[boulder.pm] My Lovely Day

[Jason Van Slyke]

Same kind of stories here. 

Marketing Acct Director issues a reporting-project request in mid-August. On
8/29 I deliver a prototype report. In early October, her boss rakes me over
in project prioritization meeting for doing nothing (while she if off on
vacation spraining her ankle and getting 5 days of medical on top of the
vacation; I was unaware that setting on ones ass chatting on the phone taxed
the ankle, but...). 10/6 I rebuild the prototype and reissue it because she
has no idea a prototype was ever sent to her. Then she tells me this isn't a
priority project and I should not be spending my precious time on this one.
Yesterday, in the prioritization meeting, she has this project as #1
priority but still hasn't done anything with the prototype I sent (twice)
because the project coordinator (who's last day at this company was 10/27)
had mistakenly attached the comments from another project to this now #1
project and those comments indicated a database issue was open. She wants to
know when is this ever going to get done?!!! ... I too choked our something
bland.

Would you like a job here? Management by chaos and confusion guaranteed.

Jason

-----Original Message-----
From: Walter Pienciak [mailto:walter at frii.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2000 12:18 PM
To: boulder-pm-list at happyfunball.pm.org
Subject: [boulder.pm] My Lovely Day


So this group of people I write stuff for ask me to build them a web
interface where people can submit files and information to them
electronically.

Lots of back and forth.  What they want is an e-mail with the
field submissions nicely formatted and any file uploads as attachments.

I roll it out this morning.  They play with it:  fill in the fields,
attach a few files, hit submit.  They get the e-mail with the field
submissions nicely formatted and their uploaded files as attachments.

I get an e-mail back:  "What are we supposed to do with the attached
file?"  I'm too polite to say "I don't know and I don't care -- why
did you ask for it in the first place?"  I also think that snarling
"Shove it up your ass" would be insensitive and un-PC.  I choke out
something bland.


And yesterday?  I write/support an application being used in the N.J.
office.  Electronic upgrade to a previously all-paper process.
"HELP!!!" screams the e-mail subject line I receive.  Seems this woman
doesn't trust the electrons, so she's been printing out copies of
everything.  And this new subsystem outputs ASCII .txt files, so she's
*opening, cutting, and pasting* hundreds of files into Word, and then
hitting print -- ONE AT A TIME.  I tell her there's an easier way to do
this, if she really, really needs paper copies, and that the network
admin there can show her how to print ASCII .txt files without having to
cut and paste each one individually into a blank Word template file.

On-site, trained, several-years-experience admin *can't get it
figured out*.


A nice program we finished 2 months ago under heavy deadline *still*
hasn't been linked to anywhere on the site.


I don't think I'm going to last much longer with this company.
I feel the burnout coming.

Walter