Ineptitude

The BBQ Pit
1

Just an OMGWTF moment to share.

To set up the story - I work as a supervisor at a call center. There are 10 other supervisors there aside from myself. We all have about 20 reps who report to us, and we all have roughly the same amount of work to do in a day. Most of the work involves running reports, processing forms, and instructing our reps in what they need to do each day.

One of the other supervisors - referred heretoforward as Helga Phlegmbrain - is completely incapable of performing her job, and it has seriously begun to grate my nerves. I have never before met anyone as ignorant, as catty, or as inept as Helga. She’s got the whole package.

My interactions with Helga always involve fixing her computer, or re-explaining how to run reports or fill out spreadsheets that she has needed to do daily for the past three years. She is to computers what blindfolded crack addicts juggling chainsaws are to kindergarten classrooms. She has gone through three laptops in three years, with multiple formats & reinstalls inbetween. And she seems almost proud of the fact that she can not do the simplest operations without fucking up her entire system. And she has the balls to complain about the IT guys and how they mess up her computer, or bitch about the reporting department screwing up her reports.
On to the OMGWTF moment… A couple months ago, I made a utility to make life easier on the reps. I won’t mention what the utility is for, for fear that someone will peg what it is, who she is and who I am, and generally make life miserable by informing management that I’m ranting about this. But anyway, the utility replaced an ancient procedure that involved passing paperwork around to everyone in the call center each month, then compiling a lot of data by hand. Now the reps go to a webpage, click a couple buttons, and things are done in a snap.

I held a meeting with all of the supervisors, gave them instructions in how the utility works and how the reps should use it. I told them all to go into the utility and update their team information so their reps would be able to log into the program and do what they needed to do. I also sent them all three reminder emails, and I wrote 6 pages of instructions on a separate web page, just to avoid problems.

Two months later, after the first live run of the program, the only problems that occurred were from Phlegmbrain’s reps. She came screaming to me that all of her team’s stats were fucked up and that my program was garbage. Upon investigation, I found that she did not pass on any of the instructions I gave her. She did not even add her reps info into the program so they could log on. In fact, she hadn’t even opened the program. When I asked her why she didn’t do as I had repeatedly told her she needed to, she said, “Oh I wouldn’t be able to do that, I’m no good with computers.”

OMFG!!! (Note: we’re not to the OMGWTF part yet)

I told her to go in immediately and fix her reps’ info so I could get the system updated. The next day, she asked me what the URL for the program was, because she had deleted my emails. ARGH. So I emailed her the URL to the program and the URL to the webpage with instructions again. Followed up in a week – still not done. When I asked her what the holdup was, she said “Oh I still couldn’t figure that out, can’t you set them up for me?” My response was something like “Dude, like I have time to do your fucking work too. Why the fuck didn’t you mention this a week ago!?” - only slightly more tactfully phrased.

I made her show me how she was going about it while I watched, so I could see what her problem was. She opened up the webpage and clicked the link for Updating Your Reps. She clicked, and clicked and clicked and clicked, but by golly, nothing was working. She couldn’t click into a field to make any changes on the form.

Know why?
Seriously, you’re going to boggle. This is the OMGWTF bit.
She had opened the FUCKING INSTRUCTIONS page and was clicking on A FUCKING .JPG. A fucking JPEG IMAGE. An image of the form, complete with bright red arrows pointing all over the place and numbers on each arrow to be referenced by the instructions below the image. Seriously… the image was even badly compressed, so it barely even resembled a usable form.

Say it with me, now! OH MY GOD, WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!

Apparently she had totally skipped all those other instruction topics with useless headings like “Getting Started” and “Opening the Program”.

I have no idea how she ever got to a position where she would be required to A) work with computers daily and B) instruct her reps to work with computers. What really blows my mind is that she has managed to keep her job, with as worthless as she is at it. She’s got to have blackmail pics of our managers or something.

I feel better having ranted, though. Thanks for sticking with me through that.

2

Doesn’t anyone in management realise what a computer dillbrain she is?

3

Unfortunately, I guess it takes more than general ineptitude to fire someone at our company, so she manages to scrape by. I wonder what they’d do to me if I suddenly turned computer-illiterate and lazy too. Grr.

4

Really, if you were to go into her office and blow her brains out with a pea shooter, there’s not a jury in the land that will convict you. Well … maybe a jury of her ‘peers’, who also probably wouldn’t figure it out, and will assume that you’re in the wrong, becuase you’re doning one of those voodoo things with your computer (ie, making a program that requires an IQ over 45 to use). One more reason why I think that the death penalty should be abolished for all crimes except stupidity.

5

I can understand why you’re fucked off, mate. Commiserations. What a useless twat you have t’ put up with.

6

Please - the only reason she still has a job is because of you. Stop helping her and she’ll get fired.

7

Absolutely. In fact, report her to management for not completing the required tasks that you depend on to get your job done. Dob the moron in.

8

I’m going to have to agree here. No one will know how incompetent she is if you keep covering her ass.

9

Well, maybe, or maybe some of her innocent reps will get fired for incompetence when she blames all the problems on them.

10

It might be helpful to have a talk with her supervisor and let the supe know that he/she will be Cced on future emails to the dillbrain, and why. That’s a pretty awful situation.

Of course, a couple years ago, I had to teach someone how to use our organization’s database, and before I could teach her how to do that I had to teach her how to use a mouse, and she never got the hang of using the mouse without making grinding, grunting noises with her mouth as though she were passing a particularly hefty turd. She’d claimed during her interview to be very computer savvy, by which she meant (she told me this later) she’d used a cash register at K-Mart for the previous eight years. So my sympathy only goes so far.

Daniel

11

Xixox, I completely feel your pain. I don’t know what it is about the call center industry, but we always seem to be stuck with a few “winners” like Helga as supervisors.

On many occasions, I’ve come up with various things to make everyone’s life easier. Without exception, I have had absolutely no cooperation from certain other supervisors (often even the majority) even after going to them and specifically asking them for feedback, and getting management approval also.

My management is pretty spineless, which is the problem. I can go to a manager, ask for permission to set a reasonable deadline, set it, and have maybe one of six supervisors actually get it to me within a week of the deadline (even after several reminders). In one instance, I gave three days for assembling basic contact information for agents; within two weeks after the deadline, I had gotten exactly one supervisor to respond out of the whole department (seven supervisors). I’ll e-mail my manager, and absolutely nothing happens.

I know we’re overworked, but yeesh, can’t we make it a priority to do things that will help us be less overworked?

12

And she’s threatened to click on them, too, with her evil magic!

13

Well, if she doesn’t know how to do the job, then it’s quite unlikely she’s able to train them to do the job.

14

About the only thing she is able to do is berate her reps when they mess up. Her turnover was astounding for a while, until she built up a team of reps that rarely mess up and can put up with a lot of crap.

I guess if results are what you’re after, she got them. I don’t necessarily agree with how she got them, though.

She has done other really really stupid stuff, though. <Name Withheld to Protect The Guilty> came to her asking for ibuprofen or something, and she said “oh I usually get them from XXX’s desk.” XXX had given the sup permission, not NWTPTG. NWTPTG ended taking prescription pills from XXX’s desk without asking, since NWTPTG assumed they were open to everyone who needed them. Due to a stupid zero-tolerance policy on theft, NWTPTG wasn’t even given a warning, just canned that day after 7 years of working there.

I know for a fact that management wants Helga out of there. The problem is that she does just enough to get by, and her fuckups are timed just right so they happen after previous disciplinary probation periods expire. I have decided to limit my assistance for her, and I started keeping track of everything bad she does, to help management build a case for dismissal. I’m not normally a snitch, but in this case I consider it removing a cancer from our company’s body. After the OMGWTF moment, I’m on a mission.

I appreciate all the support from y’all. Has anyone else had a similiar situation with a cow-orker? How did they end up getting resolved?

15

What a dumbass.

Reminds me of a guy I used to work with. Our group existed only to test software, so you’d think all the people in the group might have some understanding of computers. But this guy had to have me explain how to use FTP to him every friggin’ time he had to transfer a file. And it’s not like FTP is a particularly complex or nonintuitive program.

16

Seems like Helga has it pretty good, and you are playing right into her hands. As you noted, she has assembled a team that rarely screws up, even though her method of doing it was ranting, intolerance, and high turnover. She has you dumbing-down instructions, giving her plenty of reminders, and then spoon-feeding her on the process. No wonder it’s miserable working with her. :mad:

One thing you might try, if you’ve not been doing it all along, is to save your outgoing email to her - for example when you ask her about putting the new cover sheets on the TPS reports. Then when she doesn’t respond, or misses a deadline, you send the email to her again, cc: her supervisor and yours, and ask again why she hasn’t responded. Once the replied messages get ridiculously long, hopefully there would be some movement from higher up the food chain.

That way you can also go to your supervisor and say, hey - this is above my head, someone at my level is screwing up, and it’s your (the supervisor’s) place to escalate with the supervisor of the offending party.

Unless of course nobody cares about the new cover sheets for the TPS reports (which is just so wrong) - then you’ve just found one less thing that needs doing.

17

Actually, blind carbon copy(bcc) the e-mails to management.

I agree that you should stop propping her up: you’re reinforcing and enabling her helplessness.

18

I agree with your second point, but must respectfully disagree with your first - bcc, in my opinion, is not good for this type of situation. It tells the bcc: recipient(s) that you are trying to screw-over the person in the to: field, and makes the sender come across as petty and back-stabbing. When I (used to) send email like this, it was my intention that all recipients be made aware of the issues, and that everybody knew that everybody else had received the same email communication.

I figured that the offending party’s supervisor might still hit the delete button, but they were at least made aware that another group had a gripe with a member of their team - which should cause them some level of irritation, hopefully directed partly at the wrong-doer. :slight_smile:

19

In that case, put both recipients on the “To:” line…

The “BCC” option allows the discreet sharing of information. If your management can’t distinguish between discretion and back-stabbing, then you’ve got bigger problems than incomptent colleagues.

Explicitly copying her on these e-mails, if anything, will incite her to circle her wagons and view your actions as an attack.

20

Hm, if it weren’t for your location I’d identify you as one of my coworkers, who just had someone do what you described (click furiously on an emailed screenshot and then complain that it didn’t work. At least she laughed when she realized what she’d been doing).

Worse, I had a boss who was similar to your Helga. Luckily our performance review process means that not only your coworkers but the folks that you manage (if any) are asked for feedback.

So my bosses boss emailed our team and said “How’s she doing?” I responded professionally and pointed out my concerns. Evidently a solid stream of other folks did as well (I don’t think there was anything positive said about her). This was for her 6 month probationary period…on the day of her 6 month review a few of us went to lunch and when we came back she was gone. A very deserving internal candidate was promoted to the position and things have been good since then.

So are you ever asked to provide feedback on Helga? If so, lay out your criticisms (politely and professionally and be prepared to back everything up). Maybe I’m a little optimistic but over the last ten years it’s been my experience that what goes around comes around - really lousy people are hoist to their own petard.