I Try, I Really Do!

From BLOGS_IMAGES

It all started back in late 1990s. I discovered that there was data loss on the database. Information was being deleted for no apparent reason, so I wrote an e-mail to all my superiors and the support center in the Information Technology Division. I never head anything back.

I raised the issue again in a meeting we had three months later and everyone around the table was SHOCKED at the data loss. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”, my program manager asked me. “I did.”, I replied, I e-mailed everyone sitting at this table about it three months ago, didn’t anyone read it, I can forward it to you again, it still sits in my sent folder waiting for a reply.”

I could hear the shuffling of feet under the table and the nervous glances that everyone started throwing at each other. I was informed after the meeting by a supervisor in the hallway that “no one ever reads my e-mails”. If something was important, I had to force others to listen to me. I couldn’t type the word “FIRE” to someone, I had to go and yell it in their face.

Since that day, I have written several long and detailed memos / e-mails up the corporate ladder where I work regarding ‘issues’ that we have in our work process and redesigning our business model. All of them have gone into the same black hole of the e-mail waste bin.

I have also found that yelling it in their faces didn’t do much better. I raised these same issues in key management meetings, and pressed for time lines and focus groups to move these changes toward implementation. I am told they would be discussed later, but they never were.

So in the interim, I continue to run the race with concrete sneakers, doing three times the amount of work that is necessary to accomplish my job.

Yesterday, I got an e-mail from my manager regarding a report that is generated every month from our database that is showing expired information. I fixed this report 5 months ago and e-mailed out a draft of it to see if it met with everyones approval before setting it to run on the database server. You guessed it, I never heard back from anyone. I re-forwarded the e-mail to him and told him that I would schedule to run on the server by the end of the week.....as soon as I have run a few more laps in my lead track shoes.

If you look at the top of the right side panel of my web log you will see a count down timer for my retirement. That little clock cannot tick fast enough for me these days.