It used to be that you’d have an assistant who’d organize your stuff, take notes for you, then write up a memo to send out. But it looks cheaper to have people do all that themselves without an assistant. The real cost is hidden in wasted time and mix-ups. There are of course clever people who can do stuff and communicate effectively, but that’s uncommon.
Maybe AI assistants can make up for it, but I expect the average person will manage to mess that up as well.
That’s sort of what I meant by email not being the right tool for some jobs.
It should be, but it’s not because the tool is great but the user… not so much.
I’ve taken to scheduling a meeting with an agenda. 30 minutes, 5 questions, 6 minutes per question. That doesn’t work either; you never get past the start of the 2nd question, at best, before the other person starts rambling or going down a rabbit hole: they’ll start investigating the topic at hand, then spot something else unrelated, say “Wait a minute! That Shouldn’t Be!” and then you’re done, they’re talking about something else for the rest of the allotted time.
I’m part of the problem, of course, in that my conversational style is deferential especially to those who outrank me at work, I do not interrupt people, and I let them interrupt me. No doubt this makes me an ineffective employee in many ways, but if people weren’t complete idiot jackasses, I could discuss 5 topics in 30 mintutes and get them all put to rest.
Sorry for the non-email-related hijack, but it’s true, often the problem is not email as such, it’s just discipline of mind or lack thereof.
To be fair, the entire company was like that because the senior management hated the IT department; this was the same place they told me to start publishing KPI reports, then told me to stop publishing them, because they didn’t believe we were as busy as the (completely factual, queried from the ticket system) stats appeared to show.
It was also the home of “This document is too long! Summarise it! / This summary isn’t very detailed, is it?”
If anything, they are afraid of us. 
We have very strict control over ourselves though. We play by the same rules.
I get this crap at work all the time. Tickets that just say, “Need help now!”
They thought the solution was to make someone pick a category before submitting but that just means someone picks the wrong shit.
No, if you broke your mouse because you dropped it that’s not a software installation request, unless you’re trying to request softer carpeting, in which case you want to contact Facilities not IT.
When I worked tech support they called us twice to fix the coffee-making machine (and we did it, because geeks).
The truly cursed tickets are those who simply read “It’s not working”.
I once had to unclog a toilet.
But that was at a really small company. And there was no ticket system there, it was too small to really need one.
I also once fixed a door that wasn’t latching properly.
Hahahha.
Well this is at least somewhat IS related. Our offices where being all moved around. Had to disassemble all our cubes and carry them across a parking lot and take them into another buildings basement and ‘store’ them. I’m sure they are still there collecting dust.
That’s really a job for facilities.
A department that was responsible for a piece of public sculpture asked IT to fix the LED lighting on it, because it was too dangerous for their own people (the location required crossing a motorway on foot, to get to it)
I’m glad you realize this is a problem. In my experience, it’s a big one. Everyone is counting on each other to be efficient, and every timid person throws a wrench into the process.
“No doubt this makes me an ineffective employee…” Just the fact that you can type these words means you’re one of the few with self-awareness and can recognize that you need to change this part of your working style, and even your personality.
I had someone point out something like that to me thirty years ago. (Actually, they said "I think you get caught up in the details and lose focus of the overall purpose, the Why Are We Doing This?")
I immediately changed what I could. And, on topic, it meant I led shorter, more focused meetings!
But I also realized that I still have that propensity to have “tunnel vision”, and I ended up switching careers to something where I wasn’t an “accident waiting to happen”.
By the way, while thinking of this thread, I ran into the person who gave me that advice (ummm, let’s see, thirty years ago!), and thanked them.
What started this thread from me is non responses from someone I need data from.
They can’t seem to understand that a physical (situs) address of a property, is different than that mailing address of the owners of said property.
Yeah it’s unusuall.
Again they said that they just want to insure that the USPS can deliver pet dog tags to the property.
And I again for the fourth time said WE DO NOT GET USPS delivery in this county.
I can give them all the info they need. Lat/Long, pyhsical address or mailing tied to it. They can’t seem to understand that a physical address is different from a mailing address.
I DID finally get them to say that “No we don’t need the legal description lot number”.
I think the person I’m working with is also the ‘Data Team’. And is not a GIS person.
I want to help, I really do. But my confidence in this is dropping.
“Hey, I have no idea what the hell you do, so you are disposable”
We can’t risk a human life, send IT.
Kind of reminds me when we knew that there were going to be power interruptions on a particular weekend, so we rented a massive generator that would be able to keep our servers powered for the duration. Everything was all set up and ready to go.
A manager wanted me to wait and watch in a tiny server room for 8 hours just in case something happened.
Luckily my boss said no fucking way. And I mean those words literally. He was not going to subject me to what was essentially torture and cussed the guy out. There wasn’t even anywhere to really sit comfortably in there.
Everything went uneventfully that weekend without my presence.
On the other hand, this personality trait makes me sometimes more self-deprecating than is reflective of reality. I actually think I’m a great employee, but a lot of managers are utter jackasses in love with the sound of their own voice. And we absolutely have an organizational culture of falling down rabbit holes. I almost never witness any meeting stay on topic, whether or not I’m an active participant. Virtually everyone is easily distracted by shiny objects.
(I do appreciate the feedback. I’m probably in the wrong organization though; I really do feel surrounded by loudmouths, and they probably think I’m a mouse. But I’m not going to start shouting down my managers and their inability to listen is on them, not me.)
As an introvert, that sounds like the fifth level of hell…