Three more years. Just keep telling yourself it's only three more years until retirement.
You may have noticed that the blog has been relatively quiet this week.
On Monday (one of my two weekly work from home days) I was greeted by this email from my immediate supervisor:
Fellas, this week might be a bit challenging as I will be out of the office starting tomorrow for shoulder surgery and B. is out the whole week with some personal health and some significant primary residence issues. It would be best if you guys could come into the office as much as possible this week so we have in office coverage. I will ask L. to send out an email to staff about limited IT support this week but I'll let you guys coordinate what you can on in office coverage for what works best for you two. Definitely going to need you both to step up a bit more this week while we are so limited on team resources and staff being out.
Mark, you will be in charge of all desktop support and coverage tasking C. where and when you need assistance for things you need help on (F. may be able to assist on some things as well, just communicate any needs clearly). C. has a very full plate too with coverage on projects and application/system support (SharePoint SPO migration for August go live is a big one) F. can also provide support with communication and follow through on SPO and other things as they come up. Just keep her posted on what you need help with.
C. will be in charge this week and I have delegated control to him for while I will be out. FYI please check in with C. for all supervisory matters while I'm out of the office, as he is the boss this week.
If anything major comes up or you have issues anywhere please keep L. in the loop and she will give guidance on how to proceed or handle.
We all have our professional crosses to bear, and B. has been mine—especially over the last few months.
Since May, he has taken a two week vacation (because apparently his adult daughter is incapable of driving across country by herself), returned to work for a week, followed by another two week vacation "building a deck" for said daughter in Florida, followed by one week back at work, and lastly followed by yet another week-long vacation spent on a cruise. Each of those vacations were augmented by a spur-of-the-moment extra day tacked on one or both ends of his official time off.
We're a small team, and when even one of us is gone, it affects all of us. But with B. being gone for these extended periods, and now, most recently gone cruising for a week followed by yet another week-long absence has left me stressed to the point where I know I will be getting sick—for realz—sometime within the next week. I know that simply because I know how my body deals with this kind of stress.
We normally have about 50 work-in-progress tickets on any given day, constantly churning as some are knocked out only to be replaced by new ones. Some are easy and some require more expertise than just any one of us on our own possesses.
This past week, the ticket count has been consistently hovering over 120, with fully half of those open or not even acknowledged because we simply do not have the manpower.
Even before the clusterfuck that B's serial vacations created, it was commonly acknowledged that we needed at least more more technician, but what did they do? They hired a fucking project manager (F. in the email from my boss) who doesn't have anything to do with the day-to-day operations of I.T. in our department.
Adding to the clusterfuck that was this past week, after a period of six months where we were unable to order any new equipment from Dell because of contract issues, everything was resolved and the backlog of requests were finally ordered and they started pouring in over the past three weeks. Everything's been sitting in our lab awaiting imaging and deployment because, again—we don't have the manpower to deal with any of it.
So midweek, someone in their infinite wisdom decided to call upon the talents of a not-official-but-knows-I.T. person working in another division in our department to help with the imaging of the equipment since I—who usually handle this task—was absolutely inundated with trouble tickets and break/fix requests.
Okay, the guy may know I.T. stuff, but he didn't know how we did things, so an entire day was spent—pulled away from the tasks that were already bearing down on me—to get him up to speed on how we got equipment ready to go out. Every task in the process was met with a question. And when he wasn't questioning why something was done in a particular manner, he was just constantly trying to engage me in pointless conversation.
LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE TO CONCENTRATE ON MY OWN WORK YOU CUNT!
"You don't look good in an orange jumpsuit…you don't look good in an orange jumpsuit…you don't look good in an orange jumpsuit…" became my mantra this week.
If all this weren't enough, it seemed that even the most basic of procedures—things that would normally take a few moments at most to accomplish—were taking hours because nothing was working.
I found myself uttering, "because of course it doesn't" or "because of course it does" more times than I care to mention.
Wednesday I came home and did something I haven't done for more than a decade. I sat on the sofa, chatted with Ben for a few minutes and then went upstairs and crashed. I slept until around 9:30 when I got up, came back downstairs, ate a bowl of cereal, and went back to bed for the night an hour later.
Both my boss and B. have been curiously silent in our group chat this week, and at this point I won't be the least bit surprised if we get another email on Monday telling us that he and B. are both going to be out for another week. I took my laptop home this afternoon and will be treating Monday as a WFH day—just like this past week—even if that dreaded email arrives.
It never ceases to amaze me how some upper mgt people seem to be NOT really committed to the company they work for, BUT they certainly DO like to get their obviously-sizable pay checks from said company.
Obviously, they have the confidence in "their troops" to carry on in their extended absences. Good for them, not so good for the troops who have to make things work well.
From "the troops'" perspective, those upper mgt operatives might as well not be there, anyway, it seems. How much harder it makes things for everybody else is not in their comprehension. They probably had similar things done to them earlier in their work life, so that gives them license to do the same thing to y'all.
In one respect, this is all a big bluff to them, like who are the troops going to complain to? If they do complain, might they have another job waiting for them somewhere else?
So . . . y'all need to run things as they should be run. Efficiently, expediciously, and with a high level of execution. Y'ALL need to act like your own boss in this matter. Enough so that others perceive you as one, but without the title. Do a good enough job that others notice, too! This way, YOU are in control rather than somebody else. With enough alpha-male orientation that others know YOU are in charge of what you're doing and how it is done.
IF a mindset is maintained about how much extra work is needed in the managers' absence, it will be difficult to deal with. Negative mindsets will happen, by observation. Which is not good, period.
Going to work every day with the orientation of "Whom can I make happy today" is much better than "Whom can I piss off today?" Then, when you finish your "trouble tickets", also do a quick note of what caused the problem and how to prevent it in the future. Educate your customers will save time in the future, usually, PLUS make you a go-to person for information and such, thereby elevating your perceived position in the organization by them. I know, this can take a bit of extra time, but consider it an investment in not having to spend that time again in the future with the same problem.
THEN, when you do leave, there will be comments indicating your work associates are just "doing their job" and no more. You will be missed and everybody will know that.
Also be cognizant of any attempts by others to undermine your success, too! It probably can happen, so watching for signals is important and nullifying them before they happen is important. Been there, done that!
Going to work each day with the orientation of "Whom can I make happy today" can set a positive tone for the work day. Which can carry into the next day(s) when you DO make that happen. Much better than just going in to work and working at the desires of others. Think "Power Bottom", rather than j ust "Bottom".
That concept was discovered by a gay porn star. He was a bottom and enjoyed that orientation. BUT he had his own needs to get satisfied, which made the performance of his top very impirtant. As he also orchestrated these things from his side of things, rather than letting the top do all of the work as he desired.
So, be that "power bottom" and make things happen to your liking, whenever possible.