One of Those Days
- Wade
Similar to Al's experience yesterday, today's gambit has been impeded upon by actual work. Bugger. Anyway, if you aren't in the corporate world and/or not involved in technology projects this gambit will likely be pretty dry. If you protest.. well.. write your own. I'll happily post next Monday.
Ever have one of those days when you question your chosen profession? Today has been one of those for yours truly. In years past, days like today were commonplace. However, I'll celebrate my five-year anniversary at Dain in a couple of months, and my job dissatisfaction has dissipated. Well, either that, or I've given up hope. Regardless, for the past two years I've approached most of my workdays as one of the seven dwarves-- whistling my happy ass along, surrounded by taupe cube walls, and ignoring (if not accepting) the corporate world around me.
Today though... well, let me enumerate.
Passive aggressiveness. Picture this: our hero is in a meeting with your typical clueless business user. I am in the process of transferring this project to a different business analyst, who is just starting to compile business requirements. At the beginning of said meeting, the new BA states that the purpose of the meeting is to define what data elements need to be sent to a third-party vendor. Whereupon clueless business user pipes up, saying "This meeting is NOT needed." Addressing the new BA, she continues. "I provided this document to someone in this room months ago, which outlines everything you need." Of course, she was referring to me. Now... if the document she was referring to was a list of data elements that the business line had come up with, I'd be pretty red-faced. However, she was holding up the XML schema that the vendor had provided us. For those non-geeks, let me explain: this is a clueless, clueless woman. However, this did not prevent her from calling me out as less-than-adequate, and the unfortunate part is that she was surrounded by similar clueless business folk that all nodded in agreement. I sometimes think about leaving IS for the business line, but am afraid that the lobotomy might hurt too much.
Co-workers. I have one co-worker in particular who enjoys being difficult, just simply for the fun of being difficult. This morning I overheard one of the programmers come over to his desk to get signoff on a code change going in tonight. I like this programmer-- he's pretty easygoing, or at least as easygoing as a COBOL programmer can be. However, my coworker proceeded to rip into him and treat him like a six year-old, simply because he wanted to. Work is bad enough, there's no reason to be an a-hole to other people. No one really wants to be here.
Secret projects. My current project has been described as "hush-hush." I have another word for it: "doomed to failure." Several times I've suggested that we confer with other business lines that will be impacted, only to be told "there's no use in getting them all riled up." We're not getting any client feedback on whether this product will be accepted or not for a couple reasons: there's not enough time, and we don't have any recourse if clients say they won't like it. We're also not getting any feedback from groups of brokers DESIGNED to give feedback on projects before they are implemented. Know why? THEY MIGHT NOT LIKE IT. Greeeaat. Our hero is tasked with documenting requirements for this project. As a matter of fact, a draft is due this Friday. Numerous times, though, when I've asked for details, I've been told by the project owner to, in essence, bug off. They'll tell me what they want when they're good and ready.
On days like today, the thought of being a librarian, high school social studies teacher, or Caribou barista sound pretty tempting. Or, heck, writing full time for simpleprop. I wonder how much we pay...
What do you think? Drop us a line at webmaster@simpleprop.com and give us some
feedback. Maybe we'll even run your letters in future Gambits. 'The Daily Gambit' is updated every weekday.
