for example… email wars

Aggressive email wars – yea you know what I’m talking about… it starts out as someone requests information or work from someone else who either can’t do it – didn’t do it when they should of – doesn’t want to do it… for whatever reason it turns into something like a tennis match where after each serve an extra player is added to one or both sides until there is hardly room on the court to swing your racket, often times the two people who began the match have gone to the club house and are no longer included in the game. The possible scenario’s are endless sometimes you have three people on one side each taking turns hitting the ball to the other side where there are 30 people on the court but only one of them is actually playing. You get the idea, you’ve seen this game, you have no doubt played this game, the question is did you enjoy it?
Spmmt’s (Serious Potential for Middle Management Training) love this, they believe they are getting a real chance to show off their back hand to someone senior who has without a doubt no idea they are even on the court because the department admin reads and deletes the mail for him/her. Sometimes though the senior people get sucked in… now were talking…
I just got off the court of a seriously entertaining match. On one side we have a group of two developers and the corporateBSA who originally asked a member of a consulting company (who have been hired by the man at the top) to explain a very simple process to do with dates. The Consultant didn’t know so, being a consultant, replied with a very lengthy email about nothing. The developer replied to this by asking for a process flow document, maybe it would help explain. Well… The next thing you know an army of consultants are getting called in for back up. The reply was something along the lines of how dare you accuse us of not creating the correct documentation.
The developer went back saying I didn’t accuse you… but now that you mention it… this went on for a while, every now and then the developer would try to say all I need is an explanation. Eventually – wait for it this is brilliant- The consulting company got very senior members of the corporation to defend their company to us. Fantastic! In the end one of the consultants wrote one sentence that answered the question perfectly. That sentence was probably worth $10,000.00 in wasted time…

for example…we will keep your resume on file…

I’ve only just started this blog and I am having serious trouble deciding which “for example” to use, should I discuss;The six page memo on what food is appropriate to order  through the online stationary website, it’s not like it’s a six page list of specific things we can and can not order, it’s six pages of scenarios of when it’s ok to order a type of food and when it is not. Ok to order cookies for a coffee area as long as there is more than one department that uses that area more than once a day and its not just the same person from a different department or something like that… for god sake…. You get the ideat there is a hundred more in those six p-ages

Or should I tell you the new meeting structure that’s going to save hours and hours of useless meeting time?– no I’ll talk about that another time, when I actually do it, right now it’s just an idea… a damn good idea, I think I’ll patent it before I tell anyone..

So – today’s “for example” is, as you have already seen, we will keep your resume on file…I was just hanging at the water cooler, I know cliché, when I asked someone from our wonderful HR department about a job we are advertising for internally, I was asking for a friend of mine who had applied here once before and was unsuccessful, so we got into the whole hiring process and I was asking how their new $400,000.00 recruitment software package was working, “OK it’s easy to do searches and to track the progress of a job seeker”. “Cool, how is it for finding potential candidates who have applied for similar jobs previously?” I asked. “We can’t use it for that” Confused I asked “What?”.“you have to apply for each job separately” . So I ask “Why do we reply Thank you for your application, we will keep your resume on file?” “Because we have their information on file”“But we can’t use it?”“We can use it if they apply for another position” she says“If they apply for another position won’t they have an updated resume?”“Usually”“So what’s the point of the new software?”  I ask“So corporate knows who applies here?”I then ask “is that so we may have a job for them in the
Denver office, because that would be really useful?”“no just so they know who applies here we don’t do anything with it” And on and on and on meanwhile my friend isn’t applying for a position he is more than qualified for because he thinks that our super duper recruitment system will find him because WE TOLD HIM “Thank you for your application, we will keep your resume on file”  

for example… apps about apps

Al right check it out im sitting in my open plan all inclusive environment trying to make a difference when i get an email about the colors of a new app my friend is working on, this app is a simple web app to keep track of all of our applications ( kinda like a meeting about meetings) anyway because meetings about meetings and applications about applications  is exactly what this department loves and because this particular app is going to replace an awful spread sheet that was created to  be a temporary solution to make it easier for us to keep track of all the information that needs to be loaded onto the corporate application about applications there is a lot of interest about it.So I’m looking at the colors of that he used(seriously questioning his sexuality) and make a comment about the care bears in relation to application databases, well I don’t know how it happened but the next thing I know there is 10 BSA’s surrounding my PC as well as my friend who developed it.  This is it this a their chance they can actually make a contribution to an important business application an IT person who doesn’t have a clue about technology’s dream – The developer is actually looking for advise on color…Then from everwhere.  “ pink is nice, I like the way it is, maybe they can change colors depending on where they are within the application, can you make it red when it’s highlighted? And on and on and on. Needless to say this is not what me or the developer wanted. This means that we are going to have 9 unhappy users because we didn’t pick their colors! before we even get started were now coming from behind.   That’s just the beginning we knew it was coming…. about 45 minutes later one of the “BSA’s” comes over and says I think we need to add screen shots of the different colors in the URS (or some other 68 page document describing an application that used to be a spread sheet) OK he says, I’ll send on the link, knowing that this means all the same people gathered around my desk earlier are now going to have a document that they can add comments to and pass around over and over until the original document has become so full of comments that they are going to come back to us and ask if we can write an application to track the changes of the document about the application that is replacing the spreadsheet that tracks the applications that we have in order for us to be able to easily load them into the corporate application that is used to track all the applications….

for example…

we (when is say we i mean the corporate machine i work for) have these awards for different things such as innovation, respect for people etc… you know the kind of thing well every year they print out a big glossy magazine with the pictures of all the winners and the wonderful thing they did to earn one of these awards. I’m looking at it right now!and I amused by tthe winners of the award for ”innovation” reading the examples it appears that  the definition of innovation is  ”following the corporate steps outlined for you ensuring that you come up with the corporate solution that saves the most money and fires the most people.” Did I metion the other award is for respect for people…

BSA

Business Systems Analyst I think that’s what it means or what it’s supposed to mean anyway, I’ve been at it for 7 or 8 years I should probably find out for sure. It (BSA) may just as well mean Business Service Architect – I actually like that – it definitely doesn’t mean that, nor does it mean bull shit artist and I hate people who call it that even though is quite accurate , that’s probably why I hate people who call it that.Well here’s my story – i am a BSA work for a multinational – managed to climb pretty high up the middle management ladder – got kicked down the ladder by a three letter acronym that means save money by making this a crappy company to work for – got frustrated and amused at all the incredibly stupid things that happen in the corporate world-for example…