28th February, 2002.
More Cow-orker database
disasters. It's become increasingly clear that her database skills begin and
end with designing garishly-coloured menu screens. I didn't *think* that asking
her not to bugger up the data entry was such a big thing, but I'm being proven
time and again that I'm obviously expecting too much. What is wrong with her
brain? Why is it so hard for her to understand how to check whether reference
data exists before adding a second, badly-spelt copy of those records?
I've spoken to her about
the database problems, because that's something quantifiable where I can point
out what's wrong and what's right. Her personal conduct is another problem
entirely, because I find it much harder to tell someone they're like a cheesegrater
of the soul when they're apparently driven by stupidity rather than malice.
It would feel kind of like tipping cripples out of wheelchairs.
And while I was fixing
those errors, I discovered that when I was on holiday last year she supplied
materials to an organisation that isn't part of ours, and isn't eligible for
purchasing through the same discount schemes we use. I don't know how many
laws or contracts this broke, but I think I'm going to have to put this away
in the Too Ugly To Contemplate file and pretend I never saw it.
Yes, for the thousandth
time, YES! We only give them the first item in the set, because they don't
need the second one. Just like the hundred previous times we've produced one
of these exact same sets for people!!!
And stop telling me
about the kind of shows your damn kid watches! I don't give a rat's what kind
of video popcorn your Spawn and your deadbeat husband watch when they're
sitting around the house all day! No, I don't find it disturbing that
Bob the Builder talks to his vehicles - they talk back to him, don't they,
and it makes as much sense as Bananas in fricking Pajamas!!!
Get the hell away
from me and leave me alone before I'm forced to use lethal force!!!!!
Oh, God, but this is
going to be a long day... I picked such a bad week to quit junk food.
And stop giving me
a running commentary on everything you do as you're doing it! I can see
you're getting up from your desk, I can see you're walking over to
the other side of the room away from your phone! I have EYES, damnit!
AAAAARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!
It's been suggested that
I use headphones and loud music to combat the Cow-orker's stream of semi-consciousness
gibberings. This has some merit - headphones and the right kind of music have
worked in the past. There was an employee here last year who was sitting at
ground zero, and after the first day or so he just brought in his MP3 player
loaded up with heavy/death metal tracks. The downside was that he couldn't
hear anyone else, either, but after he had her trained to stop talking at
him incessantly he didn't need to play the music anymore - wearing the headphones
was enough.
Sadly headphones aren't
really an option for me, because my phone rings so frequently I'd be forever
taking them on and off. I'm doomed.
It's quiet. Too quiet.
The theme from Jaws
begins...
"That email you
just forwarded to me verbatim? Who did it come from?"
Where's Robert Shaw
when you need him?
27th February, 2002.
From The Cow-orker
Recipe Book:
Dish: Database
Lite Just like a real database, but with none of that pesky usable content!
Method:
Take one
previous complaint re. databases, reference numbers, and the need to cross-reference
with external data sources in order to actually make the database useful.
Add new consignment
of CDs to be catalogued.
Add one thickened
Cow-orker.
Allow to sit for half an hour.
Check the contents of
the database and voila! - two dozen database entries of no meaning
to anyone!
Serving Suggestions:
Best accopmanied
by:
- vengeance (served
cold);
- panadeine, or other painkiller of choice (for relief from butting head against
brick wall);
- alcohol. Cheap and lots of it.
25th February, 2002.
Pop quiz time again:
Childbirth is:
a) a miracle of
nature;
b) just a part
of life;
c) something best
not experienced first-hand;
d) an appropriate subject for a blow-by-blow retelling (complete with sound
effects and graphic descriptions) over a morning tea with some suppliers.
Drama time: a soliloquy
in which the Cow-orker begins to reveal the mysteries and conspiracies surrounding
the plants in her garden, and the treachery and backroom politicking of those
neighbours who would see her grandiose plans for the future of her weed-enshrouded
fence-line (to leave it as it is) come to naught.
The soliloquy is a deeply
moving one. At least that's one way of explaining the tears and wails of anguish
from the audience.
22nd February, 2002.
A shaky start to the day with a visit to the dentist that left the side of my face numb (from my throat, to above my cheekbone and back about an inch behind my ear) for four hours. And the anaesthetic still wasn't strong enough - when the Cow-orker arrived I could still hear her.
So your family are genetic mutants and your mother once had a tooth grow out through her nose? Absolutely fascinating. And you seem like such a normal, well-balanced individual, too...
19th February, 2002.
Apparently some lessons are harder to absorb than others.
Inspired by the words of our manager, who had the temerity to suggest that a degree of discretion or professionalism on the phone could be considered a good thing, the Cow-orker embarked on a late afternoon rant (after the manager's departure, of course) about the curtailment of her right to publicly identify people falling short of her own high standards of efficiency and deride them in front of an audience. There then followed a thinly-veiled and apparently arbitrary rant to any and all passers-by concerning the member of executive management she'd been bad-mouthing so vigorously last year.
The only thing this particular executive had done to provoke this sudden flashback was benefit from a reorganisation that now sees them wield even more direct influence over our division. Presumably this news triggered the Cow-orker's "career deathwish" gene.
18th February, 2002.
Friday's Cow-orker saga continues with a vengeance. In the 90 minutes since she started work, over a third of that time has been devoted to picking up exactly where she left off on Friday. She's found some new people to ring, though.
Now instead of ringing people outside the organisation, she's talking to colleagues of the staff member who started this whole thing off (the one she was denigrating to all and sundry last week), and is telling them how useless he is.
15th February, 2002.
Situated as I am in the fallout zone surrounding the Cow-orker's phone, I'm learning a surprising amount about things I've apparently been saying or doing in the last few days. I've been pretty scathing things about people (which is arguably true, but not about these specific people) and have been having no end of trouble with other people (which, again, is arguably true, but not with the people she's talking about).
The total absence of anything like professionalism or discretion in her work-related phone calls is mind-blowing. I'd be appalled at the amount of time she's wasting on the phone with her peculiar brand of character assassination, but the upside is that while she's engaged in it she's not bothering me directly. After a fifteen-minute barrage it becomes too much and I flee for a coffee-break, only to find on returning that she's still in full swing, repeating the same stories to a different person at the same company.
In the space of less than five minutes she produces the following gems:
- bad-mouthing of other staff within our organisation to the supplier (identifying the staff member by name and department);
- bad-mouthing of other suppliers (identifying both the company and the employee);
- informing the supplier several times that they, on the other hand, "kick arse";
- telling the supplier exactly what quotes she's been receiving from other sources, the names of the people she's been getting quotes from, personal appraisals of their relative competence, and who she hopes gets the best quote (not the supplier she's talking to, either!).
After finally getting off the phone she surfaces for air, fills her lungs again and rings another supplier to begin again!
Deciding to share the pain around (and because I'm not senior enough to the Cow-orker to successfully rein her in) I consult our manager in the hope there's some training course we can send the Cow-orker to, where people are beaten with rolled-up newspapers and knotted towels until they're capable of showing some restraint on the phone. Unfortunately there isn't, but I experience the rare joy of seeing my manager clutch his forehead in pain exactly the same way I was doing ten minutes previously.
This isn't the first time this has come up.
Last year the Cow-orker was gleefully bad-mouthing a particular member of administration to everyone on the phone, which was bad enough in itself. What made it worse was that in the grand scheme of things this person was one of the highest people in our organisation and one of the few people our division is directly answerable to. In ecclesiastical terms, if our supreme leader is God, this person would have been the Pope. When our manager became aware of this and approached the Cow-orker about it (charitably assuming she didn't appreciate who she was maligning) he was horrified to learn that the Orker-of-Cows knew exactly who they were slandering and couldn't seem to understand that this was an extraordinarily careless thing to be doing.
And this, among other things, is why my manager repeatedly apologised to me at my performance review for making me work with the Cow-orker.
13th February, 2002.
"It's no good, I can't find the serial number!"
"It's there. I'm looking at it now."
"That's so weird! I can't see it at all." There's a pause while realisation begins to dawn. You can almost hear rusty mental gears grinding against one another in protest. "Hey, where are you reading that file from?"
"From the place you copied it to because you said it would be easier for everyone else to access it there."
"Ohhhh... Then what's this one I'm reading?"
"It wouldn't be the original "inaccessible" one you didn't delete after everyone started modifying the copy six months ago, would it?"
Silence.
At least the client patiently standing beside the Cow-orker's desk waiting for the serial number looks amused, so the exercise wasn't a complete waste.
Storing relevant work documents in one location rather than spraying them randomly across a variety of local and network drives, e-mails and filing cabinets allows you to quickly locate required information and provide accurate summaries, thereby avoiding near-misses such as the following:
"We were told to do it this way! I've got the directive from executive management saying just that!"
[20 minutes later]
"I still can't find it - you must have it in your files."
"No, I was on leave when that happened, remember? And I've already checked in case you hid it in my files, anyway, and it's not there."
"Oh. Where is it?"
I don't know. Why would I know where you'd hide something like that when I wasn't even here at the time. I continue trying to get on with my work while an indignant and uninterrupted monologue floats over the cubicle wall.
[5 minutes later]
"Oops. That was just my faulty recollection of things. What I thought was a final decision was just an email I sent to someone else entirely asking if they thought that was what we should do. Lucky I held off on telling the director we were only doing what he'd told us, wasn't it?"
Lucky is such a subjective term.
8th February, 2002.
"I can't think clearly
and manage bodily functions at the same time."
I may as well stop updating
this site now. It's just not going to get any better than that.
7th
February, 2002.
"Did
I tell you my cat had her kittens the other day?"
No,
please do. Please tell me you videotaped the happy event so I can see it with
my own eyes.
This
was followed by the inevitable description of what the cat looked like, and
comparisons with the patterns and colours of the kittens (right down to the
colour of their claws). This would conceivably be useful to me if I was a
cat-kicking type of person and frequented her neighbourhood, because at least
then I'd know what animals to abuse. But I don't belong to either category,
and I know I didn't look interested while she was telling me this because
I was busy replying to work e-mails while she wittered on.
"And
these people received this much mail, and this person received no mail,
probably because they changed sections recently. And you got these letters,
and they're from <insert names>, but I think they're all junk mail."
Cool!
Junk mail - I can throw it straight in the bin. What am I supposed to do with
junk conversations, though?
On the
bright side she seems to have finally learned how to look for the names of
departments that don't immediately leap out of the database at her in response
to her experimental key-strokes. The next step is to train her to stop shouting
out every goddamn step in the process.
"I think
it might be this! No that doesn't work. I think they're a part of this department!
No, that doesn't work. I thought they were a part of this department, but
they're not. Maybe I could try this! No that didn't work, either."
And so
on. Very stream-of-consciousness.
Annoying
as that was, it didn't come close to the hysterical jubilation at having finally
found the "missing" name.
And, of course, once the celebrations died down
it was my fault again for entering the name incorrectly in the first place,
because I entered it under its actual name rather than its popular acronym.
As I
type she's on the phone to her husband (as part of her solid 45 minute personal
phone-call marathon) and is explaining to him exactly what noise the phone
makes when the person at the other end hangs up.
Dear
god, now she's imitating the sound to let him know what it sounds like! She's
sitting at her desk going "Doop-doop-doop-doop!" down the phone at him.
How did
these people ever manage to conceive a child, let alone avoid killing it within
the first two weeks of its life?
All this
and it's not even lunchtime yet...
5th February, 2002.
"I can't find this department
in the database!"
"It's in there."
[long pause]
"Oh, it's okay - I found
it. You put a space between the words."
Yes, that would
be because the department's name is made up of separate words. This is a surprise
to you because...?
1st February, 2002.
"No, it's not going to
work. The problem with what you're suggesting is that it doesn't take one-off
box-product orders into account - we can't use a sliding scale for those.
We need some sort of flat fee for those."
"You mean like the flat-fee
model I said we should apply to one-off box-product orders just two minutes
ago?"
"Yes! Oh..."
