From: jwgh at earthlink.net Subject: Pet peeve/getting thin-skinned Date: Fri 16 Oct 1998 19:33:25 Message-ID: <jwgh-1610982231570001 at 1cust138.tnt35.nyc3.da.uu.net> Newsgroups: alt.tech-support.recoveryOne of the things I dislike about my job is that it has made me very thin-skinned. I try to keep a sense of humor about things, but it keeps getting more and more difficult. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that I've recently completed my 18th month on the tech support desk in my company.
What follows is an example of a fairly small thing that I blew way out of proportion. Perhaps some of you can relate.
OK, one of my standard pet peeves is people who show up late for meetings, or who don't show up for them at all--particularly when they are the ones who scheduled the meetings in the first place. (Read literally I suspect that that sentence doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, but I trust you're still with me. Ah, the perils of gender-neutral writing.)
The other day I was asked by a gentleman I haven't dealt with much before but whose reputation preceded him who he should talk to about setting up a small problem-tracking database for his group. I told him that it was me, figuring that it was possible I'd end up being given the task of creating the database (since I created something like that for my department when I first started working here and it seems to be working OK) and even if it didn't I could get the specs of what he wanted, filling my valuable Help Desk role as the first line of defense in front of the sysadmins. I told him to schedule a meeting with me and we'd talk about it. This he did, a half-hour meeting, for today.
Now today was hell. The other help desk person was out, and our NT admin, who sometimes gets seconded for desktop support when it's really necessary, was on the last day of his week-long vacation. In addition, several new hires for Monday morning had just popped out of someone's ass, and guess who ended up with the task of setting up their PCs and coordinating the creation of their accounts? And of course checking help mail, performing some minor sysadmin work, and doing all the little tasks that make my life the joyful thing it is.
Nonetheless, the meeting was scheduled, so I went to it. This involved going to another floor of the building, which due to the slowness and unreliability of the elevators is not something undertaken lightly. Unfortunately, fifteen minutes after I got there the other guy had not shown up. I got ready to leave, but then an emergency printing problem popped up and I got pressed into fixing that. After that was all resolved, the time for the end of the meeting was reached and I went back down to my desk.
As I was returning to my desk, the guy who the meeting was supposed to be with saw me and said, "I'll tell you this much: we're not going to work on a problem tracking database today!" I replied (in a very humourless fashion) "That's true."
He then said, "Sometime next week good for you?" I responded, "Whenever--just schedule it in Meeting Maker and show up, and we'll have the meeting." The words "show up" were perhaps emphasized a bit.
He then said something about it not being his fault that he missed the meeting and that his time was not his own or some damn thing which I pretty much ignored.
I've considered taking revenge in various ways, but looking at what actually happened I have to admit that his offense was in fact pretty minor. Rather than concocting some sort of petty revenge, I'd be far better off figuring out a way to get a better perspective on this, and find a way to laugh again at the members of our little clown college.
But I'm not sure how to go about it, so I guess revenge'll have to do. Hmmm....
-jwgh