Pushback from a colleague that rubbed me the wrong way

At work, a couple of months ago, I was given a task to take data from two horrible spreadsheets and create documents out of them. I am doing this task again for our upcoming software release.

I have made it clear that I don't want to be stuck with this task forever. I was given this task because I am normally the one who is good with taking a first stab in designing it and outlining a potential process. 

My manager agreed. He met to with my two peers who have taken over my software release work. He wants them to own this task. I was also in attendance. 

One of them did not like it. He basically asked me what my challenges were. He then said that was the reason for this meeting was that I needed help.

I find that when I handled everything on our team, very few people on my team understood just how much work I did. I have done this grunt work for far too long that I have better things to do. Anyone can do this work. I have earned it. My experience and performance speak volumes.

My manager put his foot down and said that he wants them to own this task because it's considered a part of the release work. It's true. They don't realize that I have been handling another task for years that anyone can do, but I am stuck with that for years. I shouldn't carry the burden of having two such tasks.

It was interesting to see how this guy started to push back on this task and the second task that was discussed. It was fascinating observing him.

I am on my Chromebook. I love it. Such a great purchase.

Spreadsheet hell

I have been writing two new documents for work. They are based on two spreadsheets that are horribly designed.

This person interchanges the software product's name and the software company's name. On top of that, she has merged a bunch of columns, so it's difficult to comprehend. Ugh!

Finally, this person repeats the same list of software products for every software release that our company does. Yet, the list is supposed to reflect a specific release. Huh? It's such a waste of time going through each software release because the versions rarely change.

I am nearly done with this set of spreadsheets for the previous release. I am expecting a new set this week. I have a feeling that they will look equally horrible because this person hasn't bothered to make her spreadsheets meaningful and useful. Instead, it's a dumping ground for her data.

Vacation has begun

My vacation has started. I'm happy about the downtime. I don't have anything terribly exciting to do, though.

I am continuing to reorganize things at home. I found an old work notebook from ten years ago. My handwriting wasn't great then. I am sure that it still isn't.

Perhaps I can spend some time practising my cursive.

Labels in the new Blogger interface is horrible!

I am still trying to get used to the new Blogger interface. On the whole, I like it. However, what I dislike is the horrible usability of labels. Sometimes, it works when I reuse existing labels. When I introduce new labels and select existing ones, I get an error message and can't save my post.

My workaround is to go back to the old interface and add labels like a normal human being. It works well.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who is frustrated over this feature. I found this support post, which recommends a workaround where you don't select the labels when you are writing a new post. Rather, you save your post, go to the Posts section, click the tag icon for the post that you want, and select existing or add new labels there.

Do I like this feature in the new interface? No. It seems ridiculous to offer adding labels while authoring the post and it doesn't work. Why does it need to be an afterthought by going to a different screen?

I like change, but not when it makes the usability worse than it was.

Weekend relief from an annoying colleague

Yay, the weekend is here! Although it was a short workweek for me, it seemed incredibly long.

I have a colleague who joined my team over two months ago. She is apparently supposed to be as experienced as I am, but comes across as being junior and not knowing what she is doing. It's to the point where my astute student has made the same observations and shared them with me.

She has an issue with punctuality. She is supposed to be at work by 9:45 am. She has been getting into work at around 10:30 am. On Friday, it was 11:00 am, as noted by my manager.

Both my manager and I have had a talk about it with her. I saw signs of improvement at first, but we are back to square one. She doesn't seem to be making a decent effort.

Anyway, enough about that issue and the fact that she came over five times to talk to me while I was quietly working with my student.  I am off to bed to enjoy sleeping in.

Happy weekend, everyone!

Issues with the new employee continue

I haven't talked about the new employee for a bit. She is definitely the most challenging person to understand. This post explores a lot of my thoughts that I have shared with various folks for the past month.

We have a new authoring tool that most of our team has been gearing up to move to. I have said to this person that she is not ready. She doesn't have the basics down with our current authoring tool. My team consisting of this woman and two students are staying on our current tool.

She is stubborn and adamant to learn the new tool. Her reasoning, according to what she told my two students, is that there isn't a relationship between the two authoring tools. Um, that's because you don't understand the existing tool well enough to see that your transition to the new one will be difficult if you don't have a decent foundation on how things work.

Before the Christmas holidays, I had instructions for my two students to look at the training materials on the new tool. I specifically told the new employee that she wasn't ready and to focus on learning our current tool. What does she do? She watched one of the videos on the new tool.

She has raised a number of red flags in my eyes. The first one occurred during her third interview (it was my second one with her) where she said that she was a "slow learner." I brought that up to my manager, but he dismissed it. He thought that the extra time she spends after work to learn would make her catch up.

I was right. Hiring a slow learning in an IT field is bad.

She has been with the company for over two months. She cannot grasp simple things like knowing that the entire team is away on an all-employee meeting, which means that the team will not respond to her e-mails. She couldn't attend because she had a medical appointment that day and worked from home. Yet, she constantly sent out e-mails and even texted one of my students over work when she got to this offsite meeting that was not urgent. She does not take into consideration whether folks are physically able to respond to her e-mails. She is only thinking about herself.

Most of our department has to do a test that grants you access to this new tool, but for the production (live) environment. I said to this new employee that her main focus is to get up to speed with work so that she takes over one of my documentation software release duties. Her deadline is later than everyone else's to do this test. My manager made the same comment in a departmental meeting last Thursday.

What does she do? The following day, she takes this test. She hasn't gone through all the training materials or videos. She just did the test over and over again (you select either one answer or some combination) until she passed it.

I was annoyed. I told her so on Monday. The fact that she just asked for access to the test environment and was absolutely afraid to even log on was a joke. Now, she has access to a production environment where she could mess up everything with her current "knowledge" that she allegedly proved to possess on this test.

I told her she put the cart before the horse.. How meaningful are the answers that she memorized to ultimately pass this test? Not all that meaningful at this stage.

She doesn't listen. She has difficulty comprehending simple concepts. Yet, she does whatever she feels like.

She pointed out that she's not a linear learner. Yep, it shows. She is all over the map to the point where none of us truly knows what she is thinking. She has no sound judgment about much.

I had a talk with my manager on Monday night. I told him that my students and I have been drilling her with exercises and explaining concepts in multiple different ways. It is the plan that he first devised. It doesn't appear to be helping. I levelled with him and said that she wasn't a fit for this job. He nodded.

The problem is that the company is under a hiring freeze. We let her go and I am back to doing everything. I personally don't want her becoming a permanent employee at this company. She is not pulling her weight. I don't always want to be saving the day because we can't get another employee to fill the void.

On Tuesday, my manager wrote an e-mail to her and copied me. It was a snowday. He basically reinforced that she needs to work on understanding concepts and her job. All of us have noticed that she is great at memorizing, but does not understand what she is spewing out. She doesn't have critical thinking skills. She can't think for herself.

I had this chat with my guy when we were in the States. He agrees that it's probably better to get rid of her than having her pull down everyone.

The current plan is to have my students work with her on simulating a documentation release. We are assessing how she will do within the next two weeks. I have a feeling that she will be at the level that she is currently at -- slow and incompetent.

She's a nice person. She's just not suitable for this job.

Puns and fun

I usually work from home on Wednesdays. For the past month, it hasn't been the case. I have been either receiving or delivering training. I had to be at work.

Yesterday, I finally worked from home. It was nice to have a quiet day to catch up on tasks that have been piling up.

I let my guy know that chatting with him would be perfect. We had a great conversation.

"I'm staying at the Westin. It's horrible. It's not a five-star hotel here. It's more like three," he noted.
"I'm sorry to hear. You know that you like to vent about such things to me," I noted.
"Yes," he paused. "Had I known how bad it is here, I wouldn't have Westin my time and would have stayed somewhere else."

He laughed at his own pun. He's a punny guy. It was nice hearing him crack himself up.

"I tend to laugh at my own puns these days," he remarked.
"You probably have to because there is such awkward silence after you dish out a pun that you need to fill the void with your laughter," I noted.

We both laughed. It's nice that we are both punny and funny.

Borrowing a degree

My guy and I can practically talk about anything. I don't think that we have stumbled across a topic in which we have steered clear of discussing.

We are educated folks. Between the two of us, we have a ridiculous number of degrees. My guy was and still is an overachiever. I fit in the same realm, except that I do not have a doctorate.

We talked about whether we'd like to teach at a university. We both like that idea, but would ease into it by teaching a course a semester. The problem is finding a course to teach. The demand to teach a sessional course is high.

We then had this conversation:

"Can I borrow your PhD?" I asked him.
"Sure, if you want to change your name to mine," he said.
"I can do that. I'd also have to take testosterone pills to get my voice down a couple of octaves and tell horrible jokes," I joked.
"Oh, man," he said, laughing.
"Well, I think I have mastered telling horrible jokes, so I just have to worry about more cosmetic things," I said, smiling.

It's far more fun to borrow a degree than it is to slave over research for five years and be broke!