Working really tires me and I think
I'll turn to crime
I know everybody finds this boring, but I have to vent somewhere,
and my coworkers are too stupid to understand:
Part of my job involves maintaining a lot of policy manuals
online. Each manual has an 'owner', a person who dictates
and approves updates to said manuals. One particular manual
has several hyperlinks to another, older manual. This older
manual was decommissioned earlier in the year, as its department
had been dissolved. Rather than re-engineer the new manual
to include all the information needed from the old manual
I was instructed to leave the old manual online, but remove
and reference to it elsewhere on our website. The links would
remain, so the only possible way anybody could ever get to
this old manual would be through the links in the new manual.
This happened about 6 months ago.
Enter some guy from the Phoenix office who emails me the
other days asking me to add a new section to the discontinued
manual. I tell him the manual is no longer functional, that
the only reason it exists at all is because some information
is linked from the new manual. He doesn't get it. He doesn't
see why I shouldn't update this dead manual with some new
vital information, even though I explained to him in no uncertain
terms that nobody will ever see his precious updates because
there are no direct links to the old manual.
Then he tries to have me add the section to the new manual.
Forget that the new manual is for a completely separate entity
of the company and as a rule departments are pretty picky
about their policy manuals. They don't often take kindly to
people from other parts of the company blithely adding content
to their guiding principles.
This drew me into a volley of stupid emails and stupider
phone calls between the Phoenix guy and the Keeper of the
Newer Manual in London. Finally, it was decided what to do
with the new material: add it to the defunct manual anyway.
Everybody wins: the new manual remains unbesmirched by the
rogue information, the Phoenix guy is happy because he's too
stupid to understand the concept that NO ONE WILL EVER SEE
HIS ADDITONS TO THE MANUAL BECAUSE THE MANUAL DOES NOT OFFICIALLY
EXIST ANY MORE. But whatever, from an official office perspective,
everybody got what they wanted.
While there's something to be said for all employees having
clear notions of how a company operates, maybe we're ushering
in a new paradigm here: the "Do What You Feel" business
model! The company progresses on the sheer whimsy of its employees:
- Oh, I felt like adding something to this useless manual
that no one will ever read, why not?
 I'd
like to add the phrase "... in bed" after every
line of the company Mission Statement.- I feel like replacing the company logo across the entire
corporate website with a self-portrait of Buzz McKinnon.
- When anybody tries to download a document form the site,
they will actually download an mp3 of "Wang Dang Sweet
Poon Tang" by Ted Nugent.
Now that's what I call a List of Primary Action Items!
Posted By Jimmy Legs
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what
do you guys think?
