"They've jammed our communications"
Sep. 22nd, 2006 03:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lumy12((help me with the quote, someone?))
Yes, I am a morning person. But getting up at 4am does tend to make me a bit cranky.
One of our offices is piloting a new payroll system. It's our second-largest office - I'd prefer to see a smaller office work out the bugs, but these folks are sharp so I'm guessing that's why they were picked. This was the first payroll processed using the new system, and they had problems up the wazoo.
That's to be expected with a new system, I suppose, but... but... it irritates me. They've had countless meetings about this over the past TWO YEARS. They're using an outside consulting company (or maybe independent contractors, I'm not sure) and they've designed this system FOR US, it's suppose to cater to our quirks. I think part of the problem is there's too many hands in the pot and NOBODY TALKS TO EACH OTHER.
Which is actually the issue that pissed me off this morning. Okay, so yesterday was Wendy Day - my long day. My day that is all about me and my needs. Ha! Well, it sort of is. All the offices know it as "Wendy Day." First of all, I came in at 5:30 to get started and found the main system I needed down. It was down for 3 hours. This set everyone back about 3 hours to begin with, and there was a management meeting going on - which my boss made me interrupt for no good reason, GAH! I hate that. I hate opening the door and having everyone turn and stare at me. But I digress - and one of the managers who was dependent on my report being run to do HIS part was in this meeting... basically he never got to do his thing with it, so things are screwed up because of that, but that's not what's annoying me. It's more the field's problem than mine.
The parent company was supposedly working on fixing the Major Issues all day. Towards the end of the day, they still hadn't resolved it, and I was getting panicky. I wanted to start manually keying stuff instead of putting it through the right way. They were supposed to send us a spreadsheet of all the things I'd need to key. They said they thought they knew how to fix it, that I'd have maybe 100 lines to do. No problem. Waited, waited, waited... finally when I was either gonna have to take the mail to the post office and come back or send a manager with the mail (we STILL don't have a mailbox here), my boss just told me to go home, that they would email me so I'd have it in the morning. That made me nervous - I wanted to KNOW what I'd be doing in the morning, or stay late and fix it the night before, not at the last minute (I guess I should mention that payroll is due at 11am EST, which is currently 8am our time until daylight savings comes around again, and it takes me 2.5 - 3 hours to do everything I need to do to send it off). I should have insisted on taking the mail and coming back, but I just went home.
So this morning, I trot in here at 4:30 and I find in my email not one spreadsheet, but THREE spreadsheets, all with vague messages from the computer chick that made me scratch my head and have to think about if I'm supposed to key them or not. She had copied my boss, but I wasn't sure if Boss had received them as they came in after 5pm and she might have gone home by then.
I quickly determined which one was the lowest priority - it also happened to be the largest. Didn't touch that one. There was one with only 8 lines on it. Easy enough. But one had 543 lines... and not only that, but there were no pay rates, no employee #s, and there were start and end times but no hours. It boggled my mind. Got the coffee going and dove right in, though, manually calculating, looking up pay rates, looking up people's payroll #s. I knew I'd be late sending the payroll off but I also knew management was more worried about these people not getting paid and were willing to hold things up to get everything entered.
I'm working on this for like 2 hours, when my boss calls. She was at Starbucks, did I want anything? Heck yeah I did, but I wasn't cheeky enough to ask if she was buying and I didn't want to pay for it myself <.< so I said no. I did tell her I was freaking out over the spreadsheets, I asked if she saw them last night... "Oh yeah," she says casually. "You only have to worry about the one with the 8 people on it. Mesa has to research the other stuff cuz it's all screwed up. We'll do manual checks once they've figured it all out." - Huh? Could you not have TOLD me this? I dunno, forwarded me an email or called me at home or something?
I was quite relieved that I got to stop that tedious task, though. I hid my anger. Ended up being only a half hour late after all that.
Just... the whole lack of communication thing in this company drives me up a wall. It didn't used to be like this. You might say with growth it's inevitable, but I don't think that has to be the case. There are some of us who can quite easily look at something and realize how many tentacles it has and who might need to be involved when it's changed or whatever. But are we allowed to say anything? No. Everything must go through theextremely inefficient appropriate channels.
To end on a more positive note, at least the appropriate channels thing means I can tell our field employees to call their supervisors, not me.
I was in a foul mood earlier, but you know what cheered me up? Printing 140 pages of something for personal use that I really should have printed at home but am too cheap to do so. I felt better after that. (My printer won't print anymore anyway, I think it's on strike! I've tried everything to get it to work but it refuses)
A fine mess awaits me on Monday, but that's two whole days from now. I am SO going to sleeeeeeeep innnnnnnnn this weekend.
Yes, I am a morning person. But getting up at 4am does tend to make me a bit cranky.
One of our offices is piloting a new payroll system. It's our second-largest office - I'd prefer to see a smaller office work out the bugs, but these folks are sharp so I'm guessing that's why they were picked. This was the first payroll processed using the new system, and they had problems up the wazoo.
That's to be expected with a new system, I suppose, but... but... it irritates me. They've had countless meetings about this over the past TWO YEARS. They're using an outside consulting company (or maybe independent contractors, I'm not sure) and they've designed this system FOR US, it's suppose to cater to our quirks. I think part of the problem is there's too many hands in the pot and NOBODY TALKS TO EACH OTHER.
Which is actually the issue that pissed me off this morning. Okay, so yesterday was Wendy Day - my long day. My day that is all about me and my needs. Ha! Well, it sort of is. All the offices know it as "Wendy Day." First of all, I came in at 5:30 to get started and found the main system I needed down. It was down for 3 hours. This set everyone back about 3 hours to begin with, and there was a management meeting going on - which my boss made me interrupt for no good reason, GAH! I hate that. I hate opening the door and having everyone turn and stare at me. But I digress - and one of the managers who was dependent on my report being run to do HIS part was in this meeting... basically he never got to do his thing with it, so things are screwed up because of that, but that's not what's annoying me. It's more the field's problem than mine.
The parent company was supposedly working on fixing the Major Issues all day. Towards the end of the day, they still hadn't resolved it, and I was getting panicky. I wanted to start manually keying stuff instead of putting it through the right way. They were supposed to send us a spreadsheet of all the things I'd need to key. They said they thought they knew how to fix it, that I'd have maybe 100 lines to do. No problem. Waited, waited, waited... finally when I was either gonna have to take the mail to the post office and come back or send a manager with the mail (we STILL don't have a mailbox here), my boss just told me to go home, that they would email me so I'd have it in the morning. That made me nervous - I wanted to KNOW what I'd be doing in the morning, or stay late and fix it the night before, not at the last minute (I guess I should mention that payroll is due at 11am EST, which is currently 8am our time until daylight savings comes around again, and it takes me 2.5 - 3 hours to do everything I need to do to send it off). I should have insisted on taking the mail and coming back, but I just went home.
So this morning, I trot in here at 4:30 and I find in my email not one spreadsheet, but THREE spreadsheets, all with vague messages from the computer chick that made me scratch my head and have to think about if I'm supposed to key them or not. She had copied my boss, but I wasn't sure if Boss had received them as they came in after 5pm and she might have gone home by then.
I quickly determined which one was the lowest priority - it also happened to be the largest. Didn't touch that one. There was one with only 8 lines on it. Easy enough. But one had 543 lines... and not only that, but there were no pay rates, no employee #s, and there were start and end times but no hours. It boggled my mind. Got the coffee going and dove right in, though, manually calculating, looking up pay rates, looking up people's payroll #s. I knew I'd be late sending the payroll off but I also knew management was more worried about these people not getting paid and were willing to hold things up to get everything entered.
I'm working on this for like 2 hours, when my boss calls. She was at Starbucks, did I want anything? Heck yeah I did, but I wasn't cheeky enough to ask if she was buying and I didn't want to pay for it myself <.< so I said no. I did tell her I was freaking out over the spreadsheets, I asked if she saw them last night... "Oh yeah," she says casually. "You only have to worry about the one with the 8 people on it. Mesa has to research the other stuff cuz it's all screwed up. We'll do manual checks once they've figured it all out." - Huh? Could you not have TOLD me this? I dunno, forwarded me an email or called me at home or something?
I was quite relieved that I got to stop that tedious task, though. I hid my anger. Ended up being only a half hour late after all that.
Just... the whole lack of communication thing in this company drives me up a wall. It didn't used to be like this. You might say with growth it's inevitable, but I don't think that has to be the case. There are some of us who can quite easily look at something and realize how many tentacles it has and who might need to be involved when it's changed or whatever. But are we allowed to say anything? No. Everything must go through the
To end on a more positive note, at least the appropriate channels thing means I can tell our field employees to call their supervisors, not me.
I was in a foul mood earlier, but you know what cheered me up? Printing 140 pages of something for personal use that I really should have printed at home but am too cheap to do so. I felt better after that. (My printer won't print anymore anyway, I think it's on strike! I've tried everything to get it to work but it refuses)
A fine mess awaits me on Monday, but that's two whole days from now. I am SO going to sleeeeeeeep innnnnnnnn this weekend.
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Date: 2006-09-22 11:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 12:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 12:23 am (UTC)Yay for the return of Drunk!Kev!
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Date: 2006-09-23 12:28 am (UTC)What's your screen name?
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Date: 2006-09-23 12:33 am (UTC)I'm ChocoLion. Ping me, baby!
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Date: 2006-09-23 12:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 12:24 am (UTC)I would offer you the last white chocolate macadamia nut cookie in exchange, but someone ate it yesterday. Ha! No snickerdoodles in here, those are my favorite.
*eats the reeeeally late pizza and mutually pets the Megan*
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Date: 2006-09-23 12:29 am (UTC)Argh. People are so incompetent. >.