I read somewhere once that Billy Joel was asked now that he was older, did he miss anything?
His answer was “competence”.
I can’t agree more. I find myself saying, over and over, “Ah..for chrissakes, can’t you just do your job?”
What really gets my goat is when they (whoever it is) is working hard at everything but what I paid them to do. I can’t tell you how many times, as a boss, I’ve been to a site to find my idiot tech sitting on a bucket, holding court with the fellas on the site instead of installing the wiring I’m paying him to install.
Even at the office this silliness goes on. I had a request in to allow read/write access to a shared folder. This is bush league help-desk stuff. Do the permissions, tell me they’re done. I’ve been working on networks for 25 years, I think I can figure out what to do after.
So dude asks for a remote session. Fine. Show me you did your job. First thing he does is start poking around on my laptop to make sure I’m being a good corporate citizen. “Ahh…I see you aren’t running backblaze?”
No shit I’m not. Did you see the onedrive folder? Or the rather large Dropbox folder? All my stuff is on cloud storage. What isn’t is backed up on a huge storage network I have in my home office.
Not. A. Noob. Dude. “Can you do what I requested on my ticket, please?” was my response.
I was food shopping one day, and knew the wife needed tires on her car. So I stopped by the local tire shop on my way home. Looked up tires, ordered them, got an appointment – 11 AM Monday. Awesome. I’ll dump it off, hit lunch, pick it up after.
I get there, the counter dude says they are really busy. To which I replied, so what? I have an appointment. That’s why you do appointments, right? Says it’ll be an hour and a half.
Fine. I’ll goof for that time.
The barber is in the same center, so I went and got my hair cut first. While in there, the tech came and took the car and brought it in the bay. Cool, I thought. They fit me in. So after my cut, I waddled to the BBQ place and had a leisurely lunch.
I came back to my car, in the bay, maybe 2′ off the floor, and no tires appeared to have been installed. I went to the waiting area and watched, fuming, as some nob tech is fiddling under my hood. Tires, are NOT under the hood. Knuckles on the counter time.
So I go to the counter, place my knuckles on it, and ask the dude;
“You said you were busy”
Oh..we are.
I lean in…”You know, You’d get ahead of the curve if you did what I paid you to do and replace the tires, instead of checking things under the hood I don’t need checked”
Oh.. it’s a complimentary check…blah blah blah.
No, it’s fishing. Last time I got tires on my truck, they “Checked” it, and screwed up the stability control, but handed me a list of all the ills they could find on it. I’m utterly uninterested in the litany of problems, most of which will be nit-picky and useless.
Even at work I encounter situations where I have to counsel employees to do their jobs. I’ve had two at one point that flat out said “I ain’t paid to do that”. For me, that line is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Both times I told the insolent bastards “You’re paid to do what I tell you to do. Do your job or soon you won’t be paid to do much of anything.”
Even most recently, I have an employee that is incapable of understanding the concept of “Stake Holder”. He was nonplussed that someone who his work effects, an internal customer, so to speak, reviewed and suggested changes. “They come to us, we give it to them. We tell them what they want”. Literally.
I don’t know where this goes. I’m not that old, but I long for the old days of customer service and pride in your work. As far as employees though, they are usually told “It’s what it is”. The corporate version of the result usually ensues when they don’t listen.
Inspected By Pat 