I work in the IT department of a large insurance firm. Right now we are trying to upgrade the enitre building (some 1200 pc’s) to Windows 2000. Currently I’m occupied in sending questionnaires about their current systems to all (and yes, I do mean all) our employees.
Now for the rant:
To the procrastinating jackass who won’t return my e-mails:
You do want your employees upgraded, right? You were the one who decided that all the questionnaires would be sent to you, and you would then get the answers from your employees and send them back. Well, I gave you a deadline. That deadline was two weeks ago. I called you last monday, asking (politely) “what happened?” You said “Middle of the week, I swear.” I should have gotten you to specify which week, obviously. Today, I e-mailed you first thing in the morning, because I’ve gotten sick of listening to your excuses over the phone. No answer yet.
It’s nice that I only have to deal with one person for 50 questionnaires. But when that one person stonewalls me, I’m fifty times more screwed. Get it together!
This post is a bit of foreshadowing for me. I think we’ll be rolling out 2000 eventually (we still have quite a few people on 98 and NT), and I’m sure we’ll have the same problems.
When we had to migrate our users to a new VPN system, we set a deadline (for ourselves) a month ahead of when we needed to ship the unit back. Each of the 5 of us on my team received a list of users to migrate, and we all in turn gave them a deadline of two months before the disconnect date. We only had a few people who didn’t respond, but they called pretty quick when we unplugged the box after the deadline expired.
Call the person’s supervisor, explain the situation. Wait one day for a response. If no result contact the Jackass’s supervisor’s boss and explain that you have been waiting on Jackass to return the info for XXX time period, that Jackass’s supervisor is aware of the situation, and that you have received no response. Let the manager know that this one person is holding up the whole company and you ‘won’t be able to explain this away to your management for much longer’. Make it sound like you are the good guy and taking the heat for his employees screw-up.
If that fails go to plan B, trust me, you don’t want to go to plan B…
Problem being this guy is the supervisor. sighs Ah well . . . If I don’t get the stuff by tomorrow, I toss it to my supervisor, who can deal with him on an equal level. Then the fit hits the shan.
Anyhow, I now feel like a first-class heel, because apparently the lazy bastard in question has been end-dated (i.e. scheduled for termination) in a month or three. But still, 'tis no excuse to get sloppy.
Yes, yes it is an excuse, perchance even a full blown reason. Poor sap probably deleted your latest email without even reading it. I wouldn’t imagine him, a dead man walking, walking around the office collecting motherfucking questionaires, would you? Looks like you are going to have to go back to Plan A and collect the 50 worksheets yourself. Kind of a drag.
My large insurance company has a big group working on a Win2K conversion, which has now changed to an XP conversion. Lots of meeting invitations and emails flying around. Their activities and requests were regarded respectfully for the first several months, but now we mostly just point and laugh. Goofy bastards.
Of course no matter the magnitude of cluster-fuckery, the whole thing will end with an explosion of glad-handing, back-slapping, and group fellating. They will loudly proclaim their initiative to be a masterpiece of goals overachieved, budgets underrun, and productivity hyperincreased.
Bleagh! Well, on the bright side, no matter how grim it gets, it’s nothing a high-powered rifle and a clocktower can’t fix. Was that my out loud voice?
Clocktower . . . ponders Maybe the church across the street will do . . . When they ask why, I’ll hand them my suicide note stating that, being a contract worker, I couldn’t take the lack of benefits anymore.
Of course, now I’ve just found out that he went on vacation on Friday, leaving me, my boss, and his partner on the upgrade project in the lurch. End-dated or not, that’s pushing it. He could have at lease said something.
