Spreadsheet nightmare and next weekend's plans

I have a deadline of Wednesday to get two documents delivered. It's involves in regards using ugly spreadsheets as my source. They went through massive updates since I last used them in December.

I spent Sunday working on these documents. I have made good progress, but need to go through roughly 2,000 rows of data. I've already gone through that may rows! We'll see if I can get through this nonsense.

Next weekend will be better. I'm getting together with a friend on Saturday now that our lockdown has been lifted once again.

Sleeping better with exercise

I haven't been sleeping well since I have been working from home every day. I did much better when I went into the office three days and worked from home for two.

I figure the reason is that I was more active. Staying at home and having deadlines to hit has made me put exercise on hold.

Well, I have changed things up for the last three days. I'm taking it slow. I'm doing pushups and situps. So far, so good.

For the last couple of days, I have slept soundly. I may up it to getting back to using my glider daily.

Lonely boss and incompetent colleague - both are October babies

My manager feels lonely working at his desk. I haven't sat next to him for nearly three weeks.

My first two weeks were spent training my new student in a meeting room a few floors down from where I typically work. My incompetent colleague on my team was supposed to work on a software release, but couldn't get her act together. I took that task away from her and trained my student on it. We both split up the work, which went well.

I had a talk with this incompetent colleague. She can't commit to deadlines even though I took off major tasks from her plate. She is simply an idiot.

It's interesting that both our manager and this incompetent colleague have birthdays in October. They are polar opposites as far as personalities and work ethic go.

I get to sit at my desk later on today. It'll be a bit weird, but I look forward to the change in environment.

On Thursday, my manager had to drop by our meeting room simply to chat. Our chat had nothing to do with work. I gave him the tipoff that there was food at another meeting room. He appreciated it. It's nice that he likes our company.

Incompetent colleagues

I work with a few bad apples. Otherwise, things are good at work.

First, there is a person who is older than I am. He is also a team lead like I am. He is highly incompetent. He didn't do his job on a straightforward task. It was to the point where I actually knew more about what he was supposed to do than he did. I don't even work in that area these days. I have dabbled in it in the past.

He blamed getting the information "at the last minute." I corrected him by saying that communication wasn't there between he and his teammates. Additionally, if he is going to write something that he is unclear about, he needs to ask.

Then, there's my incompetent colleague whom is supposed to take over some of my job responsibilities and isn't even close. She was asked by someone to provide status in an e-mail initially. This woman then pinged her on our corporate instant messaging app. The newish incompetent colleague ignored responding to both methods, as I had expected.

I asked her to write back. She said that she would do so "with [my] exact wording." I told her that she needs to think for herself. I'll need to have yet another talk with her. She is unfit for this position.

Finally, there is this woman who pinged my incompetent colleague. She assumed that our work needed to be done today. I asked her politely whether the deadline had changed. My team completes our work at least a day before the deadline, which would make it Thursday and not her made-up deadline of Wednesday. Luckily, the manager who is in charge happens to know how my team ticks and he is actually our manager. He said that we could take our time and that the deadline was indeed Thursday.

Ah, the joys of dealing with people who need help doing their jobs at the most basic level.

Issues and a proposal

It's nice when you make a point and folks side with you. My motto is to give it a try, say what you need to say, and see what happens. It's better to say what you need to say than regret not saying a thing.

At work, a number of us were given a task to drive projects to their completion. My counterpart borders incompetence. She decided to assign a number of folks deadlines, including me. I pointed out that she can't arbitrarily assign deadlines to folks who need to do the work without consulting with them.

In an e-mail, I pointed out the issues that I have encountered trying to get various folks to collaborate on a single document of which they own certain sections. The idea that I need to work with them on deadlines and such was time-consuming.

Instead, I proposed a different way to get this work done. The leader of this group liked it. She held a meeting with us. On Friday morning, we ran through my proposal and it was approved. Go, me!

The catch is to strike a balance. It is one thing to list all issues encountered. It's also helpful to suggest a new approach.

I don't like inefficiency. It makes sense that I would speak up. Otherwise, I'd be miserable wasting not only everyone's time and effort, but mine, too.