"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -- unknown

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - Albert Einstein

Irked at work
July 21, 2008 - 6:13 pm

There weren't too many cries of lost-work-horror, but some.

My laptop... just beeped and flipped to battery. I smiled.

I spent the vast majority of the day waiting to get an answer from someone... an answer I needed ASAP as I was due to ship a project by 5pm.

Around 1... I send an email. No reply.

Around 3... I call. V-mail says she'll be in by 1pm.

I'm not worried. It's a literal yes/no type question and I've got a plan for either. Or, at least I think I do.

Around 4... I get up an walk over to her area. I didn't do this originally because I like to give folks time to do their thing. However, with no reply to either message, I was irked and wasn't going to be all that nice in person.

Since I'm typing this... that's right, she wasn't there. No computer at her desk... meaning she never came in.

I call her boss, explain the situation and the answer I need. We leave a few messages here and there for folks.

I go back to the team member said answer matters to. I have her reply for if it's a yes... but it's now 4:30, I ask her to send me the reply for it's a no.

She replies... we'll, we can just tell them to take the yes answer (which if the answer is no, we can't do) and add a few percent to it.

I frown. I mean really frown.

That's just not an answer. I don't know what the fuck that is.

You can not tell a prospective customer here's the number for the thing we can't do.... and for you to get our real number (since, remember, we can't do it), you, the customer, have to do some multiplication.

I shake my head.. and call the real sales person on the case. I lay out the situation... and we agree to say fuck it and go out with the yes answer.

Life is, again, good.

Except... I could have sent this and left around 3:30 or 4.

In the mean time... another person asked me if we got a different answer. We had and I'd sent it to her last week. I resend it. She sends back some "joking" email basically saying "thanks for tell me, but knowing last week would have been nice."

At the time, I decide to let it slide... who really cares?

However... it's now about 5 and I'm irked over the whole above thing. So I go back into my sent email and pull out the copy that I sent last week to the three folks on that account team... and basically said, "I did send it last week, read your fucking email." I was nicer of course.. and no doubt I'll get an apology tomorrow.

Then... there's the prick of an IT person who's suppose to fix my laptop so it's actually usable in the first hour I'm at work. I don't know what the deal is, but for, literally, an hour after I log on... I'm in mud. I can't do anything with minute or multi-minute delays.

I opened the ticket over a month ago. We traded emails.... and then he vanished.

I go back into the IT system and request, for the second time, a status. If I don't get a reply in a day or two... I shall take the status email. Go back and take the last unreplied to email direct to this guy and the two outlook invites for a meeting for him to come see my PC... put them all in an email which I'll direct to said IT guy and his boss.

I'm in a cranky mood eh?

Simply put, I get irked when things that should work... don't.