a quote for the actual cost of the software he's asked for if that's really what he'd like us to order. He's cancelled each returned request out of hand because he doesn't feel he should have to part with any funds, and then resubmitted exactly the same request. The only changes he's made have been increasingly pompous complaints about the delay and how he's very important and needs it urgently.

The breakthrough came this afternoon when I sent him a lengthy detailed email explaining to him (again) exactly why his previous requests couldn't be processed, why he needs to actually buy the software he's demanding, and outlining exactly what software he's currently entitled to and any related upgrades attached to those. He picks a bit of software only tenuously related to the one he's been demanding for free.

"Yes! Yes, that is exactly the one I want! You've already made me lose a couple of days, so please install it immediately!"

Because it was so very clearly our fault for somehow compelling him to keep ordering the wrong thing and for failing to divine his true purpose...

Housekeeping

Things are a bit hectic right now. Not just because of the impending new job and the rush to get things finished, but because of more planning retreats (there's a story to be told there), management decisions (likewise), Stress Fiend madness (always) and, more seriously, family illness that's leaving me a bit ragged at the moment while I try to juggle everything at once.

Without wishing to blight  my chances of moving to a sane and rational workplace, I can offer this much reassurance to anyone worrying I'll run out of material: this blog came into existence when I moved into a near-identical role in a near-identical government department.

How strong the resemblance turns out to be remains to be seen ... but one of my predecessors here was one of the project managers back on good old Project Death Spiral in the very early days of Blunt Trauma.

06 March, 2012

A modern Library of Alexandra it's not...

We recently endured another morale-boosting, all-of-division meeting where everyone is herded into a function room at an isolated location and made to sit through two hours of Powerpoint presentations explaining why we're all happy and, indeed, can only become happier as we're given more work with fewer resources increasing number of challenges a greater array of opportunities allowing us to show our true greatness.

Internal communication and documenting things people need to know are two or our great weaknesses. They've been consistently identified as such for as long as I've been here, by everyone from senior management down to primitive single-cell organisms like Ted E. We're now on to at least the third project I can recall that's meant to address this, and Gimli stumps up to the podium and peers over the top to announce the latest milestone.

"Sharepoint!" He announces triumphantly. "It's here, it's live, and you should all be using it!"

On the one hand this isn't new. We've been hearing "Sharepoint is coming!" for so long now even the dim-witted northerners from Game Of Thrones would have grown weary at the repetition. On the other, the fact that it's live and has (apparently) been available for use for some time was a minor revelation for everyone gathered.

"This is what it looks like!"

Gimli, like his Powerpoint presentations, talks in short! emphatic! points! and he clicks through to a couple of screenshots so we can marvel at it. He has to use screenshots because, having gone off-site - waaay off-site - for this meeting, we don't have a reliable and secure network connection to the live system to let him actually show it to us.

"You can upload photos of yourself!"

- click -

"You can update your staff profile, and list all your skills! This will let other staff can badger you directly about things! Rather than going through the proper channels that will let you have some pretense of control over your workload!"

(Okay, I may have expanded on one of his points a little there...)

- click -

"Sharepoint! It's live! Use it!"

That was a month ago. I've checked into it periodically in the hope that something has happened to make it useful, as there's a pressing need in my team for someplace to store documentation that isn't The Morass. Sadly, no. At this point it's only an unsuccessful and ugly attempt to imitate Facebook in the belief that this will somehow make work fun. I'm expecting some subtle vandalism to start creeping in on people's profile pages before too much longer.

But at least it provides a fresh to that age-old question: "What if we built a social network and nobody came?"

The previous answer, of course, being "Google +".

I don't think a glib title can cover this.

It's been an exciting couple of weeks. We finally received permission to advertise outside our organisation for someone to replace Ted so we could stop operating in perpetual crisis mode after two years. Then our director, after approving the ad and allowing it to run, got a bad case of cold feet and decided to put the whole thing on hold without actually seeing fit to mention this to The Invertebrate, who only found out when HR called him to ask him what he'd like to do about the applications already received.

The Invertebrate took a couple of days to calm down, and then broke the news to me and the Stress Fiend: "... and he's decided he wants to review how we work to see if we can get by without that extra person."

The Stress Fiend snarled and frothed bile. I was a little more phlegmatic and, honestly, I really can't say it came as a particular surprise. I was unhappy enough to cast my periodic job-search a little wider than usual and followed up possibilities a little more thoroughly and, in a brilliant stroke of timing, now have a new job that I start in a few weeks. The Invertebrate is both stressed and pleased; stressed for obvious reasons, but pleased for me (and he seems entirely genuine in this) and with the timing, coming as it does as pretty much a direct reply to the director's decision to make life harder for us than it already was.

(I should note that I think a review is a actually a good thing, but the time to do it was two years ago when Ted announced his departure plans, not now when everyone in the team has been worn ragged. On the other hand, I'm also deeply cynical about the outcome of the review and suspect that any answer other than "No, they don't need another staff member" will be strongly unwelcome).

But that's all by way of providing some context. Since it was confirmed last week I'd be leaving, the Stress Fiend has started to become even more obviously deranged. This morning was a kind of Stress Fiend tour de force.

She opened the day with the traditional rant about the corporate GMail account, how she misses Lotus Notes, and how much she hates anything new that's been introduced in the last twelve months. Nothing out of the ordinary. But then a workmate passed through and somehow set her off on a rant about prisoners, the injustice of them having actual rights, and the many hedonistic pleasures they enjoy in their luxurious, all-expenses-paid accommodation.

There was a brief lull where she paused her diatribe long enough to vapourise the irony-meter by stating loudly and angrily that ""if you do nothing but sit and bitch and complain all the time, no wonder you're never happy."

I don't know who this was directed at. She's like an AM talkback station given human form and turned loose in the world.

Leaving that odd interruption aside, from prisoners it was only a short journey to how the real problem is those infamous "kids today". And, naturally, their parents. And a lack of respect for other people and themselves. The Stress Fiend is only a few years older than me, but sometimes - most times - it's like working alongside an angry and addled octogenarian who wishes time could have been frozen in the golden age of their teenage years (when, presumably, they were the Kids Today, but a better class of Kids Today. They just don't make Kids Today like they used to in the old days.)

Then her capacity for any kind of sustained thought seemed to break down again, and first she began addressing the air: "We made jelly on the weekend. And now we need to make some more. We love jelly. Mmm. Jelly. Jelly! Jel-ly! Jellyjellyjelly ... mwahhh!"

And then she sat making wookie noises at her computer before going to buy some Pepsi so she could come back and rant about how awful it is (the taste having failed to alter mysteriously since she last drank some a few days ago) and how the Coke filling the drinks cabinet but which she chose not to have tastes so much better in every way.

(To be fair, there was some method to her madness in this case: she's trying to drink all the Pepsi so that the manager of another team who consumes it regularly and often will run out and get angry at the people responsible for keeping the fridge stocked.)

The rest of the day passed in a kind of  blur for me as I tried to switch off higher brain functions and lose myself in documenting stuff so the remnants of my team have some idea of what I do all day other than try to cling to my sanity.