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.

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?).

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."

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.

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.