On writing notes, and knowing when not to ask questions

The Invertebrate tries to slip away quietly for lunch, but makes the mistake of saying so aloud.

"Oh," says Ted, looking up from where he's busy scribbling away at something, "I was writing you a note."

(Notes are Ted's latest way of trying to pass a problem on to someone else without giving them the opportunity to pass it back to them. He waits until their back is turned, slips it on to their desk and then runs away. If they don't notice, he'll mention it as he slinks out the door in the afternoon. His notes appear without any kind of context or explanation, so I routinely ignore them. The Invertebrate is still a bit further back on the learning curve.)

The Invertebrate pauses. "What was it about?"

Ted realises the by telling someone he's writing them a note, he's just undermined his own strategy.

"Oh. Oh, nothing. You go to lunch. It can wait."

The Invertebrate persists. "It's okay, I'm not gonna starve. Shoot."

"Um, I'm still finishing the note."

"You don't need to write a note. Just tell me."

"I'll tell you while I write." 

The Invertebrate soon wishes he was starving to death, because it has to be preferable to what follows.

Even under optimal conditions Ted's writing is slow and incoherent. Worse, he's even less capable of multi-tasking than most people: he can't talk any faster than he writes and, if he tries to utter aloud, any word other than the one he's in the process of writing, his brain breaks and he has to pause and start again.

After many stops and starts (punctuated by increasingly indignant growls from The Invertebrate's stomach) Ted's note boils down to this: one client has placed the same request seven times over the last working day.  Ted doesn't understand why. Rather than ring the client to see what they're doing, he wants The Invertebrate to do it for him.

The Invertebrate, broken by the ordeal, agrees to do so and staggers off to lunch. Surprisingly, he actually comes back afterward.

Not our usual vendor spam

I think our spam filters must have fallen over during the night, because in amongst all the legitimate email (which, honestly, is a misleading way of looking at it given how little meaningful content there is in any of it) there are a couple of gems of internet marketing.

Really, who wouldn't be persuaded by the offerings like "Love Tsunami!", "Forces donger to go up" (although, on reflection, that seems like it might be potentially painful for all concerned) and "Bulldozer lovepower" (even if that last one sounds like something a Japanese cartoon character would should during a fight scene)?

Amusing as these are, though, I just wish Ted would stop using the group email address to log into adult websites.

Glimmerings of sentience

"Can you have a look at this email template I've drafted?" *

(Translation: "Even I can see I don't know what I'm talking about here. Please don't let me put my name to this.")

---

* "Drafted" in this case means "Cut-and-pasted together from the previous year's email he's trying to emulate, without actually knowing what any of it was about or trying to update the information, and with no attempt to correct the crazy format changes wrought by the combination of Ted and Lotus Notes", so obviously I'm using the term pretty loosely. Ted, I suspect, isn't.

Pushing the envelope

I think Ted may have genuinely broken new ground this morning. One of the admin staff asked Ted if we had a shredder they could use. He obligingly showed her where it is, before deliving the following disclaimer:

"But I don't really understand how it works. I think it might need electricity or something, so it might need to be switched on first. I don't know."

Even in a jellyfish, this would clearly be self-parody. With Ted, though ... 

Welcome to Monday

Whoever implemented our HR system here was clearly touched by genius ... in the sense that a genius armed with a sack of pig iron bludgeoned them about the head when they saw what was proposed, before hurling themselves through a third-floor window to escape the madness.

It makes me wonder if Ted E. is moonlighting as an HR sysadmin.

*****

Can you spot the difference?

What Ted says: "Oh, we're not bothering about being compliant with that anymore."

What Ted means: "We have blanket coverage for that software and don't need to track individual installations anymore."

I'm actually a little disappointed he said that to one of the techs and not a supplier, though. That could have been amusing.

Turning into one of those days

The Stress Fiend celebrates another week of her return to full-time work by not coming in again. I think she might have managed one full week since the start of the year but don't quote me on that.

---

Fortunately we still have Ted here to fill the breach. Unfortunately it's only in the Henry V "close the wall up with our English dead!" way.

"Invertebrate, I've got a voicemail message here you might want to have a look at." (Yes, I know).

"Did you want to transfer it through to my phone, then?" (He knows that otherwise Ted will just - eventually - repeat it to him, full of errors)  "No, wait! What's it about?"

Too late. Ted happily transfers the call.  About two mintues after that he finally answers: "I just thought it was a weird one, and you might like to have a listen to see how you want to handle it."

The Invertebrate duly checks his voicemail. "The one that just asks can we give him a call back in an hour, but doesn't say who they are or what their number is? That one?"

Ted is either blissfully unaware of the underlying echoes of disbelief in the Invertebrate's voice or, more likely, assumes it's disbelief at the message, rather than the fact Ted just wasted several minutes of his time while he's dealing with a political bunfight that's erupted in the last fortnight and shows no signs of abating soon.

"Yes, yes... That's the one. Some people just know how to waste our time, don't they?"

Ted E. does not compute.

Ted's still struggling with the idea that a local support-oriented database isn't the same as the HR database that underpins most of the organisation. Kicking things off, he starts tormenting our long-suffering database developer for answers, and they've reminded him yet again they don't work in that area, can't tell him why it behaves in certain ways, and that he needs to direct those kind of questions towards the team that manage that system. I think the number of times he's been told this is now well into triple figures.

The Invertebrate's turn comes next: "I need an explanation for this."

The Invertebrate tries futiley to give the same explanation he's given Ted a couple of dozen times before (here, for instance) but quickly, if unsurprisingly, hits the infamous Ted E. brick wall.

"Wait, wait. Sorry, Ted, you've lost me. How does what you're showing me now relate to the problem you're having?"

"Oh, it doesn't. This is something else."

The Invertebrate limps away from the conversation after, in effect, telling Ted to try using his brain a little.

Ted decides that's a fool's game, and finally rings the team he should have called months ago for some answers about this. Luck or foresight were on their side, however (alternatively, and equally plausibly, they may have been trying frantically to stave off a system crash), and he had to content himself with leaving a petulant message.

I'm not optimistic they'll call him back, though. Any call that whines "I want to know how this works", without actually stating whether there's any reason other than idle curiosity tends to settle at the bottom of the call-back list.

Sometimes it's too easy

For a variety of reasons we don't support Windows Vista here. In hindsight this seems like an especially obvious decision to make but, in reality, it owes more to extended procrastination by senior management afraid to make a decision one way or the other.

In Ted's world, this means that Vista doesn't exist. (I imagine there a lot of people who'd like to live in that world, too, but they should bear in in mind they'd be sharing it with Ted). So when a relatively important client calls with problems with a software installation on their home computer, and the increasingly desperate support person calls my area looking for advice, Ted manages to combine a little bit of knowledge (overhearing me mention some Vista users were having trouble with this particular piece of software) with ontological anxiety when, first, he tells the support tech that "Oh, they must be using Vista!" and then realises he's entered paradox country and starts to babble down the phone.

"Oh, wait. There isn't any Vista. They can't be running it, because no-one has it. But if no-one has it, how can people be having problems with it? Uhhh... I'm going to transfer you to someone else now."

From the "I know it shouldn't surprise me, but..." file

Ted E. has a really unique way of looking at the world. Well, I'd like to think it's unique but it almost certainly isn't. However he's the only person I know who does this.

We're under some political pressure at the moment to justify the way we operate. This has come about because the way we work was dictated to us by senior management several years ago and we haven't been allowed to deviate from it since. In the lastyear or so, though, virtually every level of management from this unit's team leader up to the director and his boss has resigned or moved on, and now no-one knows why we're forced to work this way. But they still won't let us change, or provide us with the resources we need to operate differently.

The Invertebrate has been asked to prepare a brief, large-print explanation of what we do, how we do it, and why we do it the way we do. What we really need for this is to dig through The Morass and find documentation from the upper echelons explaining this.

Ted, on the other hand, has decided that what we need are the semi-literate* email templates he sends to suppliers saying, in effect, "We buy stuff for this organisation, and we're special, so you should give us cheap prices", because they'll demonstrate to the higer powers that we operate this way because that's the way.

The Invertebrate makes a foolish attempt to explain that what he needs is something official from our management showing the rules their predecessors have laid down.

"But this is official. We send this to suppliers. Look, I even have a shortcut that will past it into an email automatically."**

"We write it, and it's automated. It doesn't get much more official than that!"  [paraphrasing]

The Invertebrate has had a rough couple of weeks and folds quickly. "Err, yeah, Ted. Thanks for that."

Ted all but wags his tail and goes back to drinking out of the toilet.

---

* I think they manage to be semi-literate by virture of being based on an original written several years ago by someone else, which Ted E. has been attempting to plagiarise ever since.

** This isn't a bit of technical cleverness on Ted's part. It's the result of some crap little piece of software that the unit tried to use in lieu of actually documenting how things needed to be done or using actual template stationery. Ted's the only one still using it, because it ended up being so over-used that no-one knows the two thousand different keyboard combinations needed to insert the right text (and because a combination like Shift-S causes it to embed a chunk of irrelevant text right into the middle of whatever you're typing. Ted doesn't use punctuation or capitalisation at all, so this problem never affects him), and no-one ever documented what the various combinations are.

Instant nastiness

"I'm not a technical person," says the creature who's only technically a person.

Who supports the support staff?

Oh, it looks like he's decided to cram in as much as he can before he goes. A passing phone-support tech was on a desperate run for coffee when Ted stopped just short of physically dragging him to the phone to help one of our clients that Ted (unsurprisingly) was struggling with.

"My coffee break!" gasps the increasingly desperate tech when he finally manages to escape the phone call, "It's almost over! You're killing me, man!"

He makes a break for the door.

"Wait up," calls Ted, "I'll come with you." And vanishes yet again.

Unconfirmed rumours

The Stress Fiend (who has yet to manage a full working week since returning to full-time duties and is already claiming mounting levels of stress) tells me that Ted E. will be going part-time from the middle of the year (will anyone notice?) and then retiring at the end of they year.

Around ten minutes after this, Ted trundles in over an hour after his advertised starting time without a word, turns his computer on, and goes wandering off someplace for over half an hour.

I don't want to get my hopes up until I hear something a bit more definite or authoritative, but there have been a growing number of hints that something like this might be coming.

Of course if it does happen I'll be at a bit of a loss for material to write about, but I'm sure my organisation can solve that by poaching the idiot from some other village.

Idiot Season has started early this year, I see.

Some clients have a singular talent for asking the most staggeringly inane questions that leave you wanting to do nothing more than beat them about the head with a sack of bricks.

"Why is the information you sent me in this email different from the information you sent me in the previous one?"

Because, you misbegotten wretch, you told us the information in the previous one didn't seem to be correct. We checked into it, found that was the case, and sent you the correct details.  And if that still wasn't enough of a clue as to why they were different, the explanation at the start of the second email should have been a hint.

A normal person might be content to attain that level of stupidity or, at least, rest on their laurels for a few hours. Not this individual, however. He then follows it up with a phone call minutes later to repeat the question, trapping Ted E. on the phone for many long minutes (demonstrating again that it's an ill wind that blows no good), before being passed through to me with another riddle for the ages.

"This email I've received about these external training courses... there are prices listed next to them. Does that mean they cost money?"

Yes. Yes, it does.

"So that means they're not free, then?"

Advertised starting times are approximate only

Ted always likes to maintain that he starts at 8am or earlier every day. It's part of his justification for leaving early on Fridays, and one of the excuses he uses for accumulating ludicrous amounts of flex time considering how much work he actually does during those hours of seat warming.

I know from when I was acting as team leader that he lies on his timesheets, because I could see the hours he was claiming and I was getting reliable reports from others as to what time he was actually turning up in the morning. And, of course, there were the surly glares I received anytime he arrived and found me already at my desk. That was probably the last time he had to at least be at his desk during the hours he claimed.

I arrived early this morning to beat the heat. No Ted. No surprise either, really.

Half an hour after his advertised starting time he finally wanders in, and then promptely disappears for another fifteen minutes to collect a coffee and exchange gossip. Then he calls up the traffic section to report another employee for putting rubbish in a garbage bin. "No, no. I asked them and they said they'd brought it in from home."

He stopped to ask someone where they got their rubbish from. Following a previous conversation where it emerged he stared into his neighbours' houses at night, this surprised me much less than it once might have done.

"Yes, I took their licence plate number down."

Presumably he'll claim the defense of our garbage bins on his timesheet. In fairness, though, it's probably the closest he's come in some time to legitimately doing something for the organisation.

"She brought it in from home, can you believe?" repeats the person who once tried to bring his old computer in from home to dispose of it here because it had a virus.

It would be comforting to dismiss him as a freak of nature, but these days I'm not so sure he is.

Something dimwitted this way comes.

Ted has returned from his month-long holiday and isn't wasting any time. Figuratively speaking, that is:

• Despite being having just come back from holiday, he's already angling for an extra long weekend (a plan that was swiftly sunk when I staked my claim to the day he was eyeing up. Honestly, I was already aiming for that day before he even started checking the calendar for his next day off. Even money says he calls in sick that day now, instead);
  
  
• a client rings up with a problem that they've been having trouble getting someone to look at. It's within Ted's area of responsopility, the fix is easy ... but rather than actually doing anything about it (even with The Invertebrate telling him "It doesn't matter, just fix them up") he begins stalking the area, piece of scrap paper in hand, questioning everyone as to whether they're the ones who left this for him to sort out;
  
  
• another client rings up for some information. Ted pulls out one of his traditional spiels and redirects them to our website (presumably one of the parts he hasn't been in sabotaging) where "you'll be able to read a little story about that". Ted doesn't believe in things as modern as blurbs or information. Everything that relays information in writing is a story to him. Which, really, says some pretty fundamental things about his ambiguous relationship with things like "facts", "truth" and "honesty";
  
  
• offering to take The Invertebrate to coffee to pump him for information on what's been going on while he's been away. The Invertebrate looked hopeful for a second, misinterpreting Ted's Pidgin English invitation as meaning that Ted had some important news for him (you could practically see the "Yippee! He's going to tell me he's retiring!" thought bubble appear over his head until he actually realised what had been said;
  
  
• "Have my duties changed while I was away?" No, Ted, you're still expected to do at least a token amount of work while you're here. You don't get out of them that easily.

Sadly, it's like he never went away. He's now busy combing through everything that everyone else did while he was away looking for things to complain about.

New Year, old tricks.

Today was supposed to be the Stress Fiend's first full week back at work since her breakdown and reduced hours last year.

She's phoned in sick.

Stupidity striving for equilibrium

I don't know what strikes me as more stupid:

• Ted E. sending a series of emails to the same tech asking exactly the same question about several different computers, rather than simply compiling and emailing a list; or
  
• the same tech, without a trace of irony or self-consciousness, sending exactly the same reply to each individual email from Ted.

On the bright side, Ted's now departed for a month's holiday. Finally. He managed to draw it out by doing a grand tour of the office to say good-bye to everyone and tell them the exact date of his return. I'm not sure why, although the smart money is on equal parts stupidity and delusions of grandeur.

Words to strike fear

Without warning, Ted turns to The Invertebrate: "Randy for you, Invertebrate."

There's the office equivalent of crickets and tumbleweed.  Then everyone's brains try to climb out their ears to either flee in horror or roll around the floor in helpless laughter.

Ted, oblivious, waves a telephone handset at The Invertebrate. "It's Randy. From Microsoft*. He wants to talk to you."

Another exercise in communication falls victim to Ted's gift for making context-free statements.

---

*No, really. I'm not making this up. After the phone call was finished, Randy from Microsoft was subjected to much (probably) undeserved mockery.

The struggle of being Ted.

Ted approaches. "I'm taking off early. I've been struggling all day."

Because remembering to breathe in and out can be draining like that.

The Invertebrate comes back from a meeting and notices that there are even fewer people here than usual.

"Where's Ted? Gone already?"

"Yeah.  He said he was "struggling"."

"Struggling? With what? His work? Thinking?"

"I don't know. I wasn't game to ask."

The burden of being Ted

The Stress Fiend is off yet again (she's nominally working three-day weeks at the moment, struggles to manage even that consistently, but refuses to admit that there's a problem) and Ted's treating that and everything else as a personal affront.

He's sulking at the moment after trying to pass a couple of clients off to someone else to deal with, only to have them insist he actually direct them to the right section instead of just forwarding the calls through to the first technically-minded person he has line-of-sight on.

Many great, world-weary sighs ensue.

He's also working hard at feigning ignorance today*, but has already overplayed his hand badly.

The Invertebrate: "That kind of thing needs to go to the tech support guys."

Ted: "Who are the tech support guys?"

The Invertebrate waves his hand absently over the cubicle wall towards the desktop support team who've sat adjoining our area for at least the last five years. "Those guys, Ted. Those guys."

---

* I know, I know. This doesn't seem like something he should have to work at, but he's not content with just lying and saying "I don't know" and always over-reaches and tries to convince people that not only does he not know, he's never known, and has never been given any reason to think that this is something he could reasonably be expected to know or find out about any time in the several years he's been here. It's probably the only aspect of his job where he's actually set the bar too high for himself.