That’s the 2nd (3rd?) time a. I’ve posted a work bitch about this, and b. you’ve asked me that, and c. the answer is, “Nope, native 'Murrican all the way.” I do believe that I shall never again even attempt to defend the American educational system.
… nuh-uh, not even the edjuhmakashunal system.
OK, is this an India-based-service thing? We farmed out some admin type work to a few contractors based in Mumbai and that was the 1st time I’ve come across that phrase.
ETA: shameface also, I found out that our template does support some of the requests, although in a very dumb and low-tech way that probably won’t satisfy that particular board anyway. Oops.
It never fails. I spend all day at my desk quietly working and having no one pay me any attention. I take 3 minutes to doodle on the whiteboard and the boss comes to chat.
Well, when you doodle a stick figure of the boss with his pants down and a wiener schnitzel in his hand, what did you expect? You might as well page him and yell “Boss! You’ve gotta get over here NOW!”
*"What, this? Oh, just something that crossed my mind as I was contemplating the best approach to the project we’re going to be working on in January.
"Oh, you mean, the drawing of the jackass with the label that says Clarke Simoleon? Uh, that was here when I walked in this morning; I assumed one of the cleaners brought her kid in with her last night.
"The label? oh, nonononono that’s not you; didn’t I tell you in my interview that I went to college with a guy named Clarke Simoleon? Dang, I could have sworn I mentioned it, it was such an incredible coincidence! I don’t carry a photo of him around with me; we weren’t that close, but he TOTALLY looked like the guy in that picture. You wouldn’t believe it!
“Welp, got to get back to these figures! See ya!”*
Major releases often require significant downtime while the install is done. And for critical systems, holidays are often the best times to have that extended period when they are down. When I was working, I many times spent a holiday at work, doing an install of a major release.
But allowing vital people to be gone right afterwards – that’s a failure by the management of that department. But they appear to be lax/incompetent in general. They should have downtime every month for doing releases, scheduled in advance for everyone to plan around. Not having the new release announced to everyone beforehand, and some training or at least an online tutorial of the new/changed features – that’s a bad practice, too. Especially nowadays. I remember doing this for mainframe green-screen terminals 20 years ago, when it was much harder to do.
I mentioned before that my old department hadn’t filled out the cost transfer paperwork for my transfer to a different job in the same institution. I thought all that affected was that my old department would continue paying my salary until the appropriate people (not me) finally filled out the paperwork to transfer the cost and then other appropriate people (still not me) filled out paperwork to refund the old department their money. (And then the same people would have to fill out paperwork to explain why forms weren’t, and then were, respectively, filled out and money transferred and then what would be done in the future to avoid such issues. But I digress.)
Anyway, no, that’s not the only problem. One issue is that I can’t get a new photo ID badge because I’m technically (sort of) still “working for” the old department. That’s not so bad right now as it doesn’t actually affect my job and plus I have a rather annoying and prominent zit that I’m hoping will go away quickly, before I need to have the picture taken…
The other is that the mail room still thinks I’m working for the old department. I got an E-mail today to come pick up a package on the other end of the campus, in a basement mail room that you get to via an unmarked elevator (seriously, there aren’t any signs pointing to it, you have to know where it’s tucked away). They thought I worked in Old Department (hey, I’ve been there for years), and looking me up in the online directory still showed me in Old Department, but I had the package shipped to a small building elsewhere on campus (New Department), and the address mismatch confused them. Well, I got the package - a present for a late Christmas visit with my family over the weekend. But the significant amount of gift cards I’d also ordered shipped in a separate envelope, which I didn’t realize until opening the package after getting home. I alerted my officemate to check tomorrow; she hasn’t seen it but it’s possible with the weird half-days and days off this week that someone hadn’t gotten the mail for the old department.
I’d really rather not have to buy the gift cards again and then hope that the older purchase shows up, then try to return them or something.
Just work your shift. As scheduled, please. Even if the shift is crappy and should have been scheduled differently.
(A co-worker came in at 7 or so rather than 11:30, so he left about 3. So from 3:30-5 there was a new and mostly incompetent employee all by himself, and from 5-9 there was supposed to be new guy and Flakey guy. If Flakey didn’t call in-- which he does often enough to be annoying, and not quite often enough to get himself fired.
New employee isn’t probably quite as new and incompetent as I think he is-- but I don’t work with him enough to be sure of it.)
Also, I’m PMSing, and am sick of people griping. And I only got one day off for Christmas. Working on Christmas Eve was my choice (I didn’t work Thanksgiving or the day after, or the day after that). And I really wanted Friday off, and I’ve got that. And Saturday, which is nice. But still, going back after only a single day off? Makes me a little cranky.
Oooh, that reminds me-- Look, co-worker, I get that you don’t want to deal with NEW Truck, because there’s all the Old stuff and the Christmas stuff to be marked down . . . but, that doesn’t mean that New Truck is full of crap, and I wish you’d get less cranky about it.
Q: Why don’t I have access yet?
A: Because you have to answer a question we emailed you last week and you haven’t done it yet.
Q: Why doesn’t my direct report have access yet?
A: Because we sent it to you for your approval and you haven’t done it yet.
Q: How come I can’t access the database?
A: Because we your request to DBA to be completed this morning, and they haven’t gotten to it yet.
Q: How come I can’t access the database?
A: We don’t have any records of you attempting to do so. Please tell us what you’re doing.
Q: How come I can’t find the tools for this?
A: Because you haven’t ordered them yet, like you were told to do in that email 2 weeks ago.
Q: But I need them in the next hour!
A: Sorry, I don’t have them to install for you. Should have payed attention to that email.
Q: Who can do that for me?
A: Probably no one. Follow the instructions and order it. Have your boss call in to expedite the order. Good Luck With That.
Q: How can I get access to someone else’s ID?
A: You can’t. Next question.
Q: I was using someone else’s ID and someone changed the password? Can you tell me what it is?
A: No.
Q: I’m a programmer and I need update access on a system admin database. Give it to me.
A: Dude, not even the DBAs have direct access to that. They have to use the (carefully monitored) system ID. No, you can’t have that.
Q: Well how do I get it.
A: God himself couldn’t get you access. The answer is NO.
Q: I need a detailed schedule of when every database on the entire production system will be loaded over the next two holiday weeks.
A: Assume that it will be done by the normal working schedule unless someone tells you different. Beyond that, we don’t keep that schedule and I can’t give you one.
Q: Can you get it for me?
A: Nope. Contact the various production ETL teams and business units if you need that much information in that kind of detail. Good Luck With That. (Because frankly, there is absolutely ZERO need-to-know for that much detailed information on that many business systems, so fuck off.)
It’s what I also thought about, that it sounded like the kind of stuff you get from (certain parts of) India; a lot of people there speak English but first, they have as much dialectal variety as the UK or the US and second, a lot of those people don’t really have it as their first language. And yes, “please do the needful” is Indian-English for “my part is done, your turn”.
You fucked up the first time, and I told you nicely and patiently how to fix it. I even went above and beyond by attaching a blank template rather than making you search for it on the intranet. Then you somehow managed to fuck it up again? Maybe third time’s a charm, but I’m not counting on it. You can’t manage your own email box, why are you entrusted to run an entire branch? Don’t UGH at me when I reply back, yet again, that you fucked up. I said it just as nicely and politely, but YOU fucked up. It’s not *my *fault you can’t/won’t read the words in front of your face.
I work in the ops center of a small bank. Most of the branch employees I deal with are very intelligent, cordial, thoughtful individuals. I guess that’s why it was such a shocker to spell out a series of exact, concise points in an email and get back a form that doesn’t fit the bill.
The staff knew about the release, but the clients didn’t until about a week before, and we didn’t issue release notes until the first business day after the release. (Of course, no one reads the damn release notes anyway.) We’re having major meetings with Management because we of the Support Team get royally screwed when they don’t bother to show us what’s being changed ahead of time. Generally we only get to see the stuff that we are QA testing; if it’s not our area, we don’t see it.
We do our releases on weekend nights; this one started at 8:00 PM on 12/21. It was turned over to us around 1:00 AM or so; we finally got done with testing around 3:00 AM. We do full releases about once a quarter or so.
We’re actually much better than we were when I started here 6 years ago. This one was just more of a clusterfuck than usual.
Choke on my lunch you brainless tupperware stealing choad breath. I hope the chives I used give you diarrhea, and that the ham makes you so constipated that you need to eat three boxes of EXLAX to blast your shit loose. I hope your pets and children vomit on your clean laundry for a month straight.
I know this is about 3 days late, but you know, holidays.
Thanks for that! I have been working almost solely with Americans for a year now, and had completely forgotten that phrase that accompanied every.single.email from my former bosses, co-workers, and everyone else in Germany, India, and China for such a long part of my career. Maybe it’s us here in the US using our language wrong?
Such as, the newly floated-in and befuddled ER doc backing out of the Code (resuscitation) situation telling the techs and nurses, “Uh … just do what you usually do …”
Friday. The Friday that just passed, between Boxing Day and the weekend. Only two people in our side of the office besides me. The two people who had an affair together a few years ago. (One’s marriage survived, one’s did not.) It was painfully quiet all day long. Monk-like silence, all day.
I had a temp job years ago working with a couple of guys who had something of a similar situation - the one guy had an affair with the other guy’s wife (who also worked there, down the hallway), and broke up two marriages in the process. They stayed working in the same department for a while until one or both could get transferred out, and shifts where they were both scheduled were…yeah, “awkward” was one way to describe it.
Especially when you majorly change the main patient demographics screen, and then get the tooltips wrong on the toolbar icons. :rolleyes:
That said, I may have to borrow that last sentence … that’s a good curse!