Fail, incompetence, blonds and cows. These are a few of my favorite things to hate. Coincidentally, these words can also be used to very accurately describe an individual I work with. Combined, she is the epitomy of the word ‘nightmare’. I’ve blogged about her before, she’s a problem user, she’s incompetent, she’s blond, she’s an irrational thinker and she’s a complete cow. I resort to thinking about colorful things and rainbows whenever I’m dealing with her because I’d be more concerned with the dent I’d cause a street pole if one were to surreptitiously wrap itself around her head.
Consider this scenario:
2 months ago I was informed by FIBC (Fail, Incompetent, Blond, Cow – hey don’t look at me like that I had to come up with an easy acronym) that the lamp in our main boardroom projector had imploded, I had our vendor come in, un-mount the unit and send it in for repairs. Fast forward 2 months and the projector is repaired and ready for installation. The vendor contacts me to set up a time for this, we’re estimating around 3 hours just in case they bump into any problems. Excitedly I look up the boardroom calendar in Outlook and notice a good available time slot between 10am and 1:30pm on the following Thursday. I quickly send out an email requesting a booking, the receptionist confirms and accepts the booking. I contact the vendor and let them know, the stage is set, the pawns are in place, everything is good to go.
…But first some history, FIBC wouldn’t be much of a problem. Not a problem at all but she happens to be the assistant to one of the VP’s so she think’s that her word is gospel and everything she says must be carried out to the letter (Heck I’ve got enough material to write ‘The Book of FIBC’ and append it to the bible if I need to).
You have to understand that I go out of my way to help FIBC when she encounters issues (which is fairly regularly because she’s also an IWAQ – Idiot With A Question). I try so hard not to think about terrible things that can befall her like, a bus running into her or ,I dunno, having her brain slowly ooze out of her head so that she’s unable to think. Happy thoughts Jon, rainbows, colorful shapes, Pokemon!
Enter FIBC. Late on a Thursday afternoon she jets out an email to the receptionist with the subject line “remove Project Installation off the calendar – June 26“. Note the spelling errors, she must have been in a hurry to send it with no time to spell-check, but hey, who am I, I’m certainly not the assistant to the VP where English skills, comprehension and grammar would be expected, nay, required skills.
FIBC then forwards the email to me and asks “Jonathan, what is this about—projector installation??????“, note the multiple question marks. Apparently one question mark isn’t enough or perhaps she thinks I’m blind and won’t see that she’s asking a question.
I respond with “The projector that blew up has been fixed and needs to be re-mounted to the ceiling.“ A reasonable response. Let’s ignore the fact that she’s the one that originally reported that the projector was broken, I mean, she knew about it, so why’s she asking me? Maybe she forgot, or…more plausible, maybe she’s just plain dumb?
She responds and tells me to re-schedule and utters some unrelated garbage about us not having to pay for additional labor. At this point I’m confused so I quickly retort and tell her that there was nothing scheduled in the time slot that I had requested and that I had already arranged with our vendor to come in during that time. She almost instantly replies with this gem, “Would you like to tell {VP} he can’t have it. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, {VP} runs the factory and ultimately if he wants the room everything else is moved. Rarely is there an exception. I am sorry but it’s my job to carry out his wishes…“ At this point my eyes closely resemble this emoticon O_o. I have no idea what her problem is and this is where I’ve had about enough so I calmly compose the following email to her:
“The boardroom showed free time which means that nothing is booked during that time, meaning it’s available for someone to use. Historically if you look at all the Thursdays for the past 5 weeks (and even further back) the 10am – 1:30pm timeslot has been (with the exception of the one Xerox meeting) completely open. The same is true for all Thursdays moving into the future, 10am – 1:30pm always shows as being available. How am I or anyone else in the building supposed to know when {VP} wants the boardroom if nothing is explicitly booked? I’m certainly no mind-reader. I work on facts here, not hearsay.
I’ve scheduled this time with Inland A/V to come out and do this work. I’ve based this on the fact that the boardroom will not be in use from the information provided to me in Outlook, if Outlook Calendar is somehow incorrect in this and there is in fact a meeting scheduled for Thursday then I need to see a booking in there at the timeslot I requested, otherwise I’ll consider it available for my use.
If you’re going to insist that this installation be re-booked then you will have to find a suitable time (preferably 2-3 hours) so that Inland can perform the projector installation. Weekends are unavailable.”
A completely respectable email intended to put an end to her irrational thinking. At least that’s what I thought until she responded with:
It’s been moved as everyone else understands the need to be flexible.
Jon I will print a copy of your email for {VP} to read as I feel it is important for him to realize that not everyone is willing to be flexible with the need for that room, whether it is last minute or pre-booked weeks in advance.
Nice attempt at a retaliation but how am I not being flexible? She’s the one that had the problem with the booking in the first place. FIBC tried to play her ace card, sending our entire conversation to the VP, she’s trying so hard to instill a sense of fear into me. What she fails to realise is that this tactic doesn’t work on me because I have no problem with the VP getting involved and to be frank, I hope it will expose her for the incompetent wench that she truly is because this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. The cow just has no tact whatsoever and has no clue on email etiquette.
Happy thoughts Jon, rainbows, colorful shapes, Pokemon!
Filed under: Adventures @ Work | Tagged: FIBC, Idiocrasy, IWAQ, projector
There is one of these in EVERY company! We have about 20 boardrooms and we’re constantly fighting over them.
On a side note, they dont call them boredrooms for nothing. (Misspelling intentional)
Of course FIBC wouldn’t think of clearing out the second boardroom for the use of the VP instead of ensuring that the work in the first boardroom doesn’t get done. I would imagine that she’ll be the first to yell when the projector isn’t working! Sigh! Chin up Jon, these people exist to make us feel better about ourselves and to give us a good blood pressure workout.
As it turns out, this drama could have been avoided had she used some intellect and tact when sending me the email, she could have said something like this: “Sorry Jon, I noticed you made a booking on this time slot….but the VP needs it quite urgently, could we re-schedule the boardroom projector installation, if you need any help with that let me know and I’d be happy to help you.”
Instead she wrote this: “Jonathan, what is this about—projector installation??????” – Unbelievable. No thinking involved in sending that one.
Good article.
Funny that you mentioned the main board room. We were bumped from the second floor boardroom after we had a re-accuring meeting scheduled a year ago because we were told he prefered the second floor board room over the main floor……….?
FIBC are there to spawn more blond jokes……..