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Poor planning on your behalf does not equate to urgency on mine”
A phrase I utter regularly. Had a chap ring up last week asking us to quote on something before his presentation meeting to his client at 9am. It was 830am.
We used to have the electronic equivalent of a filing cabinet, now we have the electronic equivalent of a barn where documentation is deposited and distributed via a leafblower…
Sir needs BIM protocols in his life. This will make you very happy and everyone will be fully onboard and completely adopt the new approach. Your projects will become smooth operations and the data a process will be captured in such a way that it is auditable and be usable for future works.
Systems do not fix poor process discipline. Seen it may times. “The next shiny new app will fix the process problems we are having”. No they won’t.
This was exactly the reason we got this report-writing / meeting management software.
Oh, all our papers are all over the place (they're not), it's difficult reviewing them (it's not), what we need is a system where all our reports are written within it (what, like SharePoint then...?) and we can have an auditable review trail...
So we got this system and it turns out you can only write specific covering reports within it, not the actual documents themselves which still have to be written and saved in SharePoint. So now we have two parallel writing systems, one of which is clunky and shit and causes more problems because people are having to go out of SharePoint, open up a third party bit of software and write / review reports in that.
Ooh, I've just had a good one, someone's just messaged me in Teams along the lines of:
"Hi, I think you were away last week (I was), you missed the kick-off meeting about Project X. Have you watched the recording, because you might be affected"
Yes, of course I'm catching up on all the meetings I missed by watching recordings of them, of course I'm doing that.
The problem as I see it is rubbish IT education.
let me look for the user instructions that are included in nearly every piece of modern technology, oh no, wait...! Who was it that started the trend of not including a comprehensive and useful manual with their products...I can't remember
I don't think it's fair to blame users for not being able to use the technology when the producers of that technology insist on continuing to tell us that we don't need any education to use their products .
Our "management" use "just a wee reminder" I like to point out that it's not a reminder if this is the first email on the subject.
Sir needs BIM protocols in his life.
Probably, yes, but what we'll get is a 'better', but which I mean an additional, Collaborative Working Toolsuite
I don’t think it’s fair to blame users for not being able to use the technology when the producers of that technology insist on continuing to tell us that we don’t need any education to use their products .
That's long been an issue with consumer products though - the "owner's manual" you get now is a QR code taking you to hours of video reviews and tutorials.
In some respects it's quite good cos the content is supposedly more up to date than a printed booklet could be but in other respects, people end up not being bothered to view it all and just using 5% of the available features of [device / product].
Teams is a classic for that - there are some very good video tutorials on it but most people's introduction to Teams was "oh shit, lockdown = remote working = Teams = just muddle along until you get the hang of it"
IT drones bitching about others not being as dorky as them when it comes to IT
Still, it pays for their next Santa Cruz i suppose
People who don’t understand why there’s a To and a CC field.
Agree. if I'm cc'd I'll only read it if it's mentioned by someone else as something that is worth reading.
If you send me an email demanding I do something, and you're not my Boss, don't expect a reply, until you 'ask'.
The best email response I’ve seen in some time covers many of the issues in this thread.
“Poor planning on your behalf does not equate to urgency on mine”
Shame he’s retired now
My standard response when someone's pushing me for something that I've only just been informed of is "how long have YOU known about this?"
Been at the tail-end of a career/job is handy at times 🙂
I have replied to emails full of jargon with ” I dont understand this. Could you put it in plain English? ” always goes down well
A couple of months ago I received my induction and student support email from the University I've started studying with.
I emailed back pointing out that 12(!) different internal acronyms in a first email made it pretty undecipherable, let alone accessible if someone has dyslexia...
Been at the tail-end of a career/job is handy at times 🙂
The subtle art of not giving a shit is life-changing. I learned this in the mid-90s.
"Do this or risk getting sacked," well brilliant, that's not a threat, you'd be doing me a favour. I'll just stick that in the same ****-it bucket as the pay rise you promised me last month then, shall I?
We used to have the electronic equivalent of a filing cabinet, now we have the electronic equivalent of a barn where documentation is deposited and distributed via a leafblower
Used to take me hours to fail to get the relevant info from that filing cabinet that I can find in 20 seconds on the internet.
let me look for the user instructions that are included in nearly every piece of modern technology, oh no, wait…!
That's not what I meant. I mean basic IT concepts, which needs to be done in schools.
They used to make printed in-depth manuals, then they stopped bothering because literally no-one read them. It used to be a big thing. If you go to an old office building there are cabinets all over the place full of ring binders from some piece of 90s software.
My bit of the nhs whet paper light using a comprehensive but non user friendly system. We did get some training but nothing like enough even for someone like me who used computers. Some of my colleagues never used one before. They were totally lost.
We should have all been taught to touch type as well. Watching even senior folk pecking away at a keyboard with two fingers is painfull and a major waste of time
We should have all been taught to touch type as well. Watching even senior folk pecking away at a keyboard with two fingers is painfull and a major waste of time
You are actually describing my workplace!
I once had a line manager who would bring absolutely every deadline for delegated work forward a week. It meant I often had a task land in my inbox that he wanted completed in three days and I soon learnt to go back up the chain to the source of the task and find out the true deadline. I would then set about the task so that I could have it done in time to send back to the line manager with a couple of days to check it before it really needed completing. He would start badgering a day before his artificial deadline, to which I always replied, via email "Do you want it doing a week ahead of schedule or do you want it doing properly?" He brought up workload and time management at my next appraisal, telling me I was idle and lacked integrity because I questioned his authority and went behind his back.
I suppose I had the last laugh because I used the example in my promotion interview for the skills of prioritising and organising workloads, and "managing upwards" and he resigned following a breakdown.
and he resigned following a breakdown.
Ohhh the mega lolz.
Watching even senior folk pecking away at a keyboard with two fingers is painfull and a major waste of time
Likely the same people who whine about "Millennials" and the rise of calculators. (Literally just today I saw this 'dumbing down' argument in a comment on an advert for Grammarly.)
You're right though, of course. Basic IT literacy is still lacking and computers were seriously entering the mainstream about when I started working in IT 30 years ago. There's really no excuse for it any more, boasting that you 'don't understand computers' like it's a badge of pride should be in the same bucket as being unable to do joined-up writing.
That said, I absolutely sympathise with people because as Mols and others have suggested, how are folk expected to learn? You wouldn't give someone a car key and go "off you go then" because cars have been around for years. We need to be better at this, we need to stop assuming and teach people. Touch typing is of little use for, well, people like me who spend half their day on meta keys, but it should be considered a core skill.
“Poor planning on your behalf does not equate to urgency on mine”
I may set that as my out of office....
You wouldn’t give someone a car key and go “off you go then” because cars have been around for years
Based on what I see on the roads, that's exactly how most people learn to drive.
Point.
Ohhh the mega lolz.
He didn't have the breakdown because of me don't worry. The man was an incompetent bully, an insufferable bastard of a man who had blagged his way to his position through unscrupulous and extremely outdated, if not dishonest working practices. His breakdown was "stress related" after he instructed a support-staff analyst to carry out a downright unlawful intelligence operation. It was pointed out by the analyst that what he was instructing him to do was likely to result in a prison sentence, if not several. The resulting shouting and screaming match was what was termed a "breakdown" when the dust settled.
“You’re my colleague not my boss”
The comms team (person paid to send emails and make sure stuff is on brand) sends an ‘all staff’ email advising of a new policy that needs to be read, digested and signed.
Which is fine.
The same few idiotic individuals who ‘reply to all’ saying they have done it. I don’t give a crap if they want to be seen to be doing stuff first, get the funk out. While you are there find somewhere to work that means you are not near a computer. Or other people.
I have two little posters pinned next to my screen:
"You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks"
"The most important thing is to remember that the most important thing is the most important thing"
For too long I was compromising on my own deliverables, in order to do things that other people were wanting/needing me to do to meet their own. I'm not too dogmatic about it, and it depends who's asking, but generally speaking I give priority to my own work/things I am measured on, before responding to people "barking" in my email.
“Poor planning on your behalf does not equate to urgency on mine”
Yeah - I've encountered a few people who've trotted that out when you ask them with help to meet a client deadline. I don't use it because it made them sound like a smug bellend who is refusing to help just to make a point. Maybe that's the professional reputation they were looking to build for themselves? To each their own I suppose.
I agree… and it certainly wouldn’t get you far in my workplace. It’s rarely the person who’s rushing that caused the rush.
And imagine if a triage nurse used that attitude in an emergency department!
And imagine if a triage nurse used that attitude in an emergency department!
True, but it’s unlikely that any situations being discussed here are life and death situations, with little or no prior warning. And often it’s the person making the request that’s being a dick about it, trying to make what is very much their problem, your problem because they are terrible at planning. I get that stuff comes up last minute, but demanding someone drop everything because you’ve screwed up is disrespectful and unlikely to win you many friends. I’ll do what I can to get you what you want, but I have a queue of people who got their request in before you did, why should you jump to the front?
I don’t use it because it made them sound like a smug bellend who is refusing to help just to make a point
Here here!
I also like to remind myself that fundamentally, the original purpose of bringing IT tools into the workplace was to make people's jobs a bit easier and more efficient. The fact that a lot of organisations now have entire divisions of people tasked with making the whole thing work, kind of defeats the object a little!
The requirement for an entire industry has developed off the back of tools that were ultimately meant to save time and costs to organisations!
I'm obviously getting very old.
“The most important thing is to remember that the most important thing is the most important thing”
My grandfather who worked in the NHS had this:
"I've done so much with so little for so long, that I'm now qualified to do anything with nothing."
You could just have a professional conversation about it? "It usually takes x days to do that, I can probably do it in Y days at a push - but not any sooner than that as I have a heap of urgent/important tasks queued-up". End result is the same, unless the result you are looking for is to make it clear that you think they are incompetent, and you want them to think you're a smug bellend.
but I have a queue of people who got their request in before you did, why should you jump to the front?
Because how most people prioritize work should probably be more sophisticated than "who asked first"
Because how most people prioritize work should probably be more sophisticated than “who asked first”
Should, but the SLA I'm measured on says otherwise.
Cougar
Many of the colleagues I referred to where not being wilfully useless at IT. They just had no use for one in their lives. They had no computer at home and simply had never used one until computer use became compulsory at work. The training we got assumed a basic level of familiarity that they just did not have.
I guess its not easy for folk like you immersed in it to realise that people like this are still around
We use our own software which rams a tag in the subject and files the email.
Was pretty funny when someone was complaining about person B and didn’t remove the tag.
Person B wasn’t happy when they saw that filed email.
Alway remember to remove auto archiving/filing tags when bitchin 🙂
The requirement for an entire industry has developed off the back of tools that were ultimately meant to save time and costs to organisations
TBH honest this isn’t a new thing, there was always the man that repaired the typewriters or the photocopy repair man.
Any reasonably sophisticated tool will spawn industry off the back of it.
"Uknown Error in Unknown Module"
Cc.
Bcc.
They had no computer at home and simply had never used one until computer use became compulsory at work. The training we got assumed a basic level of familiarity that they just did not have.
This is why I like tablets and mobile apps old school pc stuff is meh.
Person copies all users on email (probably about 20,000 people?)
For the next few hours, a succession of people reply, which can be divided into tiers:
Tier 1: "why am I copied on this?" x100
Tier 2: "why am I receiving all these emails, please remove me from this distribution list" x 200
Bonus tier 2b: people replying to the Tier 2 replies; "Yes, remove me too please" x200
Tier 3 (My personal favorite): "STOP REPLYING TO ALL YOU IDIOTS" (obviously, whilst replying to all) x500
I've only worked at one company where this used to happen..... and it happened pretty regularly, like once every few months.
I still have to use assembler code.
There, some proper low level IT whinging.
At least you don’t have to enter the op codes via a hex pad 🙂
Because how most people prioritize work should probably be more sophisticated than “who asked first”
That’s the point. They don’t care how work is prioritised, they need it doing now, because they’ve sat on it for too long before a deadline is about to pass.
The requirement for an entire industry has developed off the back of tools that were ultimately meant to save time and costs to organisations
The IT department isn't just looking after people's PCs and software. IT does an absolutely enormous amount of work in our current working society.
Many of the colleagues I referred to where not being wilfully useless at IT. They just had no use for one in their lives. They had no computer at home and simply had never used one until computer use became compulsory at work. The training we got assumed a basic level of familiarity that they just did not have.
Going back 20 years, I'd absolutely agree with that. My Dad was exactly like that in fact - his job had zero need for computers, he never used one so when he retired and tried to do anything, he'd constantly be asked for his email address etc and he simply didn't have anything like that, had never used it.
I think now, computers are so embedded in everyday life (even as phones/tablets) that people can use them but as phones are entirely based on touch and apps and ease of use, it still doesn't translate to using software like Excel / Word etc.
Person copies all users on email (probably about 20,000 people?)
Someone did this where I worked once announcing they were off on holiday, presumably just intended for her immediate team. Sparked off loads of reply to all e-mails with stupid questions about where she was going, wishing her a good trip etc. until the IT department put a stop to it because it was basically causing a denial of service attack on the e-mail server. 🤣
At least you don’t have to enter the op codes via a hex pad
punch cards
shazam!