Time to Retire?
All day long I have been impatient with people who were not doing their jobs properly. Here’s a litany of my encounters:
– A survey stat asking numerous questions about a spec I drafted for her review, which should have originated from her.
– A new employee who has been here 2 days without a computer because the people we request this from just didn’t deal with it a week ago when we first made the request. Nor did people in my office follow up on it adequately. I learned a long time ago that these kinds of things never happen without a lot of prodding.
– An error in a 2004 allocation rate because neither the programmer (my employee) or the subject-matter analyst bothered to look at it before it was declared final. Today was the press conference for the release of this data. Apparently the error was discovered yesterday and no one on my staff told me about it. Instead I learned of it from someone in another division.
– No one following up on a training request for the same new employee. The course starts next week.
– An error in a production program run earlier this week. I wasn’t even aware that there was a change being made to this program. Apparently the change was not properly tested. Nor did the math stat verify the production run in the 2-hour window before the release of the file. The bottom line is that it’s too late to do anything about it.
– I had logged a problem report on a WordPerfect issue last week. When I called today to check on the progress of its resolution, I was told that Claude was researching it would give me a call. He never called and instead went home. The person I finally spoke to said that Claude was actually working on a problem for their branch chief. So much for the priority of my problem! Claude could have at least called to tell me that himself.
In all of these cases, I was less than cordial, and probably down-right accusatory and insulting. I really hate incompetence. I also really hate finding out about mistakes that could easily have been avoided.
Maybe my intolerance is just one more sign that it is time to move on, to exchange these problems for ones that are more under my control.
– A survey stat asking numerous questions about a spec I drafted for her review, which should have originated from her.
– A new employee who has been here 2 days without a computer because the people we request this from just didn’t deal with it a week ago when we first made the request. Nor did people in my office follow up on it adequately. I learned a long time ago that these kinds of things never happen without a lot of prodding.
– An error in a 2004 allocation rate because neither the programmer (my employee) or the subject-matter analyst bothered to look at it before it was declared final. Today was the press conference for the release of this data. Apparently the error was discovered yesterday and no one on my staff told me about it. Instead I learned of it from someone in another division.
– No one following up on a training request for the same new employee. The course starts next week.
– An error in a production program run earlier this week. I wasn’t even aware that there was a change being made to this program. Apparently the change was not properly tested. Nor did the math stat verify the production run in the 2-hour window before the release of the file. The bottom line is that it’s too late to do anything about it.
– I had logged a problem report on a WordPerfect issue last week. When I called today to check on the progress of its resolution, I was told that Claude was researching it would give me a call. He never called and instead went home. The person I finally spoke to said that Claude was actually working on a problem for their branch chief. So much for the priority of my problem! Claude could have at least called to tell me that himself.
In all of these cases, I was less than cordial, and probably down-right accusatory and insulting. I really hate incompetence. I also really hate finding out about mistakes that could easily have been avoided.
Maybe my intolerance is just one more sign that it is time to move on, to exchange these problems for ones that are more under my control.
posted by Barbara at 5:58 PM
1 Comments:
I think your conclusion to the happenings of the day were about right. I would feel pretty much as you did. RB
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