I’m so f*cking pissed off right now that I cannot stand it.
It’s like someone gave me pissy pills.
Everything everyone says or does is making me angry.
No, I’m not PMSing. I don’t think. Crap. Maybe I am.
Must. Vent.
A Few Reasons for Why I’m Pissed Off:
My manager says, “Your number one priority is getting this product out,” then tells me to do research on an enhancement not included in the original specs.
My manager says, “Don’t get involved in training, you’re development,” then comes back and says, “Well, the big boss says we should help this one time so let’s help.” A month later, I’m asked to help with training on the same subject, different audience. I send an e-mail to my manager, asking what to do. Two weeks later, he says, “Don’t get involved in training, you’re development,” after I’ve already started working with them. Yesterday he sends out an e-mail saying, “GfH will NOT participate in training!” Then the training manager stops by and says, “Do YOU consider this stuff you’re doing to be ‘training,’ necessarily?”
In other words, I’m stuck in the middle.
Our software vendor SUCKS ASS. Every other time I try to log on to the system, I can’t. Every other time I try to run a report, I get an error message: <Software> error. Data does not exist for the report requested. This error could mean one of a myriad of things:[list=a][li]There’s something wrong in the web-based reporting software.[/li][li]The account is not set up for the kind of report requested.[/li][li]The account doesn’t have information for the date requested.[/li][li]The account doesn’t have the information requested, whether it be the account category or data element requested.[/li][li]The account has an underlying account with missing information.[/li][li]The system that feeds the web-based reporting software is down.[/li][/list=a]Am I a moron, or would it not make SENSE to create error messages that diagnose the problem? This error message is going to pop up for our clients OFTEN. And guess who gets to f*cking trouble-shoot them?
Not to mention the fact that the reports suck in the first place. Examples of suckyness: The web-based reporting software graphs information that wasn’t selected. It mis-labels keys (in other words, a client won’t be able to tell what a graph represents). It looks like crap when you try to download to Excel. It squares the quantity of copies you want to print!
And I get to train our sales staff on this piece of sh*t. What a waste of time. As if they’re going to sell this to anyone. It’s embarrassing.
Someone stop me before I get fired. I could go on forever.
This kind of thing is exactly why I got out of software development and into network administration (or “went over to the dark side” as programmers like to call it.) When I was a programmer I was repeatedly faced with software problems which my manager told me were “minor” and “not a priority at this time,” but which drove the users (and inevitably the trainers) completely nuts. And who got blamed? Well, a hierarchy of people. The users blamed the trainers, the trainers blamed the programmers, the programmers blamed the managers, and maybe the managers figured out a way to blame someone, too. Bah. I have left it all behind. Mostly.
To keep myself reminded of how not to trust the software, I have a printout of a weekly chart showing visitor session to our chart that was printed from a WebTrends report. It shows activity by day as a bar chart. The days are labelled: Thu Sun Mon Tue Wed Fri Sat…
I guess I’m naive. I still feel like this stuff is fixable. But I guess when we say we’re number one in customer service, that we want to be the premier financial services provider, we’re just blowing smoke up each other’s asses, huh?
Is this one of those ethical issues I’m learning about in my Business 201 class?
There are ways to fix this f*cking thing if we just slow down and FORCE the vendor to do what they said they would do.
But no! Our year-end objectives are more important! Having a zillion crappy products out there is more important than making our core products as good as we can make them!
Why can’t anyone else see that this is going to bite us in the ass? We will lose customers if we continue to promote shoddy products.
Well, you could always pop over here and amuse yourself by telling ol’ Bob just how life can pop up and hit him. It won’t solve your current problems, but it might make you feel better.
I swear to God, you could use me as a clock. Every 30 days, I get extremely, irrationally angry about something. Luckily and blessedly, I have the SDMB to use as a sounding board.
Thank you, dear sweet Dopers, for listening to me bitch.
