April 28, 2010

Will I ever understand people? I really don't think I will. I've spent most of my life making compromises to accommodate having to deal with other people which is kind of amazing considering most folks would never guess that I do. But, I do.

I act dumber than I really am so people don't feel threatened. 

I pretend that I don't know things that I know so people don't feel threatened and freak out.

I strive to act professionally, logically and in a grown-up fashion when what I really want to say are things like, "Are you really that stupid?" or "Just shut the fuck up." or "Get the fuck away from me." or "Just do your fucking job and quit fucking whining." or "Wow, that's the most ignorant thing I've heard in a really long time." or "Do you really think I'm so stupid that I don't see through this?" or "To be honest, your problem really isn't a technical problem, it's a you're-too-stupid problem so just go away."

Etc., etc., etc.

So, we have a new department that has been added to our company. This department thinks that they are special and that they deserve special treatment. They expect everyone to drop everything they're doing whenever they want something and when people don't, they freak out.  They have been told, by their boss (who happens to be my boss) that they must stop doing this but . . . they don't.

Today, for example, I got an email from one of them at 11:31 a.m.,  I'll call her Dina. Dina was concerned about a search that she was running. It was running against 900 database indexes and it was a huge search and she just wanted to know if it was okay cuz it had been running for some time. We don't do that. If something is broken, you are getting an error, a system is down, etc., we will look into but if you just are being a nervous nelly, not our problem.  If we dropped everything each time someone asked us to hold their hand, we would never be able to do our real jobs. We would spend all day, every day, holding people's hand. We're not the Department of Hand Holding.

At 11:34 her boss, I'll call her Tara, starts sending me emails demanding an answer. That's a time lapse of 3 minutes. 3 minutes.

I was in a very important meeting when these emails were received. Tara was in the same meeting, via phone. Three minutes isn't enough time to even know I have an email and respond to it let alone enough time for Tara to start freaking out because I'm not responding.

3 minutes.

So, I responded to Tara that there were only four people who could handle the request. One was out sick. One is no longer with the company. And the other two (myself and the other) were in the meeting, not at a computer so this request would have to wait. But that it was likely due to the large number of indexes it was having to search and the fact that it was a huge search.

Let me repeat, for clarity sake, this was an unimportant, non-critical request. Along the lines of you sending me an email asking me if your email is working cuz you haven't gotten an email from me in 2 days but you are getting email from other people.

Tara then starts sending demanding, sarcastic emails insisting I do something and saying things like, "So, I guess I'll just call the client and tell them that we don't know what's going on and have no idea when it'll be ready, right?"  So I wrote back and said that we provide the information and expect employees to understand what information to tell the client so if she felt that was appropriate, she should feel free to tell them that.

I also told her that we had to work together and that her way of dealing with things wasn't conducive to a resolution and that I thought her ham-handed style of over-reacting was counter-productive and that her sarcastic comments were immature. I further explained that if she had given me more than 3 minutes to respond, I would have responded to Dina's email but instead, I hadn't been able to because I was spending all my time dealing with her (Tara's) issues.

Needless to say, even greater absurdity commenced so I just stopped reading her emails or responding to her but while dealing with the early emails, I missed an important part of the meeting and was called on for my input and opinion about what was being said. So, I responded truthfully -- I said, "I'm sorry, I've been on my Blackberry dealing with something so I missed the first part of the discussion so can't really input." That went over well.

Our boss (mine and Tara's) sent me an email saying that I need to chill out and stop being defensive and that while my points are valid, he suggested that I stop being abrasive. And that's the part that really baffles me. Truly. I will freely admit when I'm being abrasive and, I really wasn't. She's being sarcastic, immature, demanding, petty, etc. And because I remain calm and matter-of-fact, I'm being abrasive.

So, I responded that I wasn't being defensive or abrasive; that I didn't need to chill because I wasn't unchill; and that I was calmly telling her that she was out of line and hindering the process and that I wasn't going to tolerate her sarcastic, childish, overbearing bullshit.

Maybe I'll be fired tomorrow. :)