After what was a pretty messed up weekend for me, with moments of mind blowing clarity interspersed with mind numbing (but ultimately affirming, thank you) lunacy, I have finally started to get my head back together.
Until late yesterday.
My current role requires me to present data from on of our systems in an on line report. I discovered a slight design imperfection in one of the reports that meant it reported some items as overdue that may not have been. As I am fairly new to this role and keen to impress (and my boss asked me to) I repaired it.
Mistake.
Instead of the majority of items reporting overdue, now only the ones that were actually overdue showed up.
My phone rings.
"What's wrong with the report!?" says The Wicked Witch of The East.
"Nothing, why?" say I, playing the innocent (actually I forgot I had made the change, inconsequential as it was).
"All the things that were overdue yesterday are not overdue anymore"
"Oh, yes, that's right, I noticed that anomaly yesterday and repaired it for you" (yay me)
"What does overdue mean?" asks TWWOTE
(This really freaked me out. My job entails taking pieces of data and applying rules to them, often with no idea what they mean. But I'm not about to admit that to her as she has a history of antipathy to my group. So I attempted to explain)
"Well, if this date is earlier than today and the item is not finalised then it appears as overdue. If however this other date is before today and this third date is blank, then that can also be overdue"
{silence}
"Umm, does that make sense" I ask, not without trepidation.
"Not a bit"
After three or four more attempts at explaining she adds,
"I shouldn't even be ringing you you know, we're supposed to loge every problem we have with you guys" (What problem? That the report WORKS!?)
"Yes I know that and getting this report fixed and delivered to you guys has been my raison d'etre for the past month", I plead.
"You should have been working on it for the last 6 months!!" as her voice and my hackles raise at about the same rate.
I've only been working here for 5 months. The conversation then chased itself in circles with me making placating noises and her raising complaint after complaint.
The upshot of it all was that I spent 15 minutes on a telephone call brought about by delivering a 100% correct report.
I've worked with people like the Wicked Witch before. Work is War. Everyone is out to get you. Make no more effort than is absolutely required, that way you can save your energy to whinge and complain and undermine those you perceive as a threat. To me that is an incredibly unhappy way to work, especially as we are all working for the same company. Now my work is unpleasant and further impeded by red tape.
But that's ok, it's Wednesday.
