The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread

[Scribe]

I've been periodically checking my work email, despite having taken this week off prior to our holiday shutdown (2 weeks). The number of people who want just this one thing done before the shutdown is mind numbing. Do they not think that everyone else has just this one thing, as well? When it's physically impossible to complete a task in the given timeframe, your urgency doesn't change the laws of physics.

Exactly where I'm at right now on several things.

You all waited, you all were unresponsive for months. Its no longer my problem, and once I clock out, miss me with that till Jan 2.

 

[Ryujin]

Just set up an auto-reply-

Your lack of preparation is not Ryujin's emergency.

I recommended that for 911, but it didn't take.

I set up an autoresponder pointing people back to the helpdesk. I'm sure that isn't popular, as the majority of those insane requests are being forwarded by helpdesk

 

[Ryujin]

Exactly where I'm at right now on several things.

You all waited, you all were unresponsive for months. Its no longer my problem, and once I clock out, miss me with that till Jan 2.

I have received about a half dozen emails regarding issues that were submitted several weeks ago, that I have replied to no less than 3 times, and received no responses to. They are all now, rather remarkably, "high priority." My autoresponse should deal with that

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I set up an autoresponder pointing people back to the helpdesk. I'm sure that isn't popular, as the majority of those insane requests are being forwarded by helpdesk

So given what you do, I'm sure you've probably seen this already, but I've always loved this one-

The case of the 500-mile email

SunOS? Solaris? HA! Get me a person familiar with IRIX and we'll start talkin'!

 

[Scribe]

I have received about a half dozen emails regarding issues that were submitted several weeks ago, that I have replied to no less than 3 times, and received no responses to. They are all now, rather remarkably, "high priority." My autoresponse should deal with that

 

[dragoner]

Oh man, getting into international outages over holidays...thats a bonfire just waiting to be lit.

I work with a lot of international teams, it can be different. Esp with widely varying context going on. I had one guy, British, get written up for talking about the British Empire, and I thought it may have been one of the Indian guys reported him, nope, it was the Irish plumber. I was like what the heck are you guys doing? Work has nothing to do with that, them just jawing, then I have to get called into the office for that crap.

 

[Scribe]

I work with a lot of international teams, it can be different. Esp with widely varying context going on. I had one guy, British, get written up for talking about the British Empire, and I thought it may have been one of the Indian guys reported him, nope, it was the Irish plumber. I was like what the heck are you guys doing? Work has nothing to do with that, them just jawing, then I have to get called into the office for that crap.

Yeah, on that kind of thing I err on the side of 'say as little as possible that is not 100% tied to the work'. I'm not nearly educated or nuanced enough to navigate international minefields lol

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Well, I'm trying to finalize things before I leave ... I'm shepherding a massive group of high schoolers abroad for a trip.

And no, I don't know what possible evil I did in a past life that sentenced me to this fate. Worse than herding cats. Although I did get to ask at the last meeting for us adult chaperones, "What is the acceptable rate of loss in terms of kids that don't make it back? Just checking!"

 

[Ryujin]

So given what you do, I'm sure you've probably seen this already, but I've always loved this one-

The case of the 500-mile email

SunOS? Solaris? HA! Get me a person familiar with IRIX and we'll start talkin'!

I actually hadn't seen that one before and it's diabolical. I have, however, had the following, 1st hand:

- Angry tenured prof who demands immediate in-person service for a dead computer. The powerbar was turned off.

- Client who stated her "coffee cup holder" on her computer wasn't working. Took 30 minutes to realize she meant the CDROM.

- Client who said that he was on disk three of a DOS6.22 reinstall and said there was no more room. Another half hour call to realize that the installation instructions said "Insert Disk 3" and not "Remove Disk 2 and Insert Disk 3." Why it hadn't errored-out on Disk 2 I'll never know.

- While I was searching for the cause of a single sheet of paper with 2 character on it being printed before every print job, the engineering prof who placed the request called helpdesk and said, "... and send someone competent this time." This was Win98 and Microsoft had noted the issue, but didn't yet have a fix.

I'm sure there were many others, but those were the ones that came immediately to mind.

 

[Thomas Shey]

At this stage, like I'm in meetings and my fellow contributors on the other end know it just as well as I do. We all know it. Its a pipedream at best.

If its not done and polished NOW, simply forget about it. Let everyone go get wasted, or sleep, or recover from the stress of the last quarter and all the PM's and "Project Champions" can go get bent.

Back when I still worked, I was often doing contract document editing and creation work, and one time my contract wrapped around the holiday. I had a project manager get super stroppy because I wasn't willing to work extra hours to get something prepped during the last week of December. He confronted me about it with a variation on "What are we paying you for?", to which my response was "Not to make myself sick from overwork right before the holidays when the product won't even be ready for two weeks, that's for sure." I then offered him to see if he could find someone else who was going to try and handle the project at the last minute if he was so sure it was that critically important.