No, bitch, THIS is how you school someone by email.

The BBQ Pit
1

It must be a universal law that Network Operations is staffed by bullies, dickheads, and misanthropists. God forbid someone outside your team actually expect you to do your job and put you through the misery of actually completing an assigned task in a timely manner. You know, I was sympathetic. Your team lead is known throughout the department for being a hamster fucking narcissist. Not only was I on your side, I was actually covering for you by limiting the update notifications on the network outage and not bugging the shit out of you for a more detailed response than “we’re still working on it”. Then you pull this festering pile of half-rotted, aromatic vulture intestinal garbage on me?

It.

**Is.

ON.**

I send out the last update of the day at 4 p.m. after checking status with you a few minutes prior, and all I get is “it’s still not working”. Fine. I log off and go home. TEN MINUTES LATER, you email me to say that it’s working now. You do not a) update the ticket, b) call me directly, c) call me via the on-call number, d) call any of my team members who are still at work and on the phones, or e) notify my supervisor.

And three hours later, you email me, my entire team, my supervisor, my manager, our director, your team, your manager, and your director to ask why the resolution notification hasn’t been sent?

Hold still, kumquat. This is going to sting.

Because, you see, I documented everything. I documented the fact that you didn’t respond to calls to your landline or your cell phone. I documented that the only way to reach you was by email. I documented that your manager refused to take over the role of problem manager as well as the fact that you were offsite, unavailable by phone, and were working on a problem of “higher priority”. I documented my attempts to get a detailed status from you, my report to my manager about the push-back I was getting, and the fact that no one on your team was treating a four day old outage as a problem.

So, all I have to do is “Reply All” to your coy little finger pointing and explain all the ways you failed to do your job. Also, here’s an summary of the procedure you were supposed to follow. Here’s all the contact avenues you refused to use. Here’s a link to the documentation of the Incident Management procedure you ignored as well as a reminder that the Director of IT gave every single one of us copies of the flowchart and decision tree. I even added an offer to sit down with you and go over the procedure so there was no more confusion about HOW TO DO YOUR FUCKING JOB.

Congratulations, forty people, including the director of IT, now know that you’re a sabotaging whiny eunuch who cares more about making other people look bad than doing your job. Plus, I come off as competent, caring, and kind.

Do not fuck with me, Smurfette. You will end up naked and weeping in front of the world.

(God, that felt good. I can’t wait until Monday.)

2

Said Smurfette has pictures of the CEO in a compromising situation. You’re toast. :wink:

3

Yeah, been there.

This is how it’s going to go…

People who actually read your email (those who don’t immediately go, tl;dr) will find it cringeworthy and see it for the retaliatory CYA retort that it is. Management will ignore it because it will require uncomfortable conversations with counterparts about who’s at fault and who should shoulder the blame. Director of IT will think this is simply too deep in the woods to deal with. At the next senior staff meeting, if this is discussed at all, this will be shrugged off as a miscommunication: “Let’s all try to do better next time, lads.”

But for you and for the NetOps tech… this will be what defines the rest of your professional relationship until you no longer have to interact with each other.

4

Sadly, QuickSilver is right. unless the director of IT is cool.

5

I disagree, I think phouka’s case is demonstrated by this:

That is an incredibly dick move. Sabotaging whiny eunuch is right.

Sadly, the true problem appears to be here: “hamster fucking narcissist.” And I doubt that will be resolved.

If the entire email is written in ConcernTroll, a la this:

then phouka may get a promotion. Always go ConcernTroll.

6

Yes, the lesson others should get from this is to first write emails like that in a word processor as a catharsis, cut out 90% of it (saving it in a separate file Just In Case), drop the excessive whining, and go immediately to Concern Troll. It is a powerful tool that is taught in management books, though the writers never hint that it can be used disingenuously.

7

God, the unresolved sexual tension is just… tense.

8

He nailed it. And nobody who’s cool would ever want to be director of IT.