What is it with middle managers and vague instructions delivered over email? Perhaps they’re scared that by being specific they’ll offend me in some manner?
GreyKodiak
Can you prpvide a list of those which caused the problems in December to both myself and the Humourless Harridan.
Captain Calamity
I left his abominable spelling and grammar intact. Now I grant you that, at first glance, the instructions seem fairly specific, but I, and my team at work, deal with a lot of different stuff and it’s all prone to failures of one sort or another. Is he looking for information on our failures to adhere to the relevant legislation, or supplier failures, or even the number of times the toilet has been put out of order by the Phantom Turd Bomber. Maybe he’s not talking about work at all. Maybe he’s looking for information about the number of failed terrorist attacks on the news.
Instead of spending an entire day throwing random stuff together I did the sensible thing and emailed him back to to ask exactly what he was looking for:
Captain Calamity I’m not sure what information you’re looking for. Which problems do you mean exactly?
Naturally this must have caused some confusion as he then emailed me back with this:
The fsilures which we had in Dec who caused them and what was the reason.
Congratulations you old fool. You’ve just reworded your original email and managed to make it just as vague as it was the first time round.In an act of pointless defiance I’ve decided not to email him back as this circular discussion would probably go on all day. I’ve got a feeling I know what information he is looking for, but I’m still in the middle of producing it and it’ll probably be a few days before I’m finished.
The big problem with Captain Calamity, and indeed the vast majority of managers, is that he has no concept of the amount of time required to shepherd things through the convoluted processes that he devised while sitting staring into space. The paperwork is so bad now that each item on his requested list takes about half an hour to do, and there’s 90 or so currently outstanding. He’s got a meeting with his boss this afternoon so he no doubt assumes that I’ll pull the information out of my arse in time for him to take it along.
Unlikely.
I’m not even going to start on the lack of a “please” or “thank-you” in either email.
I’m also well aware of the irony of me complaining about the amount of time required to collate the required information while simultaneously sitting here posting on my blog.