The surprise of surprise

I know I shouldn't be, but I'm surprised that Ted E. is surprised to discover the reason something isn't working is because he's doing it wrong.

His self-righteous rant is just starting to gather momentum when he actually looks at what he's complaining about.

"Oh. It's my fault."

Tact

Well if Ted E. didn't realise I'm being interviewed for the team leader position he (deservedly) didn't even get shortlisted for, he certainly knows now after the Stress Fiend loudly asked well within hearing "So what time is your interview? Do you know who's on the panel?"

He's now sitting stubbornly in the corner not wanting to talk to anyone.

Contains paraphrasing

Ted E. (recirculating an old email to the group to show us how on the ball he is):

"There are 15 pending requests that are all someone else's fault."

Me (replying to the group rather than directly to Ted, because I have no patience left to be professional about this):

"You've just recycled a two-week-old email without checking any of the data. The current figures are different, and a third of the requests are things you handle or had a direct hand in, and should know the answer to better than the rest of us."

Simple pleasures

Ah, how I love the look of sullen bewilderment on Ted E.'s face when he strolls in at 10 minutes past his boasted starting time and sees me sitting here already...

Application for the position of Team Leader, Purgatory

They finally advertised the ongoing position of Team Leader here, and they've held interviews. Now I'm just waiting to see what the outcome is.

What I didn't expect was to hear that Ted E. had applied for the job.

I was good, though. I didn't laugh uproariously at the idea (although it was close) and I think I managed to close off the "wtf?!?" expression on my face before it had time to take hold.

I'm not quite as stunned as I'd have been if he'd also reached the interview stage, but I'm still staggered at the sheer force of his self-delusion. I know he doesn't even understand the very basic jobs he avoids doing during the course of a normal working day, and therefore doesn't grasp that on his best days his performance is mediocre ... but to assume he could leap four position levels and take on licence and contract management, team management, budgeting, and HR functions.

Wow.

What colour is the sky on his planet? And he won't even understand why didn't get to the interview stage. No, he'll take it as further confirmation that no-one recognises his worth...

There's a time for democracy, and this isn't it.

"I just wanted to bring up people changing mail folders around and renaming them," says Ted E. as he produces a list of mail folders. "If you're going to make these kind of changes, then can we discuss them first at a meeting?"

Trouble is ... the folders in question have been there for at least a year, and I'm pretty sure some of them predate my time here entirely. So I'm not sure who he thinks created these and began moving them about.

And the solution... dear god!

Why would I want to hold a meeting to discuss the structure and filing of the group inbox with the very people who've actively helped make it into the Grand Abomination it is now?

Note that Ted E. and the Stress Fiend haven't suggested a meeting to discuss general principles or priorities, or how we should approach things in an Age of Reason. No. They've seriously proposed that the entire team sits down as a group and negotiates how and where 835Mb of "historical" email (read "irrelevant junk we'll never throw out because that would require a decision") should be filed.

Updates!

A sudden rash of updates has taken place, going back to (I think) the 2nd of July. Just thought I'd mention that here and save you having to work all the way back one at a time.

Pincer movements

I've been caught between a stupid client incapable of making even a token effort at helping themselves ("Give someone information that will let them solve my problem? Why would I want to do that?") and Ted E. ("I'll fix it all up for you, right up to the point where I realise I don't understand what I'm doing. Then I'll make it someone else's problem, and not tell anyone.")

The ideal solution is one where they destroy one another, but I'm not sure that's actually achievable with the resources at hand.

Still, having had Ted E. pass this to me without warning, there was some satisfaction to be had from reminding him that he was the last one to have been involved with this, and asking him how far along he'd got with it.

In some cases, careless talk costs nothing.

Faux pas for the day: discussing staffing levels within the unit, and gesturing at Ted E.'s vacant desk with the comment "...someone in that position pulling their weight" just as Ted ambles back in from lunch.

Oops.

But not a terribly sincere "Oops", I fear.

A Ted E. triptych - watch the patience diminish

Ah, Ted E. ... how it amuses me when you try to make other people's lives difficult (because, as we all know, that's the key to masking deficiencies in your own performance) and manage a 75% failure rate in doing so ...

A little later.

Having said that, I'm still not convinced that simply putting out a hit on Ted E. wouldn't be the most elegant solution for all concerned.

... and later still.
And, while I'm on a roll, what the hell is the point of asking everyone else but me the kind of questions that I'm the only one in the position to make a decision on?

I mean the former acting team leader of the remote desktop support group? I like the guy and thought he did a good job in his acting role ... but what is the frikking point of enlisting his support for a half-arsed idea that's outside his area of expertise and responsibility?

Ted E. vs The Environment

Some licence has been taken with the following conversation. But not a lot.

Manager: Now, Ted, what we're doing is installing a small client on each machine to monitor how much power it draws, so we can get some metrics on how much power we can save by using policies that power down all the computers over the weekend.

Ted: It's not my fault! I have a laptop, and I undock it at the end of each day and put it in the cupboard!*

Manager: I know, but we're just gathering some data so we can extrapolate some figures.

Ted: Laptop! Unplug! Not my fault!

Manager: We're not worried about how much power you're consuming personally, just how much we can potentially -

Ted: It's not me! Other people leave their computers on all the time, but not me!

Manager: *sigh* Ted, I'm just going to install this, okay? It won't do anything at all if you're computer's not - "

Ted E.: NOOOO! Not "if" - "WHEN". Other people BAD - Ted GOOD!

Manager: Okay, that's done. Oops, look at the time! Gotta run!

---

* Ted E. and the laptop ... where to begin? Let's not, and just write it off as one of those management vision things. But I will just say that watching Ted E. grapple with the laptop dock for the first few weeks was a regular afternoon highlight.

And the outcome is...

Meeting went broadly as expected, with Ted E. deciding the best way to defend himself was to attack anyone and everything else in sight and insist "I disagree strongly" because, y'know, that by itself invalidates anything anyone else might have to say.

I'm slightly disappointed by the ouctome of the meeting, because I'd have liked more fireworks, but at least he's now been formally asked to lift his act in a couple of areas and knows what's expected of him. The other meeting we probably need to have - about his treatment of other team members - will have to wait a little for now.

Ted E's facial tic was back, though, albeit not quite so extreme as during last week's team meeting. Again, it's satisfying to see that he's feeling some pressure.

And, coming up soon, we have the Stress Fiend to manage...

Against the forces of stupidity.

Meeting with Ted E. and my manager sometime within the next few minutes as a follow-up to Ted's antics from last week. Would have taken him aside myself, but he decided to raise the stakes by escalating things to management when (from his position) they should still have been mild and manageable. I think we'd have gotten to this point eventually, but Ted E. very helpfully got us there much faster with his injured innocence act.

Power corrupts?

I drew immense and guilt-free satisfaction from watching a never-before-seen nervous tic in Ted E.'s face dance madly throughout this morning's team meeting, especially as we drew closer to subjects he's feeling defensive about right now. Maybe he's finally starting to realise he's pushed his luck that little bit too far lately with his games.

I'm enjoying his discomfiture far too much, though, and suspect I might be straying a bit too close to wanting to make him squirm for its own sake. Luckily only the guilty have anything to fear...

Exercise

Time for a walk - Ted E. is trying to be helpful, and I just want to kill him on principle.

Relative values

Dear god... a recent staff satisfaction survey across the larger area I'm a part of yielded such awful results that the powers that be are touring each individual team to discuss personally what things are making people unhappy.

Ted E.'s complaint that he plans to bring up?* That he's been here six years and isn't getting paid more for doing work that's more in line with the payscale below him than the one he's actually on.

And somehow I don't think he finds that objectionable for the same reasons I do...

---

* Apart from me, of course. I don't think he's quite stupid enough to announce that ahead of time in front of me.

One of life's little mysteries

Why did we buy Ted E. a laptop again, anyway? I think this must have been one of those "vision" things, where the goal was to give Software Services extra mobility. But it's not like Ted E. is ever going to take a laptop home with him to put in a few extra hours, nor is it even likely that he's got any kind of work that even lends itself to that. Which only really leaves letting him roam to other campuses to meet other staff, and why in god's name would you want to let Ted E. out without adult supervision?

There's no reward for being healthy

On the way to work: text message from reliable, friendly team member telling me she won't be able to make it in.

On arrival: voicemail waiting from the Stress Fiend, telling me her partner is still dying and requires attention (after at least three days, surely they could at least hospitalise him???)

Ten minutes later: Ted E. rings in to say he's still sick and won't be in today. Laughs when he realises there's no-one else here.

A superstitious, cowardly lot.

I'm a team of one today. Further proof that it's not actually possible for me to be too cynical or pessimistic about my workplace.

One person is legitimately unwell and may well (against both our better judgments) struggle in later today - I deliberately didn't tell them about Ted E. and the Stress Fiend being off today); after having last Friday off, Ted E. spent much of yesterday foreshadowing being off today with a cold (in fairness, he was producing a lot of mucus yesterday, but it's so hard not to be cynical about his motives at the best of times); and the Stress Fiend is away a second day looking after her ill husband, who never seems to get sick in anything less than two-day increments. And again, a high degree of cynicism tends to creep into my views on the Stress Fiend's absence rates.

What's compounding my distrust of some of my teams motives is that Ted E. and the Stress Fiend were both supposed to sit down together yesterday and work through a process that one of them doesn't want to look after, and the other doesn't want to hand over.

Not exactly funny, but...

Team meeting, only the second since I officially became acting team leader ... and I think I scared Ted E. when he pushed his luck just that little bit too far by trying to slip a barefaced lie past me. The problem (for him) was that he sent two versions of the same email to different people in the team last week. The one he sent to his teammates irritated them enough; the one he sent to me and my manager ... well, let's not go into it.

But in the meeting today he tried to claim he'd never said one of the things he'd said in the email to me (versus what he'd said to the others). Which I knew was a lie - it was only the truth by the most generous of technicalities - and then he repeatedly tried to say he'd never said that.

What happened next wasn't a glorious moment for either of us but, on the bright side, it could have been a lot worse. I didn't break a chair over his head, for instance. After the third or fourth denial, I was on my feet heading for my computer where his email was still on screen: "Look, don't make me read out what you wrote. If you sent different emails to the rest of the group, that's your problem. But don't tell me you didn't write that!"

Ted E. finally seemed to realise he'd crossed a line (the look on his face was a pretty close approximation of a dinosaur looking at an oncoming asteroid and thinking"Hey, waitaminute..."), and suddenly stopped pressing his claim. He's been very agreeable and compliant since then, too, because that's probably the first time anyone in a team leader role has spoken to him like that. I think I may have scared the absolute hell out of him, so that's got to be worth something...