Welcome to Schadenfreude, population: me

Muah-hah-hah.

The Invertebrate is trying to explain something to Ted E. and getting the full "it's change and I don't want to know about it" treatment, mixed in with a healthy dose of "everything you say is invalid because you spelled one word incorrectly".

Oh, and there's been a late addition: "yes, that's always been broken, but it's how we've always done it so I don't think we should fix it".

Well I'm enjoying it, at least.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and the Surreal

Good: I have an ongoing position for the first time in nearly four years, and on a slightly higher pay scale.

Bad: it's here.

Ugly: we can't afford to keep the team member I most want to keep when their contract runs out.

Surreal: we can afford to keep Ted E. and the Stress Fiend.

"The good news is you have twenty-four hours to live. The bad news is I forgot to tell you yesterday."

The BSAA's best friend.

Ted E. noticed I've tried to limit his capacity to give the go-ahead to install extra copies of software we're not entitled to.

"Yes," he says, "I thought there was something suspicious about those numbers, but I checked with The Invertebrate and he said it was okay to go ahead with rolling them out and charging clients for them."

What was especially discouraging is that while this was exactly the kind of thing Ted E. routinely trots out to justify doing something he knows he shouldn't (and is lying most of the time), I wasn't convinced The Invertebrate wouldn't have said just that because he wasn't clear on what was really happening. Ted E., after all, has a knack for presenting only one side of a situation. 

Which raises the interesting hypothetical: What would he be writing about me if he had the technical competence to maintain a blog? 

"todayy Someone made changes w/out checking w'me first  I do not think Someone shuld be doing this, & i do not like them."

But anyway... I checked with The Invertebrate afterwards and he was appropriately horrified. Unfortunately the horror had diminished somewhat by the time he caught up with Ted E. and there were no real repercussions, but he's more aware now of why people want to beat Ted E. away with a stick when he comes near their work.

Some context

And while I'm being unmotivated, here's how The Invertebrate earned his name.

There was a process change I was trying to implement last year while I was Acting Team Leader.  It made my role easier, it made the role of the person placing purchase orders easier, it addressed some of the horrible legacy issues we're suffering with inventory and accounts, had no impact on the clients, and no impact on Ted E.'s job.

Naturally he fought it tooth and nail, because "That's not how we used to do it".  In fact it was ... kind of.  It hadn't been done properly or consistently, but it was being done.  Ted E. dug his heels in further, claiming there was a four-year-old written process explaining how it should be done, and that, by god, was how we should be doing it.

(When I finally found this apparent Holy Grail of business processes - it was carefully hidden - it turned out to be a poorly written scrawl by Ted E. about he handles a superficially similar situation that wasn't remotely applicable).

We went ahead with the change anyway ("It doesn't affect me and I don't like it" didn't cut it as a valid objection) and began phasing it in, letting natural attrition cycle out the older models.  Then The Invertebrate was appointed, and Ted E. ramped up his "It's not how we did it in the old days" spiel and turned it into a major drama production at the next team meeting. Fortunately he'd telegraphed what he was up to, so I had time to prepare my arguments (again) for why the change was useful and necessary and had no impact on Ted E.

The team meeting went reasonably well as a result: Ted E. blustered, waved his printed copy of his process, and stabbed his notepad with his biro while loudly declaring "We have a process!"  The Invertebrate wavered towards my suggestion, agreed that he could see the value and the sense in it, and seemed surprised and relieved that I had no problem with Ted E.'s process when it was applied to the appropriate situation.  Ted E. got louder and more hysterical.

The next day, The Invertebrate complained to another team member about having to make a decision.  "They both dug their heels in.  If one of them doesn't back down I'll have to decide what to do."  Which didn't earn him a lot of sympathy: he's the team leader, so his job is to make decisions based on what he thinks is in the interests of the team's ability to perform its role, not on the basis of which of his team members proves the most pigheaded.

I wrote a four-page business case outling my suggestion, it's pros and cons, implementations, risks, etc.  Ted E. continued the "I don't like it, it's not like the old days" diatribe and circulated the same copy of his irrelevant half-page how-to instructions.  Two of the team members were strongly in favour of the change, one was happy with it, and only actively opposed it.

The Invertebrate procrastinated.

 

After several weeks, he sent an email from home announcing his decision. He prefaced his verdict by stating that he understood the team was polarised on this issue (where "polarised" = "everyone affected is in favour; the one person unaffected is fanatically opposed"), and that the best solution was to make no decision at all for a few more months until the position I've been acting in on a series of fixed-term contracts was filled on an ongoing basis. At which point ... I don't know, maybe the successful applicant would make the problem go away by agreeing with everything Ted E. said to avoid further outbursts of middle-aged male hysterics.

Up until this point the Team Leader had struck me as wavering and very uncertain of his job and what it entailed.  Taking over a month to produce an email of such spinelessness and unwillingness to make a decision that might anger the psychopath-in-residence put this well beyond simple wavering and indecision, and so "The Invertebrate" was born. 

And I think even The Invertebrate had reservations about his decisions to make no decision: the email's security settings were set so high that it couldn't be replied to, forwarded, copied, printed or, well, anything really, except read.

And screen-captured, naturally.

But that, ladies and gentlemen, was the point where I decided that even if I applied successfully for my job of the last three years, there was simply no way I could continue working under the Invertebrate.

Crossing the line between cynicism and bitterness

*sigh*

Definition of wasting time: developing criteria to use to sort out one of the many ungodly and undocumented processes in our systems here, which Ted E. will oppose on principle because:

1. it's change;
2. it's not how we did things in the old days (which is only half-true - this was done in the old days, but inconsistently and poorly);
3. "I'm concerned we're creating more work for ourselves" (trans. "This means that work I've been trying to make for other people and then blame them for not doing it the way I think it should be done will come back to me to look after and I'll f**k it up";
4. his parents didn't beat him enough as a child.

And the Invertebrate will side with him because:

1. he won't understand the distinctions I'm trying to make (this is a contractual agreement - this is off-the-shelf inventory);
2. Ted E. explains things in simple terms that he can understand. They're also overly-simplistic terms that miss 75% of the salient points, but that's incidental;
3. he doesn't want to make a decision until the senior procurement role is filled, because then someone else will magically make the problem go away for him, presumably by agreeing with everything Ted E. says;
   
4. his parents let him eat too many lead paint chips when he was young.

The burden of history

"Dear software vendor,

"We have some of your highly-specialised and no-doubt-horribly-expensive software installed here, and we're pretty sure someone in the organisation bought it at some point in the past, only we can't find any record of who or when.

"We've also lost the installation media for it although, to be honest, I can't find any record of us ever having received any to begin with (that whole 'cannot find any purchase records'  thing I mentioned). But we must have got it from somewhere and, you know, if we had a CD for it that's almost the same as having a valid licence.

"So would you mind sending me some replacement media? I'm not totally convinced you should, but the previous Team Leader left large, noisy footprints over any internal correspondence related to it, so now everyone believes we ran the whole process and have all the answers even if we don't have the CDs, purchase records, contact details for the business or, well, anything really.

"Regards etc..."

The Slug Trail of Culpability

He had to wait until it was (possibly) my last month here, but he's finally done it: Ted E. has been in tampering with the database again, deleting records, creating and selling phantom software inventory the organisation has no entitlement to deploy ... and this time he's left his fingerprints all over everything, and not mentioned anything of what he was doing to anyone else in the team.

The beauty of it is, I wasn't even looking for any of this: I just stumbled across a couple of things that unfolded into a chain of deletions, arbitrary data editing, and no consultation with the people who were actually responsible for the stuff he was messing with.

I don't have any great hope that he'll get even a token rap over the knuckles for this, but (finally) he's left a trail that's too clear and obvious to be dismissed as simple error or miscommunication, and that he can't just bluster his way out of without digging himself deeper.  So even if I finish here in four weeks (and, oh, do I want to!), I can leave knowing I've put a serious and lasting dent in his pretensions to being an efficient and effective team player.

The Howling

I'm sure he does this on purpose. HP aren't the first company whose name he chronically mispronounces, but it's not like they're a small company, or a new company - they were around for most of last century. Yet somehow, on his planet, they're called Howlett-Packard and appear destined to remain so for eternity...

Team bonding

Despite much noise about the virtues - and indeed the necessity - of the team working together in the same area to improve communication, the Invertebrate has moved like lightning to sieze a temporarily vacant office and has holed up in there*. Without, I might add, bothering to notify the team as a whole, so half of us spent the first part of the day assuming he simply wasn't here.

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* I think he's actually trying to hide from Ted E.  Or else he's run through the same figures I was thinking about on the weekend** and has realised we're completely unsustainable as a business unit and wants someplace private to cry, because he has to make it work.

** Yes, I really was. No, I don't have a life.

Why some people invite violence

"This is something I don't have anything to do with at all, and I don't understand why we do it this way, and don't want to hear about why we do it that way from the people it affects. But I think we should stop doing it, anyway, because I don't understand it and think there's a half-arsed shortcut we can take instead."

"Madness?"

My team are gearing up to start a fight about something that looks to be mostly our fault... We recently had our website redesigned, and there are some issues with the template and structure we were obliged to use, and now it seems the help desk has been instructed to forward any client complaints about this directly to us.

So the Stress Fiend and The Invertebrate are already up in arms at us being held accountable for design decisions that weren't ours to make when I field another call complaining about the eccentric order we've listed stuff in.

I make the mistake of trying to investigate: is this something we can fix, as I suspect it is? Well, yes ... apparently it is. In fact the crazy sequence has been manually configured by the Stress Fiend according to criteria or her own devising ("I'll list things in the order that I think people will know it by, rather than consistently or by its published name").

But we're not going to fix this. Of course not.

No, instead we're going to blame this, too, on the design team and rant angrily and irrationally. We'll also blame the clients, because we were trying to think like them and how dare they not think we think the way we think they think (yes, the logic really is that convoluted).

The Invertebrate has also written a terse and self-righteous email, which he's now congratulating himself on (he likes flame wars with other team leaders, particularly ones he used to have to report to. I think he has some authority issues). And he's instructed the Stress Fiend not to waste any more time correcting the mistakes we were "forced" to make.

The fact I work in the same workspace as these people should in no way be taken to mean that I endorse their madness in any whatsoever.

Oh, get a room...

Conversation between Ted E. and the Invertebrate. With footnotes longer than the actual conversation in order to accomodate all the stupidity and hypocrisy hovering around it.

Ted E.: It must be so hard for you coming into this job when there's so much that needs tidied up and put in order after all these years of things not being done properly.*

The Invertebrate: Yes, yes ... it's been difficult, and I always seem to have so much work to do, and there's just so much to learn.**

Ted E.: But we're making a lot of progress now, though. So many things are finally starting to come together now.*** May I gently sponge your fevered brow, and feed you freshly-peeled grapes, my lord?^

---

* Bizarrely, these years of neglect are the same Golden Age Ted E. likes to reminisce about, when everything was a glowing model of smooth efficiency and simplicity and Ted E. never had to engage his two brain cells because he could always find someone else to pass the problem along to.
** Because, of course, no-one could have foreseen either of those things when taking up a middle-management position in an area you have no experience in whatsoever.
*** Which has nothing to do with the Invertebrate whatsoever, and everything to do with the efforts of a single team member that Ted E. has spent months resisting, and trying to bully and undermine whenever he's thought he could get away with it.
^ Okay, I might have made that bit up.

Unfulfilled ambitions

Walking back from a meeting, and Ted E. reminisces about his childhood for no readily apparent reason: "Did you ever used to tie cotton around the legs of blowflies? That always used to be fun..."

So much becomes clear about his behaviour: he's obviously a frustrated serial killer too shiftless and lazy to ever have moved beyond torturing insects and co-workers.

One more time, with pictures.

Ted E. is having something explained to him for the nth time. The hyper-efficient team member is painstakingly showing him the process for doing something he's constantly complaining about, but stubbornly refuses to learn.

Ted E: "Oh, I'll need to get someone to write this down. It's all very complicated."

Hyper-Efficient Team Member: "I emailed you the workflow last week."

Ted E: "Really?"

Hyper-Efficient Team Member: "Yes. It was the one with all the pictures in it."

Me: [loud snort of laughter quickly turned into a cough]

Hyper-Efficient Team Member: "Oh. Or maybe I sent you the one without pictures by mistake..."

Which is uttered in a tone of such innocent apology that it becomes impossible for me to stay at my desk any longer.

Introducing the semi-functional illiterates

Ted E. is puzzled. He's been sending emails to an automated system rather than the staff who run the automated system, and one of them has finally emailed him back to tell him what he's doing, and why it won't get the kind of results he's hoping for.

They very kindly cc'ed the email to my entire group, which is why I now get to snigger at Ted E.'s expense.

But, as I say, he's puzzled ... and he's had to ask The Invertebrate if he understands what it means. And, if he does, can he please read it again to Ted E. and explain it as he goes.

"Must possess good communication skills..."

The Invertebrate: "It would be good to be able to do this in one foul swoop."

Professionalism: it's overrated anyway...

Paraphrasing ensues.

Email from Ted E. to me personally, cc'ed to the team in general:

1. Is the incomplete, inaccurate, and incoherent form email I cobbled together from copy-and-paste when I wasn't making lolspeak look like Shakespeare okay to send out to clients?
2. Shall we change how we do something I don't like doing and want to find lazy shortcuts for, when none of the reasons we do it this way have changed?
3. Where is the 2009 information for this? I've looked everywhere and it's not there, and no-one tells me anything.
4. Is there anything else I need to know about for 2009?

My reply (to Ted E. and team):

1. No, it wasn't client-friendly, was missing vital information, and looked like it had been plagiarised by the proverbial village idiot with a word-processor. I've written an English-language version that we'll use instead;
2. No, moron;
3. They're exactly in all the places you claimed you looked, and have been for several weeks (thank you Netware Info properties tab). Here are the paths in order to assist your meagre comprehension;
4. I don't know, is there?

I admit, I was greatly attempted to simply refer all these to the Invertebrate and let him agonise about the answers until he could find a car in need of repair ... but if Ted E. thought they were important enough to email to everyone, the least I could do was graciously accept the opportunity to beat him in public.

Creeping cynicism

After a hard morning trying to rewrite someone else's email, the Invertebrate has taken it upon himself to look after my division's transportation and maintenance needs instead. Rather than let the transport people do what they're paid to do and take care of organising spare tyres and replacement fuel caps, the Invertebrate is spending the afternoon zipping about the place buying the parts and delivering them personally.

I'm sure this has nothing whatsoever to do with having no background or experience in the area he's supposed to be managing.

Selling out?

I'm tossing up whether to enable Adsense on this page. Not because I'm particularly money-hungry (although free money is always nice) or because I feel a driving need to irritate people visiting the site.

No, it's because having seen Googe's context-sensitive ads in action, I'm morbidly curious to discover what they'd begin trying to sell people based on the content of my posts.

A quick update

We've reached the point again where I'm feeling mildly guilty about not having updated for a while and figure I should at least make a pretence of keeping this blog alive.

There are a couple of reasons for the silence. One is the ongoing onslaught of Ted E.'s shiftless stupidity has long since passed the point where I can easily make fun of it anymore, and the other has been the destabilising effect of getting a new Team Leader - which means, obviously, that I didn't get that job. If I did, we'd probably still be destabilised (well, Ted E. would, anyway), but at least I'd know why and I'd have some idea of where we were going from here.

I can't actually say I'm disappointed at not being Team Leader. What sane man would regret being denied the unbounded joy of micro-managing Ted E. and the Stress Fiend on a daily basis? Nor can I honestly say that the new Team Leader (henceforth dubbed The Invertebrate, for reasons that will become clear in future posts) doesn't deserve Ted E. as an underling.

So because I'm not feeling particularly bitter about coming a close second for the job*, I'll content myself with saying only this much about the Invertebrate for now:

When you have the complexion and charisma of a freshly-risen zombie, and no background or experience in the field you're now responsible for managing, you'd want a pretty impressive set of transferable skills and management experience to compensate, and the feedback from the interview panel was that he displayed these in abundance.

On paper.

We're hoping (with diminishing optimism) that eventually he'll reveal some of these qualities in his day-to-day performance but, nearly two months into his reign, he's still keeping his brilliance in check. Perhaps he's saving himself for a big start to 2009.

I could ask him, of course, but he's only been at work about half the time since he was appointed.

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* However I'm very pissed off about some of the reasoning that went into it.