Babysitting other departments’ staff
Wednesday, 21 December 2022 14:57![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elusivekI have this one colleague from this department... I shall call this colleague "D" and D is the head of department "B".
When the project first started and there wasn't really any structured departments, D needed someone to issue invoices and receipts. Since the company wasn't formally structured yet, D used the reason that "you (me) are the Boss' assistant, so for your development you should assist and do it."
Being the greenhorn with that Boss that I was at the time and not knowing what he expected of me, I did as D said. Soon, it felt like I was just getting work piled up on me because D always used that reasoning. And then one time D had to deal with another person but didn't want to, and D told me "ah, I know that he doesn't like me, and I really don't like working with HIM so will you do it instead?"
Hotheaded that I was, I said "I don't really like dealing with you, but here I am! Work is work and how to work around such inter-personal relations is part of the job, I believe."
LOL. How brazen of me. LOL.
Anyway, that was a couple years back. Right now, D is on holiday. D got a "dream team" but D has the tendency to... harp how good the staff are when they are newly hired, but when they start to not-perform, then they are all from hell. This "dream team" is... simply what D calls them. So far in my dealings with them, they will hardly make it to my "dream team."
D has this secretary that D has harped how good she is. "She was the assistant to who-and-who (some big shot in town)". I was just dealing with that girl today.
What happened was, my Boss contacted department B directly to get something done. D's on holiday and out of town, so the team at department B asked D's assistant to call me. Essentially, stuff had to be packed up into boxes and get sent to the Boss in Hong Kong.
Simple enough situation, right?
Since the Boss didn't ask me to do anything, I really didn't know what was going on. But, I can make educated guesses on what needs to be done. Source a courier that would pick up the items and delivery by Friday. But, other information is also needed... "How big are the boxes? How heavy? How many boxes?" Was what I asked the girl.
She sent me a photo of a big box that had the dimensions written on the box, that's good. Then another photo of another box that had no dimensions written on it, but I saw a person's arm on the side, so I could make an educated guess of how large the box was. But I still needed the dimensions to sort out the courier.
She gave me the box size of 17.5 x 17 x 9 CM.
I was feeling weird. 17 CM is not very large. It's around the length of my outstretched palm maybe. But on the other photo one side of the box was the length of an arm (hand to elbow) and surely that's more than 17 CM.
I asked her to reconfirm.
She confidently states, "the dimensions are correct."
Well. I wasn't really up for any arguments, so I simply sent her this, and said "This is 17.5 CM."
A couple minutes later, she sends me an update of "45 x 43 x 24 CM. This is the correct box size."
I figured since 45 CM was just around where 17.5" would be so she probably read the measuring tape wrong, and I also didn't really want to continue with the fight. As long as it's a size that's transportable by humans, I counted that a win, because then I could send it by some alternative methods (not normal courier) and can make sure that the Boss gets them before Friday (and it's another holiday tomorrow, so the send out and arrangement of delivery cannot wait, had to be done today).
But by golly, geez! I'm not here to teach people how to read a measuring tape! Don't they learn all that in school?
So what if she was the assistant of some local big shot? Why did she jump ship then? From a direct-to-big-shot to a department-head's-assistant? Did she jump ship or did she get axed? By her little performance today, I really wonder.
I know that yes, people make mistakes, mistakes can happen, it can maybe just be not her day, or any other reasoning, but some careless mistakes are simply that: careless mistakes. She can argue that she's on holiday and it was her colleague that had given her the measurement, but that just proves one more thing. As a middle man, I would not just "pass on the message" as it is. I would try to understand the message, and if I deem the message clear, then I would pass it on. So say she got the measurements from her colleague, she could have tried to imagine the box size then let me know. Not, when I challenged her, her retort was "that was the measurement my colleague gave me!" Hey hey hey, your colleague could be wrong, or I could be wrong, but in saying that without fact checking yourself, you've made yourself wrong as well. And now you're just digging yourself deeper.
*sigh*. I'm so tempted to say "kids these days" but this would invariable make me feel old (heck, I feel old already thinking that).
When the project first started and there wasn't really any structured departments, D needed someone to issue invoices and receipts. Since the company wasn't formally structured yet, D used the reason that "you (me) are the Boss' assistant, so for your development you should assist and do it."
Being the greenhorn with that Boss that I was at the time and not knowing what he expected of me, I did as D said. Soon, it felt like I was just getting work piled up on me because D always used that reasoning. And then one time D had to deal with another person but didn't want to, and D told me "ah, I know that he doesn't like me, and I really don't like working with HIM so will you do it instead?"
Hotheaded that I was, I said "I don't really like dealing with you, but here I am! Work is work and how to work around such inter-personal relations is part of the job, I believe."
LOL. How brazen of me. LOL.
Anyway, that was a couple years back. Right now, D is on holiday. D got a "dream team" but D has the tendency to... harp how good the staff are when they are newly hired, but when they start to not-perform, then they are all from hell. This "dream team" is... simply what D calls them. So far in my dealings with them, they will hardly make it to my "dream team."
D has this secretary that D has harped how good she is. "She was the assistant to who-and-who (some big shot in town)". I was just dealing with that girl today.
What happened was, my Boss contacted department B directly to get something done. D's on holiday and out of town, so the team at department B asked D's assistant to call me. Essentially, stuff had to be packed up into boxes and get sent to the Boss in Hong Kong.
Simple enough situation, right?
Since the Boss didn't ask me to do anything, I really didn't know what was going on. But, I can make educated guesses on what needs to be done. Source a courier that would pick up the items and delivery by Friday. But, other information is also needed... "How big are the boxes? How heavy? How many boxes?" Was what I asked the girl.
She sent me a photo of a big box that had the dimensions written on the box, that's good. Then another photo of another box that had no dimensions written on it, but I saw a person's arm on the side, so I could make an educated guess of how large the box was. But I still needed the dimensions to sort out the courier.
She gave me the box size of 17.5 x 17 x 9 CM.
I was feeling weird. 17 CM is not very large. It's around the length of my outstretched palm maybe. But on the other photo one side of the box was the length of an arm (hand to elbow) and surely that's more than 17 CM.
I asked her to reconfirm.
She confidently states, "the dimensions are correct."
Well. I wasn't really up for any arguments, so I simply sent her this, and said "This is 17.5 CM."
A couple minutes later, she sends me an update of "45 x 43 x 24 CM. This is the correct box size."
I figured since 45 CM was just around where 17.5" would be so she probably read the measuring tape wrong, and I also didn't really want to continue with the fight. As long as it's a size that's transportable by humans, I counted that a win, because then I could send it by some alternative methods (not normal courier) and can make sure that the Boss gets them before Friday (and it's another holiday tomorrow, so the send out and arrangement of delivery cannot wait, had to be done today).
But by golly, geez! I'm not here to teach people how to read a measuring tape! Don't they learn all that in school?
So what if she was the assistant of some local big shot? Why did she jump ship then? From a direct-to-big-shot to a department-head's-assistant? Did she jump ship or did she get axed? By her little performance today, I really wonder.
I know that yes, people make mistakes, mistakes can happen, it can maybe just be not her day, or any other reasoning, but some careless mistakes are simply that: careless mistakes. She can argue that she's on holiday and it was her colleague that had given her the measurement, but that just proves one more thing. As a middle man, I would not just "pass on the message" as it is. I would try to understand the message, and if I deem the message clear, then I would pass it on. So say she got the measurements from her colleague, she could have tried to imagine the box size then let me know. Not, when I challenged her, her retort was "that was the measurement my colleague gave me!" Hey hey hey, your colleague could be wrong, or I could be wrong, but in saying that without fact checking yourself, you've made yourself wrong as well. And now you're just digging yourself deeper.
*sigh*. I'm so tempted to say "kids these days" but this would invariable make me feel old (heck, I feel old already thinking that).
