Introducing the semi-functional illiterates

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

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

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

"Must possess good communication skills..."

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

Professionalism: it's overrated anyway...

Paraphrasing ensues.

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

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

My reply (to Ted E. and team):

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

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

Creeping cynicism

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

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

Selling out?

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

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

A quick update

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

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

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

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

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

On paper.

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

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

---

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

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...