Work is really starting to get on my tits at the moment.
I work alongside this woman, who, quite frankly, is just stupid. I do feel a bit sorry for her - there was a restructure earlier in the year, with a lot of people moving to an external company. Her old department was going, and she didn’t want to, so I think she was basically moved into this job as it being one which was available. Plus, the manager of the team had been there for years, and knew the systems inside out.
Problem was, the manager decided he wanted to go to the external company, so he moved jobs. Leaving E. And me. Neither of us with a great deal of knowledge behind us.
However, if I don’t know how to do something, I will use the internet, check the large amount of internal documentation written by previous members of my company, and just plain try things out to see if they will work.
If E doesn’t know how to do something, she leaves it, goes for a coffee for an hour, finds something else to do.
And then asks me, 5 days later, how far she had got, what had confused her, and oh, by the way, could I tell her exactly what to do.
She also has a trick of going to meetings, then coming back and asking me what was meant by something somebody said. Only she usually can’t remember exactly what was said. Or doesn’t know the context. At the start, I would make a guess at what it might possibly mean. However, I have stopped doing that, because she will then, a few days later, announce to all and sundry that, “Woman told me it meant this….”. I am hoping she is not doing this maliciously…….
She is also incapable of reading instructions. I am the first to admit that the instructions aren’t the best - they are written by techies weeks after they actually did it, and are more often than not just reminders for themselves, rather than detailed for other people to follow. However, when I started, the first task I did was arm myself with 3 of these documents, and begin an installation. It took several attempts, and there are lots of scribbles on the notes where I found things unclear.
These I passed to E, for her to do the same. This was in March - she still has not managed to complete an installation. She moans constantly about the instructions. Even worse, she expects me to justify them. A typical conversation will go along the lines of.
Her - What does this mean?
Me, having walk around the desk to get to hers, having no idea what she is talking abou, pick up the instructions - Well, it says to do blah, did you do that?
Her - No, I thought I’d do this instead.
Me - Well, you need to follow the instructions.
Her - Well, they aren’t very clear are they?
Me - Not very, know, but you can usually work it out.
Her - Well the person who wrote them probably could, but they are not clear are they? You can’t say they are easy to follow?
Me, biting my tongue not to point out that I managed to follow them, patiently say - Well, when you have completed it, we can change the instructions so they are clearer.
Only trouble is, she hasn’t managed to complete them yet. I have rewritten them anyway, with just my notes on, and given those for her to follow, but she hasn’t bothered. And a new installation is needed by next week, and I just know she will dump this on me on Monday.
She is also extremely secretive. She works odd hours, due to fitting in around her childcare (that’s another thing that annoys me - she refers to her son constantly as “The baby,” when he is 2 years old” Clearly not a baby.) She isn’t in today. I know I will get in, and there be nothing from her letting me know how far she got doing something last night (when she worked late). I also know that one of the managers from another department will come and ask me what E has done.
And another thing - we have had a problem with some software throwing the occasional error message. The software company have asked us to switch on a major debug option, and then send them the log to look through. This is on a remote machine, and the file generated is huge. I tried it when she was on holiday, and thankfully there wasn’t an error at the time, because I had no idea how to transfer the huge file across the network, to be able to send it to the software company.
I explained all this when she came back. She spoke to the IT department (where her partner works), and came back all confident that they would be able to send the file to the software company. I asked about moving it from the remote computer, and she just pooh-poohed it, said that we did that every day. “No, what we do is open the file remotely, and then copy and paste the text. Those files are tiny, this new file is too big for us to actually open.” She was adamant it was okay, and half an hour later proudly told me that she had done it, and even sent a test file to the software company. She wouldn’t tell me what she had done, even though I asked her, several times.
Fast forward to this week. When we do the thing for real. Yesterday she got into a mad panic. “How do I get the file from this remote machine?” “I don’t know.” “Well, we did it last time, so what did we do?” Note the WE - bitch. “I. Don’t. Know. You did it, I wasn’t involved.” “Well we do it every day don’t we? Can’t I just do it that way?” Deep breaths. “No, the file is too big to open remotely. You said you had managed to copy it across the network?” “Well, I am sure I did, but I can’t remember. Don’t you know how I did it?”
I will hit her one day, I am sure.
