The Stress Fiend: "I'm just logging a job for this client so they don't get confused. She just needs some software reinstalled, so should I log it as a reinstallation job, or one to have her computer reimaged?"
"Just as a reinstall."
"But that's not an option."
So why are you asking me as though it is?
04 January, 2011
20 December, 2010
Q: Why do they call it the Silly Season?
A: Because Village Idiot Season confused the Village Idiots.
La Mondaine is trying to do some Christmas shopping while she works and seems surprised when the corporate intranet informs her that the website she's trying to visit is a Restricted URL and continuing may breach the organisation's Code of Conduct.
"Oh! Why did it do that?"
The website? Well, I don't know exactly where she was trying to go, but she was looking for a Playboy housecoat and it's not a big leap to work out what search terms she was using and where they were likely to take her...
La Mondaine is trying to do some Christmas shopping while she works and seems surprised when the corporate intranet informs her that the website she's trying to visit is a Restricted URL and continuing may breach the organisation's Code of Conduct.
"Oh! Why did it do that?"
The website? Well, I don't know exactly where she was trying to go, but she was looking for a Playboy housecoat and it's not a big leap to work out what search terms she was using and where they were likely to take her...
13 December, 2010
Nature only abhors a vacuum because she doesn't have co-workers
Ted E. may be gone but, in a fine example of office Darwinism run amuck, La Mondaine (who, I'd like to point out, was trying to convince us earlier today against all evidence to the contrary that Ted was actually a really nice guy) rushes to fill the newly-vacant niche in the office ecology.
In other words, every village must have its idiot.
La Mondaine: "How did Ted know about this?"
Stress Fiend: "Because he'd read every email the rest of us were sending so he could tell us what we were doing wrong."
La Mondaine: "He what?"
Me: "He'd read all the sent emails."
La Mondaine: "What would he read?"
Me: "The emails."
La Mondaine: "But why would he do that?"
Next up, the global economy...
"Why do we always have to follow America? Why does our housing market have to follow theirs?"
"Because they have, what, 25% of the worlds' wealth, and our markets are greedy?" offers the Stress Fiend.
"Who has the rest? Australia must have at least that much! Who has all the rest of the money?"
"Asia will have a fair bit. I think China by itself owns a lot of the US debt..." without thinking, I blunder into the madness. Even as I say it I know I'm going to regret entering the conversation - the only question is exactly how - but it's been a long, slow day and the words are out before I can stop them.
"So why can't we be more like China?"
I pause. Surely she can't ... no, wait. Yes. Yes, she is perfectly serious.
"Because they're a repressive, totalitarian regime with a terrible human rights record?"
La Mondaine opens her mouth, closes it, and blinks in surprise. Presumably this is what happens when she tries to accommodate more than one idea at a time.
Then she gives up and goes home, which is a surprise win.
In other words, every village must have its idiot.
La Mondaine: "How did Ted know about this?"
Stress Fiend: "Because he'd read every email the rest of us were sending so he could tell us what we were doing wrong."
La Mondaine: "He what?"
Me: "He'd read all the sent emails."
La Mondaine: "What would he read?"
Me: "The emails."
La Mondaine: "But why would he do that?"
*****
Next up, the global economy...
"Why do we always have to follow America? Why does our housing market have to follow theirs?"
"Because they have, what, 25% of the worlds' wealth, and our markets are greedy?" offers the Stress Fiend.
"Who has the rest? Australia must have at least that much! Who has all the rest of the money?"
"Asia will have a fair bit. I think China by itself owns a lot of the US debt..." without thinking, I blunder into the madness. Even as I say it I know I'm going to regret entering the conversation - the only question is exactly how - but it's been a long, slow day and the words are out before I can stop them.
"So why can't we be more like China?"
I pause. Surely she can't ... no, wait. Yes. Yes, she is perfectly serious.
"Because they're a repressive, totalitarian regime with a terrible human rights record?"
La Mondaine opens her mouth, closes it, and blinks in surprise. Presumably this is what happens when she tries to accommodate more than one idea at a time.
Then she gives up and goes home, which is a surprise win.
07 December, 2010
A fool even Mr T would struggle to pity
While we slowly drift towards not bringing La Mondaine in anymore, we've been finding work for her that keeps her away from touching any of our systems. At the moment this means we have her tidying up our storeroom, a task so simple even ... actually, no, that's not quite right. I was going to say even Ted could do it and, on a purely theoretical basis, he probably could. In practice, he'd lose interest after five minutes and either try to palm it off on someone else or begin throwing random items into the bin in protest at being asked to think about something.
Come to think of it, that's exactly what he started doing the last time he made a fuss about the state of the storeroom and it was pointed out there was nothing stopping him from doing something about it...
Anyway, La Mondaine is fumbling and panic-attacking her way through the storeroom. Yesterday she found a batch of duplicate items that came with useless obsolete bonus material and wanted to know if she should file the useless obsolete bonus material away.
"No," I tell her, "Just get rid of it all."
"All of it?"
"Yes."
"Just get rid of it all?"
"Yes."
"The useless obsolete bonus material, you mean?"
"Yes."
"You don't want to keep any of it?"
"No. No-one here has ever used it, it's not applicable to how anyone here actually works. Hence, 'useless' and 'obsolete'."
Today she comes across more of exactly the same material.
"What should I do with this? It's the same as the stuff you told me to get rid of yesterday."
"Uh, get rid of it?"
"But it's the same as yesterday's stuff. Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Not even keep one copy?"
... which is almost enough to convinces me she's just doing this to provoke me. It's not just that no-one could really be this stupid: it's because we're not even in the realm of functional stupidity anymore. This is carrying some dreadful terminal illness and subtly begging to be euthanised before quality of life becomes a serious issue.
06 December, 2010
It seems I was very bad in a past life
Oh, god. Apparently this is the week of hell. For some reason, The Invertebrate has decided to make Ted's last week an epic of suffering and woe for everyone else.
Firstly, we still haven't gotten rid of La Mondaine. It was looking promising a couple of weeks ago, but then the timing just didn't work out right and The Invertebrate lost his nerve at the last minute and we're stuck with her until at least the end of the year. In celebration of this (apparently), The Invertebrate has called a team meeting for tomorrow morning. On the plus side: no Ted. On the down side: no agenda, La Mondaine, and another hour of my life I won't get back.
(It's not vitally important to me that every hour of my life be worth something, but I do get irritable when my time is wasted by meetings that aren't actually about anything).
On Thursday, there's the team Christmas lunch. Because it's Ted's last lunch with us, both my predecessor and the previous team leader are coming along as special guests, thereby ensuring life-threateningly toxic levels of rose-tinted nostalgia and self-congratulatory trips down Memory Lane when, in reality, all three of them deserve to be pursued down Beaten-With-Sticks-For-Gross-Stupidity Lane by a stampede of angry bulls.
Oh. Joy. Apparently La Mondaine will also be in attendance.
I'm still not quite sure how I'm going to deal with this. There probably isn't enough time to have my dentist fit me with a cyanide-filled false tooth, and I'm positive there won't enough time to have him fit one to each of the Good Old Days Gang.
And as if that wasn't enough... on Friday, we have our last meeting of the year with our counterparts at other organisations, and Ted has decided he'll wander along to this, too, so he can say his farewells to a bunch of people he's studiously avoided having anything to do with because he didn't feel he was paid enough for it. Following that, the Invertebrate has decided we'll also have a farewell afternoon tea for Ted. Now, I'm good at keeping things civil and professional, but I feel this is starting to ask just a little more of me than is reasonable.
In fact with La Mondaine's announcement that now she'll have to come in Friday, too, I'm sure it is. We're entering "cruel and unusual punishment" territory here. If I was a particularly paranoid turn of mind, I think I'd have good grounds for thinking this was an elaborate, divine plot directed at me as punishment for sins in a past life ... in which case I hope my past self really had fun.
(On the bright side, though, this will almost certainly put a crimp in Ted's unspoken plans to sneak away even earlier than his normal Friday afternoon skive.)
Yes, his departure is cause for celebration. I'm not disputing that. I understand the need to make sure he's really leaving. I even understand that it's important that he be seen to be leaving so that his sudden absence won't raise questions about shallow graves, suspiciously shiney gardening tools, and alibis.
But if this is drawn out any longer it's going to rival the seventeen final scenes from The Return of The King ... without the benefit of a fast-forward control.
Firstly, we still haven't gotten rid of La Mondaine. It was looking promising a couple of weeks ago, but then the timing just didn't work out right and The Invertebrate lost his nerve at the last minute and we're stuck with her until at least the end of the year. In celebration of this (apparently), The Invertebrate has called a team meeting for tomorrow morning. On the plus side: no Ted. On the down side: no agenda, La Mondaine, and another hour of my life I won't get back.
(It's not vitally important to me that every hour of my life be worth something, but I do get irritable when my time is wasted by meetings that aren't actually about anything).
On Thursday, there's the team Christmas lunch. Because it's Ted's last lunch with us, both my predecessor and the previous team leader are coming along as special guests, thereby ensuring life-threateningly toxic levels of rose-tinted nostalgia and self-congratulatory trips down Memory Lane when, in reality, all three of them deserve to be pursued down Beaten-With-Sticks-For-Gross-Stupidity Lane by a stampede of angry bulls.
Oh. Joy. Apparently La Mondaine will also be in attendance.
I'm still not quite sure how I'm going to deal with this. There probably isn't enough time to have my dentist fit me with a cyanide-filled false tooth, and I'm positive there won't enough time to have him fit one to each of the Good Old Days Gang.
And as if that wasn't enough... on Friday, we have our last meeting of the year with our counterparts at other organisations, and Ted has decided he'll wander along to this, too, so he can say his farewells to a bunch of people he's studiously avoided having anything to do with because he didn't feel he was paid enough for it. Following that, the Invertebrate has decided we'll also have a farewell afternoon tea for Ted. Now, I'm good at keeping things civil and professional, but I feel this is starting to ask just a little more of me than is reasonable.
In fact with La Mondaine's announcement that now she'll have to come in Friday, too, I'm sure it is. We're entering "cruel and unusual punishment" territory here. If I was a particularly paranoid turn of mind, I think I'd have good grounds for thinking this was an elaborate, divine plot directed at me as punishment for sins in a past life ... in which case I hope my past self really had fun.
(On the bright side, though, this will almost certainly put a crimp in Ted's unspoken plans to sneak away even earlier than his normal Friday afternoon skive.)
Yes, his departure is cause for celebration. I'm not disputing that. I understand the need to make sure he's really leaving. I even understand that it's important that he be seen to be leaving so that his sudden absence won't raise questions about shallow graves, suspiciously shiney gardening tools, and alibis.
But if this is drawn out any longer it's going to rival the seventeen final scenes from The Return of The King ... without the benefit of a fast-forward control.
24 November, 2010
La Mondaine: no matter how short the countdown, it's still too long
Happily, La Mondaine is away with a headcold. There's a certain pleasing irony in that, as yesterday she had a lengthy phone call to a friend who'd been exposed to a disease-bearing child. La Mondaine gleefully AND VERY LOUDLY informed her friend how sick she was going to be in the very near future, how awful it would be, and how completely inevitable. Because that's the kind of caring and supportive friend she is.
So arriving at work today to find she'd been stricken overnight was immensely satisfying for even more reasons than usual.
Yesterday she spent a great deal of time complaining about how she just doesn't understand kids today, and what's wrong with them, anyway? In her world, the youth of today are all on a non-stop bender and routinely glass one another in pursuit of an elusive "perpetual high". It's not safe to walk down the city streets at night because, seven nights a week, they'll be filled with drug-crazed youngsters chasing even more drugs and remorselessly smashing glasses and bottles into the faces of innocent bystanders. In her day, naturally, when the world was young and innocent, people just weren't doing drugs - or if they did, they did them secretly and politely - and there was no alcohol-related violence, because people were just better then and she understood them.
The Stress Fiend then chimed in: kids today just had no respect for their elders (the word "whippersnappers" wasn't uttered, nor were there complaints about how those damn kids just wouldn't stay offa her lawn, but if they'd hung any more heavily in the air, you could have plucked them from the ether and used them as bludgeoning instruments). Both blamed the parents for not bringing them up right.
Somehow this then segued into La Mondaine trying to use jailed drug smugglers like the Bali Nine as an example of how utterly lost and incapable of looking after themselves today's youth really. At this point, despite myself, I felt obliged to point out that millions of teens and tweens manage to get through life without smuggling illegal narcotics into death-penalty countries, but she couldn't grasp the concept that individual stupidity may not represent an entire generation or two.
(Which wasn't really that surprising - she, Ted and our previous team leader had a shared habit of fixating on isolated factoids devoid of any context. This made team meetings in the old days into an absolutely excruciating experience that still sees me and the Stress Fiend flinch in pain nearly four years later whenever a team meeting is called).
"I just don't understand them, I really don't. The worst thing my boys ever did was get a speeding ticket." Pause. "Oh, and one of them got a thirteen-year-old pregnant."
* stunned silence *
"But then she got pregnant again at 16, so she obviously really wanted it."
* more stunned silence *
Now, as a parent myself, I've know for quite a long time that La Mondaine's thoughts on parenting aren't worth the sputtering, threadbare and pickled synapses they dribble from at random intervals, but ... WHAT? Her immature, dependent, judgement-impaired, financially-incapable, 13yo-impregnating offspring are an example of successful parenting? But of course they must be, because they visit her a lot (for babysitting, washing, loans, help putting their underpants on the right way around, etc), so they're clearly far superior to today's kids with their lawless, nihilistic ways...
While that was hard to top (and I'm honestly hoping she doesn't manage to), she didn't feel it was any reason to stop talking. Instead, she switched gears and decided to argue against all the evidence that we'd miss Ted when he was gone.
When I asked, more than a little incredulously, "Why?" she began trying to convince me how hard it would be to get Ted's (eventual) replacement trained and up to speed. There was a plus side to this, however, as it gave me the opportunity to inadvertently offend her
"How will you and the Stress Fiend cope? The job's soooo complicated! It will take them months to get the hang of it all!"
She very clearly wanted me to show some sign of distress or dismay. Instead she got a non-committal shrug.
"Depends on the caliber of the person we get. If it's someone competent, they'll pick up the basics fairly quickly."
A half-second later, the slightly frozen look on her face registers and a little voice in the back of my head adds "Oh, that's right - you're struggling. Hmm - faux pas..."
But I have trouble feeling particularly guilty about it, especially because it meant she stopped talking at me for a while. Instead I'm wondering how to replicate the results on a regular basis while still making it appear spontaneous.
So arriving at work today to find she'd been stricken overnight was immensely satisfying for even more reasons than usual.
Yesterday she spent a great deal of time complaining about how she just doesn't understand kids today, and what's wrong with them, anyway? In her world, the youth of today are all on a non-stop bender and routinely glass one another in pursuit of an elusive "perpetual high". It's not safe to walk down the city streets at night because, seven nights a week, they'll be filled with drug-crazed youngsters chasing even more drugs and remorselessly smashing glasses and bottles into the faces of innocent bystanders. In her day, naturally, when the world was young and innocent, people just weren't doing drugs - or if they did, they did them secretly and politely - and there was no alcohol-related violence, because people were just better then and she understood them.
The Stress Fiend then chimed in: kids today just had no respect for their elders (the word "whippersnappers" wasn't uttered, nor were there complaints about how those damn kids just wouldn't stay offa her lawn, but if they'd hung any more heavily in the air, you could have plucked them from the ether and used them as bludgeoning instruments). Both blamed the parents for not bringing them up right.
Somehow this then segued into La Mondaine trying to use jailed drug smugglers like the Bali Nine as an example of how utterly lost and incapable of looking after themselves today's youth really. At this point, despite myself, I felt obliged to point out that millions of teens and tweens manage to get through life without smuggling illegal narcotics into death-penalty countries, but she couldn't grasp the concept that individual stupidity may not represent an entire generation or two.
(Which wasn't really that surprising - she, Ted and our previous team leader had a shared habit of fixating on isolated factoids devoid of any context. This made team meetings in the old days into an absolutely excruciating experience that still sees me and the Stress Fiend flinch in pain nearly four years later whenever a team meeting is called).
"I just don't understand them, I really don't. The worst thing my boys ever did was get a speeding ticket." Pause. "Oh, and one of them got a thirteen-year-old pregnant."
* stunned silence *
"But then she got pregnant again at 16, so she obviously really wanted it."
* more stunned silence *
Now, as a parent myself, I've know for quite a long time that La Mondaine's thoughts on parenting aren't worth the sputtering, threadbare and pickled synapses they dribble from at random intervals, but ... WHAT? Her immature, dependent, judgement-impaired, financially-incapable, 13yo-impregnating offspring are an example of successful parenting? But of course they must be, because they visit her a lot (for babysitting, washing, loans, help putting their underpants on the right way around, etc), so they're clearly far superior to today's kids with their lawless, nihilistic ways...
While that was hard to top (and I'm honestly hoping she doesn't manage to), she didn't feel it was any reason to stop talking. Instead, she switched gears and decided to argue against all the evidence that we'd miss Ted when he was gone.
When I asked, more than a little incredulously, "Why?" she began trying to convince me how hard it would be to get Ted's (eventual) replacement trained and up to speed. There was a plus side to this, however, as it gave me the opportunity to inadvertently offend her
"How will you and the Stress Fiend cope? The job's soooo complicated! It will take them months to get the hang of it all!"
She very clearly wanted me to show some sign of distress or dismay. Instead she got a non-committal shrug.
"Depends on the caliber of the person we get. If it's someone competent, they'll pick up the basics fairly quickly."
A half-second later, the slightly frozen look on her face registers and a little voice in the back of my head adds "Oh, that's right - you're struggling. Hmm - faux pas..."
But I have trouble feeling particularly guilty about it, especially because it meant she stopped talking at me for a while. Instead I'm wondering how to replicate the results on a regular basis while still making it appear spontaneous.
18 November, 2010
"It was too wet at playtime, so teacher said we could go home early."
It's 3.30pm, and the The Invertebrate bounces into our workspace. He was helping Ted fill in his resignation forms earlier today (which I can't help but envisage as "No, Ted, stop chewing on your crayons and make your mark here") and he's still having trouble suppressing his glee.
"I just wanted to check with you guys - " he suddenly notices Ted's missing. "Wait, where's he gone? Has he gone home already?"
"It was raining at lunch." He gets my best deadpan face.
"So?"
"He didn't want to get wet if he went outside, so he decided that meant he had to work through lunch instead."
"He - what? That's just..."
Pain flickers across his face as he tries to reconcile Ted's sense of entitlement with anything resembling reason and, inevitably, fails.
"Argh!"
The Stress Fiend nearly falls off her chair laughing.
"I just wanted to check with you guys - " he suddenly notices Ted's missing. "Wait, where's he gone? Has he gone home already?"
"It was raining at lunch." He gets my best deadpan face.
"So?"
"He didn't want to get wet if he went outside, so he decided that meant he had to work through lunch instead."
"He - what? That's just..."
Pain flickers across his face as he tries to reconcile Ted's sense of entitlement with anything resembling reason and, inevitably, fails.
"Argh!"
The Stress Fiend nearly falls off her chair laughing.
05 November, 2010
Ding-dong, the witch is dead!
Ted announced his departure date today. It didn't exactly come as a surprise, as I've overheard him talking to interstate removalists for the last couple of days and knew the decision had been reached.
But, from mid-December, he'll be several hundred miles away and it will be a Ted-free world, leaving only the Stress Fiend and La Mondaine to exalt an average working day into the realm of Cruel and Unusual Punishment.
Now I just need to work out a diplomatic means of avoiding the going-away event The Invertebrate seems determined to organise. I might be helped in this by Ted himself, who also seems to be trying to avoid going to one.
Or I could just be magnanimous, forget the last few years of white-anting and backbiting and make a genuine effort to wish him well...
But, from mid-December, he'll be several hundred miles away and it will be a Ted-free world, leaving only the Stress Fiend and La Mondaine to exalt an average working day into the realm of Cruel and Unusual Punishment.
Now I just need to work out a diplomatic means of avoiding the going-away event The Invertebrate seems determined to organise. I might be helped in this by Ted himself, who also seems to be trying to avoid going to one.
Or I could just be magnanimous, forget the last few years of white-anting and backbiting and make a genuine effort to wish him well...
01 November, 2010
No method in her madness, just more madness.
Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later: La Mondaine caught the same bus as me into work, and wanted to chat all the way. Luckily I got onto the bus with a book already in hand, and managed to retreat into it after some basic civilities.
Avoiding her once the bus reached our destination wasn't as easy, but in the walk to the office I learnt that she isn't happy not being allowed to run loose on everything yet (partly because the Stress Fiend is a secretive control freak, but largely because none of us have any confidence in her ability not to destroy everything she touches), and that she finds the Stress Fiend incredibly stressful to work with and feels physically ill every time the Stress Fiend erupts into a tirade about a client or a colleague.
That's a lot of time to spend feeling physically ill. A lot of easily avoidable time, when she doesn't actually need the income, so she must really be desperate for a social life to keep coming into this.
Although I wouldn't rule out Mad Cow Disease, either.
Avoiding her once the bus reached our destination wasn't as easy, but in the walk to the office I learnt that she isn't happy not being allowed to run loose on everything yet (partly because the Stress Fiend is a secretive control freak, but largely because none of us have any confidence in her ability not to destroy everything she touches), and that she finds the Stress Fiend incredibly stressful to work with and feels physically ill every time the Stress Fiend erupts into a tirade about a client or a colleague.
That's a lot of time to spend feeling physically ill. A lot of easily avoidable time, when she doesn't actually need the income, so she must really be desperate for a social life to keep coming into this.
Although I wouldn't rule out Mad Cow Disease, either.
27 October, 2010
The importance of routine
Monday - Tuesday: the Stress Fiend & La Mondaine complain endlessly about everything Ted E. has done incorrectly, or (more often) hasn't done at all.
Wednesday - Friday: the Stress Fiend & Ted E. complain endlessly about everything La Mondaine has done incorrectly. This usually keeps them going for all three days, as La Mondaine likes to hurtle through as much as she can without actually understanding anything that she's actually doing.
It's like The Lion King's "Circle of Life" by way of Scott Adams.
20 October, 2010
"I read all the emails to see what's happening. Except when I don't."
"Someone needs to tell me what to do with this."
"It was in the email the Invertebrate sent to us all last week."
"I didn't see one. He mustn't have sent it to me."
"It's in the shared inbox. In fact..." and I check quickly, "... it's still there now."
"Oh. I suppose I'd better print it off and read it, then."
Which he does. And then promptly attempts to blame the Stress Fiend, anyway, for not including it on the ever-growing list of things he needs to have written down for him even though (technically) their positions are an equivalent level and even though she wasn't actually here when The Invertebrate sent the email.
"It was in the email the Invertebrate sent to us all last week."
"I didn't see one. He mustn't have sent it to me."
"It's in the shared inbox. In fact..." and I check quickly, "... it's still there now."
"Oh. I suppose I'd better print it off and read it, then."
Which he does. And then promptly attempts to blame the Stress Fiend, anyway, for not including it on the ever-growing list of things he needs to have written down for him even though (technically) their positions are an equivalent level and even though she wasn't actually here when The Invertebrate sent the email.
Cthulhu calling
The Stress Fiend is back from leave, and Ted's working week has just begun. The two of them have finished their brief show of unity in complaining about the quality of La Mondaine's work, and are settling back into the routine of cryptic commentary and mini-rants about clients punctuated with snappish comments about random things.
("Butterflies! F***ing hate them! Graarrggh! And don't get me started on the colour of the sky!")
Ted resumes normal service first, asking "Have you seen the email from Julmwargwrmlmn?" in an absolutely breathtaking display of how to take a simple first name and render it completely unintelligible.
The Stress Fiend twitches like she's been electrocuted: "What? Where was that?", presumably wondering why we're being emailed by what sounds like one of Cthulhu's brethren. She begins scanning the shared inbox in a mild panic.
"Who was it from?"
Ted tries to help (?) by providing the surname, which he also proceeds to maul: "Sverrrrnnn..."
The Stress Fiend apparently has her Ted-to-English translation device running (or else just makes a desperately inspired guess) and manages to identify who he's talking about.
But the mystery of his linguicidal effort remains: was it deliberate? Is he on drugs (and could we even tell?) Is he having a stroke? Maybe he's been bitten by a zombie (and, again, how would we tell?).
("Butterflies! F***ing hate them! Graarrggh! And don't get me started on the colour of the sky!")
Ted resumes normal service first, asking "Have you seen the email from Julmwargwrmlmn?" in an absolutely breathtaking display of how to take a simple first name and render it completely unintelligible.
The Stress Fiend twitches like she's been electrocuted: "What? Where was that?", presumably wondering why we're being emailed by what sounds like one of Cthulhu's brethren. She begins scanning the shared inbox in a mild panic.
"Who was it from?"
Ted tries to help (?) by providing the surname, which he also proceeds to maul: "Sverrrrnnn..."
The Stress Fiend apparently has her Ted-to-English translation device running (or else just makes a desperately inspired guess) and manages to identify who he's talking about.
But the mystery of his linguicidal effort remains: was it deliberate? Is he on drugs (and could we even tell?) Is he having a stroke? Maybe he's been bitten by a zombie (and, again, how would we tell?).
13 October, 2010
Communication Theory
Ted, one of the most secretive and treacherous people I've ever worked with, loves to complain about a lack of communication around the office, to the point where he recently announced to the Stress Fiend and the Invertebrate (concerning me): "I hate him! I really hate him! He doesn't talk to me!"
I almost fell off my chair laughing when the Stress Fiend shared this gem. Yes, it's quite true - I don't talk to him, beyond what's necessary to get the job done. And there's an excellent reason for that: the first couple of years of trying to work with and manage Ted convinced me that talking to him was just wasted effort. He'd hear only what he wanted to hear, ignore the rest, and make things up to repeat at a later date.
He also made it abundantly clear during my first few months here (before he and I even had much to do with one another) that he didn't like me, and didn't accept that I had any right to be here when I'd taken a job that should have been his. Not that he knew what the job was, or understood anything about it. But he suspected it paid more, so clearly it should have been his by right of seniority, and that's the important point here. That kind of instant hostility isn't much of an incentive to maintain anything beyond a civil working relationship, and nothing since then has persuaded me otherwise. I tell him what he needs to know to do his job (which obviously isn't a lot), explain why things are done a particular way, and leave it at that.
Anyway. Digression.
Ted's an appalling communicator. He rarely writes anything down, and when he does it's a either a cryptic note in red pen explaining that you've done something wrong with something, but without telling you what, or it's an equally cryptic but even more unintelligible email shotgun-cc'ed at multiple recipients so you're never quite sure who it was meant for in the first place, never mind what it was meant to convey. The underlying message of most of the emails seems to be "I'm confused and I'm angry and I want someone to do something that gives me more money!"
He also doesn't tell people what he's doing, usually because if it's one of his gradually diminishing duties we might ask awkward questions (such as "Why are you doing it that way?" or "How can that possibly take you half a day?"), and if it's not one of his duties it's going to be something affecting one of the rest of us and he knows he shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
Last week he wanted a particular message relayed to La Mondaine, letting her know not to proceed with something that was likely to come through this week, until some additional information was received. He could have emailed her; he could have emailed a general notice to the team in case one of the rest of us had a spare moment to act on it; he could even have written it down. Instead, as a casual aside he told the Stress Fiend to tell La Mondaine when she saw her in three days' time to leave this particular task alone.
The Stress Fiend, not surprisingly - and somewhat understandably - forgot. Or she may have made the assumption that if it was important, Ted would leave some written instructions for when he wasn't here. No, I don't know what colour the sky is on her planet, either.
So this morning Ted is stomping about the office, grumbling to The Invertebrate about the lack of communication. When The Invertebrate innocently raises the thorny question of why Ted hadn't just emailed La Mondaine instead, Ted began looking for better ways to apportion the blame, started rummaging around on the absent Stress Fiend's desk, and then grumped back to his own desk empty-handed while the puzzled Invertebrate looked on.
"What are you looking for?"
"I thought she'd have a folder."
"Of what?"
"Stuff."*
Because, as Ted loves to complain on a daily basis, people really need to write "stuff" down.
* Where "stuff" = "clear and unequivocal proof that, with malice aforethought, the Stress Fiend conspired with La Mondaine to not do something that subsequently meant Ted had to do a little bit of extra work" - 20 minutes' worth, by my estimate - "when he began his working week on Wednesday."
I almost fell off my chair laughing when the Stress Fiend shared this gem. Yes, it's quite true - I don't talk to him, beyond what's necessary to get the job done. And there's an excellent reason for that: the first couple of years of trying to work with and manage Ted convinced me that talking to him was just wasted effort. He'd hear only what he wanted to hear, ignore the rest, and make things up to repeat at a later date.
He also made it abundantly clear during my first few months here (before he and I even had much to do with one another) that he didn't like me, and didn't accept that I had any right to be here when I'd taken a job that should have been his. Not that he knew what the job was, or understood anything about it. But he suspected it paid more, so clearly it should have been his by right of seniority, and that's the important point here. That kind of instant hostility isn't much of an incentive to maintain anything beyond a civil working relationship, and nothing since then has persuaded me otherwise. I tell him what he needs to know to do his job (which obviously isn't a lot), explain why things are done a particular way, and leave it at that.
Anyway. Digression.
Ted's an appalling communicator. He rarely writes anything down, and when he does it's a either a cryptic note in red pen explaining that you've done something wrong with something, but without telling you what, or it's an equally cryptic but even more unintelligible email shotgun-cc'ed at multiple recipients so you're never quite sure who it was meant for in the first place, never mind what it was meant to convey. The underlying message of most of the emails seems to be "I'm confused and I'm angry and I want someone to do something that gives me more money!"
He also doesn't tell people what he's doing, usually because if it's one of his gradually diminishing duties we might ask awkward questions (such as "Why are you doing it that way?" or "How can that possibly take you half a day?"), and if it's not one of his duties it's going to be something affecting one of the rest of us and he knows he shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
Last week he wanted a particular message relayed to La Mondaine, letting her know not to proceed with something that was likely to come through this week, until some additional information was received. He could have emailed her; he could have emailed a general notice to the team in case one of the rest of us had a spare moment to act on it; he could even have written it down. Instead, as a casual aside he told the Stress Fiend to tell La Mondaine when she saw her in three days' time to leave this particular task alone.
The Stress Fiend, not surprisingly - and somewhat understandably - forgot. Or she may have made the assumption that if it was important, Ted would leave some written instructions for when he wasn't here. No, I don't know what colour the sky is on her planet, either.
So this morning Ted is stomping about the office, grumbling to The Invertebrate about the lack of communication. When The Invertebrate innocently raises the thorny question of why Ted hadn't just emailed La Mondaine instead, Ted began looking for better ways to apportion the blame, started rummaging around on the absent Stress Fiend's desk, and then grumped back to his own desk empty-handed while the puzzled Invertebrate looked on.
"What are you looking for?"
"I thought she'd have a folder."
"Of what?"
"Stuff."*
Because, as Ted loves to complain on a daily basis, people really need to write "stuff" down.
* Where "stuff" = "clear and unequivocal proof that, with malice aforethought, the Stress Fiend conspired with La Mondaine to not do something that subsequently meant Ted had to do a little bit of extra work" - 20 minutes' worth, by my estimate - "when he began his working week on Wednesday."
11 October, 2010
Not a feature wall, so much as a feature *room*
Things are moving forward slowly, with Chez Ted now on the market and Ted himself making optimistic noises about being out of here in only a few weeks. Personally I have trouble making the conceptual leap required to imagine someone paying over half a million dollars for a house full of Ted cooties*, something that strikes me as only slightly less imperiling of one's sanity and immortal soul than buying a house built on an Indian burial ground.
And who knows? Maybe there's a buyer out there who shares Ted's exciting approach to interior design. He was repainting parts of the house and decided he needed some more paint from the hardware store. Instead of doing what a normal person would do and take a sample along for colour-matching, he just bought a new tin of paint in the same colour and set to.
Except that he got a little confused on the way to the hardware store. He knew the colour was named after a fruit, though, and strawberry and peach are kind of the same colour. Right?
The resulting pink room is strangely absent from the photos of his house on the real estate website.
* No, I don't really believe they exist ... but would you want to take the chance? I didn't think so.
And who knows? Maybe there's a buyer out there who shares Ted's exciting approach to interior design. He was repainting parts of the house and decided he needed some more paint from the hardware store. Instead of doing what a normal person would do and take a sample along for colour-matching, he just bought a new tin of paint in the same colour and set to.
Except that he got a little confused on the way to the hardware store. He knew the colour was named after a fruit, though, and strawberry and peach are kind of the same colour. Right?
The resulting pink room is strangely absent from the photos of his house on the real estate website.
* No, I don't really believe they exist ... but would you want to take the chance? I didn't think so.
04 October, 2010
Welcome to Monday
I know I tend to complain a lot about - and I'll be blunt here - all the shit I have to deal with at work. I just didn't expect that today I'd be complaining about it quite so literally thanks to a veritable mountain of fertiliser dumped conveniently near the air intakes on my side of the building. For good measure, the pile (which easily measured 5' at its highest point) was also situated right beside the exit from the fire stairs ... that open out near my area.
As metaphors go, it wasn't exactly subtle.
28 September, 2010
The Virtual Monday Blues
Dear clients,
(And if you really must call to recite your catalogue of woe, please present it an appropriate format - a nice, blues number by John Lee Hooker, for instance.
- if your dog has just died; and,
- if you've just had root-canal work; and,
- you're about to fly overseas and want to give a presentation developed using the expensive and esoteric piece of Windows-based software you had us buy for your work computer; and,
- you've just gone and bought yourself a new Mac laptop especially for the trip...
(And if you really must call to recite your catalogue of woe, please present it an appropriate format - a nice, blues number by John Lee Hooker, for instance.
21 September, 2010
Freaks. All of them.
My workplace is always full of strange smells. Usually unpleasant, often chemical in origin, and only a health hazard about a third of the time. Sometimes, I'm assuming for the sake of variety, we're afflicted with various burning smells. Mostly these consist of woodsmoke from burn-offs in the nearby forest reserves, plastic containers that people have (somehow!) managed to immolate in the tea-room microwaves and, very occasionally, from workmen setting fire to things beneath the air-conditioning intakes. In fact the air-conditioning intakes seem to be a popular spot to work: just last week some workers chose that very spot to use industrial solvent to clean their paintbrushes.
Hilarity ensued, as you can imagine.
There's a peculiar odor hanging around at the moment, and it's one of Ted's days off so it's definitely not him. The Stress Fiend and La Mondaine have been discussing it at length, and La Mondaine has concluded it's the smell of burning wiring. I'm skeptical, because it was only the other week she thought her wooden computer was on fire, but she's now prowling the office and stooping to sniff all the network ports in the belief that our internet has somehow caught fire.
Hilarity ensued, as you can imagine.
There's a peculiar odor hanging around at the moment, and it's one of Ted's days off so it's definitely not him. The Stress Fiend and La Mondaine have been discussing it at length, and La Mondaine has concluded it's the smell of burning wiring. I'm skeptical, because it was only the other week she thought her wooden computer was on fire, but she's now prowling the office and stooping to sniff all the network ports in the belief that our internet has somehow caught fire.
15 September, 2010
How many nemeses does one person need?
A manager - for the sake of a name let's call him Mr Bonehead, because I'm not feeling particularly creative with aliases right now - received an invoice and then sat on it for a fortnight before passing it through to us with only eight working days left in which to have payment authorised and processed. Plenty of time, you might think, considering it's not a huge amount (a little over $100,000) and we live in an age of digital wonders*, but the labyrinthine approvals process and (let's be honest) some seriously f***ed-up financial delegation levels make this a much more challenging process than could reasonably be expected. At the best of times, eight working days would be barely be adequate.
Mr Bonehead finally sent the invoice through to The Invertebrate, asking him to organise payment. The Invertebrate left it on my desk (I was away the day it arrived) with a note asking me to organise payment (at least partly, I suspect, because The Invertebrate still hasn't quite learnt how to use our systems). This is on a Friday, so suddenly we're already at the end of a working week.
The next week kicked off with everyone but me away for the first half of the week. This is less stressful than it sounds, but getting things moving doesn't happen easily. Nevertheless, I get the purchase request up to the Director's office to kick off the approval chain. It's beyond his meagre financial delegation of $50,000, but he still needs to see it before it goes to the next level of management for their approval ... except that it's also beyond their level of delegation, but they have to see it before it goes on to the level after that, where someone can finally rubber-stamp the renewal of a critical bit of IT infrastructure support.
Except that the Director is the one who has to approve the use of the particular account this is to be paid from, and even though it's been paid from this account every year since its inception, he decides that now he wants to know more about it. I provide a brief cover letter with all the relevant details I can lay my hands on, which aren't many because it turns out this particular contract has been administered with a high degree of secrecy over the years. So he sends the whole thing back down to Mr Bonehead asking him what it's about.
In the meantime, the company we're trying to pay has been ringing Mr Bonehead to see how things are going. Then they ring Finance, who also call Mr Bonehead and ask if it's okay to pay.
"Sure," he tells them. And then tells them to forward any other inquiries about it straight to me.
Finance try to pay the invoice on the say-so of someone who doesn't have the authority to approve a payment of that size or from that account, only to discover - surprise! - that there's nothing in their system they can match it against so they can proceed. At which point they email me in confusion and ask me to submit a payment request (in addition to the purchase request that's already ricocheting around somewhere in the building). I figure I may as well, because the money has to be paid and this might save us some time.
Except - there's that word again - I can't submit a payment request without a financial approver, which just starts me down exactly the same path as getting the purchase request authorised. Only this time, because that particular workflow is hardcoded to only recognise its own version of Inner Truth, our wonderful financial system won't let me pick a financial approver anywhere to whom I can send this thing.
If I drew this as a flowchart, it would probably end up stabbing itself in the head to stop the pain.
I give The Invertebrate an update on what's going on and then throw up my hands, having been effectively stymied at every turn.
A week or so later the saga rears its head again with no-one listening to a word anyone else is saying, least of all anything I might have to say.
The supplier is becoming more insistent that the invoice be paid today ("Kindly refer to our previous correspondence re. claiming firstborn in lieu of payment"), emailing and calling me constantly while simultaneously harassing our finance area ... who are also emailing and calling me constantly. Our Finance Trolls are being particularly annoying, as I've now had to repeat the same story to several different people because none of them write anything down or communicate anything to their teammates. Or maybe they do, and they just prefer to start from first principles every time. Who can tell? Their ways are not those of normal folk.
Anyway, with time running out I began chasing the Director's PA to see if they knew where the payment authorisation had gone because I certainly didn't. They did some forensic work at their end and discovered...
[Drum roll!]
... Mr Bonehead was sitting on it again. Had been, in fact, since the moment he received it from the Director asking what it was about.
Asked if he could bring it back so we could get on with paying it, he responded "Oh, but it hasn't been signed yet." So he knew payment was actually dependent on it being signed, but never thought it might be useful to send it back to someone who could sign off on something he wanted paid urgently.
After sitting on it for a fortnight at the start.
* Although this normally translates into people wondering how to extract their digits from various orifices.
Mr Bonehead finally sent the invoice through to The Invertebrate, asking him to organise payment. The Invertebrate left it on my desk (I was away the day it arrived) with a note asking me to organise payment (at least partly, I suspect, because The Invertebrate still hasn't quite learnt how to use our systems). This is on a Friday, so suddenly we're already at the end of a working week.
The next week kicked off with everyone but me away for the first half of the week. This is less stressful than it sounds, but getting things moving doesn't happen easily. Nevertheless, I get the purchase request up to the Director's office to kick off the approval chain. It's beyond his meagre financial delegation of $50,000, but he still needs to see it before it goes to the next level of management for their approval ... except that it's also beyond their level of delegation, but they have to see it before it goes on to the level after that, where someone can finally rubber-stamp the renewal of a critical bit of IT infrastructure support.
Except that the Director is the one who has to approve the use of the particular account this is to be paid from, and even though it's been paid from this account every year since its inception, he decides that now he wants to know more about it. I provide a brief cover letter with all the relevant details I can lay my hands on, which aren't many because it turns out this particular contract has been administered with a high degree of secrecy over the years. So he sends the whole thing back down to Mr Bonehead asking him what it's about.
In the meantime, the company we're trying to pay has been ringing Mr Bonehead to see how things are going. Then they ring Finance, who also call Mr Bonehead and ask if it's okay to pay.
"Sure," he tells them. And then tells them to forward any other inquiries about it straight to me.
Finance try to pay the invoice on the say-so of someone who doesn't have the authority to approve a payment of that size or from that account, only to discover - surprise! - that there's nothing in their system they can match it against so they can proceed. At which point they email me in confusion and ask me to submit a payment request (in addition to the purchase request that's already ricocheting around somewhere in the building). I figure I may as well, because the money has to be paid and this might save us some time.
Except - there's that word again - I can't submit a payment request without a financial approver, which just starts me down exactly the same path as getting the purchase request authorised. Only this time, because that particular workflow is hardcoded to only recognise its own version of Inner Truth, our wonderful financial system won't let me pick a financial approver anywhere to whom I can send this thing.
If I drew this as a flowchart, it would probably end up stabbing itself in the head to stop the pain.
I give The Invertebrate an update on what's going on and then throw up my hands, having been effectively stymied at every turn.
A week or so later the saga rears its head again with no-one listening to a word anyone else is saying, least of all anything I might have to say.
The supplier is becoming more insistent that the invoice be paid today ("Kindly refer to our previous correspondence re. claiming firstborn in lieu of payment"), emailing and calling me constantly while simultaneously harassing our finance area ... who are also emailing and calling me constantly. Our Finance Trolls are being particularly annoying, as I've now had to repeat the same story to several different people because none of them write anything down or communicate anything to their teammates. Or maybe they do, and they just prefer to start from first principles every time. Who can tell? Their ways are not those of normal folk.
Anyway, with time running out I began chasing the Director's PA to see if they knew where the payment authorisation had gone because I certainly didn't. They did some forensic work at their end and discovered...
[Drum roll!]
... Mr Bonehead was sitting on it again. Had been, in fact, since the moment he received it from the Director asking what it was about.
Asked if he could bring it back so we could get on with paying it, he responded "Oh, but it hasn't been signed yet." So he knew payment was actually dependent on it being signed, but never thought it might be useful to send it back to someone who could sign off on something he wanted paid urgently.
After sitting on it for a fortnight at the start.
* Although this normally translates into people wondering how to extract their digits from various orifices.
02 September, 2010
His reputation precedes him
A tech wanders into our area: "I've got a tricky question. Who wants it?"
I point to Ted, sitting with his back to us and facing studiously into his corner.
Several minutes later we've revived the tech after he passes out from laughing too hard, and he tries again: "No, seriously..."
I point to Ted, sitting with his back to us and facing studiously into his corner.
Several minutes later we've revived the tech after he passes out from laughing too hard, and he tries again: "No, seriously..."
01 September, 2010
Kill it with fire?
"Oh, there's that burning smell again! What is it? What's on fire? Where's it coming from?"
"It's woodsmoke. From outside."
"But how do you know?"
"I was outside at lunchtime, and I could smell it then."
"But how do you know it's woodsmoke?"
"... because the air is smoky, and smells of burning wood?"
"Since when? When did this start?"
"It's been like that all day. When I left to come here this morning there was a blanket of smoke over the suburb where we both live."*
"But how can you tell it's wood?"
I'm trying to think of a polite way of not bothering to even answer this when the Stress Fiend comes to my rescue: "Because he went out into the forest and set it on fire! What do you think?"
"Oh, so it's a burn-off. Is it a burn-off? Are they having a burn-off? Where? Where can you find out?"
"I don't know." (Although actually it was more like "Hnn-nnh" accompanied by an indifferent shrug in the hope she'd leave me alone.)
"How can I be sure it's a burn-off? How do I know it's not my computer?"
I don't know. Maybe because your computer isn't made of wood?
* Yes, alarmingly enough that's true. Presumably for sins in a past life, La Mondaine lives only a couple of streets away from me. Since discovering that, leaving the house during daylight hours has taken on a hitherto-unknown dimension of terror.
"It's woodsmoke. From outside."
"But how do you know?"
"I was outside at lunchtime, and I could smell it then."
"But how do you know it's woodsmoke?"
"... because the air is smoky, and smells of burning wood?"
"Since when? When did this start?"
"It's been like that all day. When I left to come here this morning there was a blanket of smoke over the suburb where we both live."*
"But how can you tell it's wood?"
I'm trying to think of a polite way of not bothering to even answer this when the Stress Fiend comes to my rescue: "Because he went out into the forest and set it on fire! What do you think?"
"Oh, so it's a burn-off. Is it a burn-off? Are they having a burn-off? Where? Where can you find out?"
"I don't know." (Although actually it was more like "Hnn-nnh" accompanied by an indifferent shrug in the hope she'd leave me alone.)
"How can I be sure it's a burn-off? How do I know it's not my computer?"
I don't know. Maybe because your computer isn't made of wood?
* Yes, alarmingly enough that's true. Presumably for sins in a past life, La Mondaine lives only a couple of streets away from me. Since discovering that, leaving the house during daylight hours has taken on a hitherto-unknown dimension of terror.
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