A Real Snapshot of My Work Life

April 12, 2007

Poorly worded support cases that were actually submitted to us recently.

"This change" being the day they started letting you use a computer? I think that was yesterday.

I sometimes like to use this close description when I have no idea what the question is: "Well, I would suggest a defense in depth strategy that can mitigate the need to apply certain patches, as the attack vectors can be minimized or eliminated."

We're an hour from where you saw all of the devistation during Hurricane Katrina. Do you think this client asked for our contingency plan for a major named storm in our direct path? No. They're worried about what to do if we all catch the bird flu at once.

This one speaks for itself. A common mistake.

Also, this is an honest to goodness text from a work email that was sent to zillions of people. The sender is a stranger to me. You don't have to read the whole thing, but go deep enough to get the gist.

Hello - In an ongoing effort to ensure all members of Professional Services have a means of submitting suggestions regarding process improvements (PI) and strategic initiatives (SI), the Shared Services team recently assessed the existing submission process and enhanced it based on the addition of Stategic [sic] Initiatives and the results of the recent reorganization in terms of roles and responsibilities. Beginning today, ALL requests for process improvements and / or strategic initiatives should be submitted by completing the process below: Step 1: Access and complete the PI / SI submission form For your convenience, you can locate the form in one of two places: For those of you with DocuShare access, the form is placed in the ET - ET Professional Services - ET Shared Services folder (link included below) http://172.18.199.57:8080/docushare/dsweb/View/Collection-1105/Document-6273 For those of you without DocuShare access, please save the form below in your personal files and access it directly, as needed. <> NOTES: 1) If you have DocuShare access please use the version posted in DocuShare to ensure you're always submitting the latest version. 2) When completing the form, you MUST complete all the REQUIRED fields for your request to be reviewed and considered. If you do not provide all the required information, your request will not be considered until all required data is obtained. Step 2: Save the completed submission form in your personal files NOTE: Please do NOT save your completed forms to DocuShare Step 3: Email the completed form to Enabling Technologies SEPG NOTE: Once the email is sent, a member of Shared Services will review the request and properly align it as A) Process Improvement, B) Strategic Initiative or C) Neither For additional information regarding the history of this initiative and details regarding the individual PI / SI process flow, please reference the presentation reviewed with Professional Services Leadership and the ATL CFT Directors.

It was also full of bold text, red text, and odd indentations that weren't preserved with my copy and paste into this post.

I haven't found the time yet, but I'm going to go through this whole routine to suggest a particular process improvement. My suggestion: don't make employess go through a complicated, unmemorizable, formal process just to suggest ways that things could be done better.

I'll let you all know if that gets me fired.

There are a lot of acronyms in that email above, but fear not for me. I also received recently a six-page glossary of acronyms, with probably 20 to 25 listings per page. I haven't had a chance to go through them all, but here's one that jumped out at me:

GORILLA

Gosh Offline Really Is Lots Less Aggravating (batch update process for ACRO)

However, my glossary didn't have PI or SI or PI/SI, but the email author defines those at the top, so I think it's her intention to add to our lexicon of acronyms. It doesn't have SPEG, which I still don't know. It doesn't have ATL (the city of Atlanta, borrowed from the airport system -- a reference to headquarters) or CFT (customer focused team), which I happen to know from their frequent use.

Does anyone else work with people who aren't nearly as smart as they think they are?