There are certain things at work that really aggravate me, I mean really, really aggravate me.  I’m not yet fifty but sometimes I act and feel like I’m that mean old seventy year old who sits on her porch and yells at the kids to get off her lawn.  Today, for example, we experienced extremely sluggish server issues.  The main program that our revenue-generators use to track their time and that my staff use to make sure we get paid for that time went on the fritz.  IT, in their wisdom sent regular status emails to all 200 employees.  Regular also meant many.

The last email they sent was addressed to every single employee with the head honcho of the IT department cc’d for political reasons.  Contained within the note were the usual IT-speak phrases–things like, recycling servers, slow response times, regression testing, all designed to make them feel smart and useful and us grateful.  The final phrase of the email said, “Please let us know if you continue to experience slow response times.”

An hour later, one of our more aggravating rainmakers, we’ll call him John, responded with his own personal news bulletin that said, “I’ve been slow all day!”  While this response in and of itself was enough to be annoying, the worst part was that he did a “reply all”.  Everyone in the entire company was notified that John had experienced slow times all day and, dammit, we should all be aware of this!  I deleted it after muttering an oath under my breath. Continue reading →