How many of you . . .

How many people on this forum have jobs where you rely on other people to do their part of a job before you can do yours? Now, how many of you end up doing the other guy's job for him so that you can do YOUR job? This is basically what I do for a living (with the exception of the month of March where everyone seemed to do their work, um, correctly and on time). I send stuff out to be corrected and approved, and often get back the same stuff I sent out, forcing me to do it myself (I'm NOT supposed to) and wasting my time and putting things behind forcing me to pick up slack every week. In addition to correcting new mistakes, the people I send stuff to often begin making old mistakes all over again, as if they just forgot how to do something they've been doing for so long. (Insert roll-eyes smiley here)

Yeah, so, did I nail anybody's job descriptions here? I'm sure I did. Or am I the only one?

NAILED MINE TOO

If I'm going to develop software, or find a solution using existing software, you have to tell me what you want.

I often end up harassing people for information. In fact the reason I've been so idle lately is that I'm all harassed out, nobody's giving me any more info. Only one project is actually going anywhere. I usually end up reverse-engineering what the people want from a paper report or an excel spreadsheet or something. Pfft clearly defined list of requirements...I wish!

I'm with you....

Except i'm the true middleman. I get harassed by you guys, then i harass doctors, then i harass you guys because you don't give me the correct info the first time, then i get the info, harass the doctor, then i get ALL the info i need, then i harass the local plans, while they don't do what i tell them to for 2months, then i harass them some more, i harass the doctor to harass the local, the whole time you guys are harassing me wondering why it's taking ME so long to take care of your issue, the issue finally gets resolved, and you guys still hate ME because you couldn't give me the info the first time, the doctor was lazy, and the local sucks at doing anything on time.

So.... yeah. I depend on everyone.

I work for everyone's least favorite health insurance provider, in case you didn't figure that out yet.

I greet a customer, convince them to trust me with their largest (or second largest) investment, then rely on a parts guy to get the correct parts, a technician to do the job correctly and if I am lucky I get a bonus if the customer is happy.

They all rely on me ;)

John Brown wrote: I greet a customer, convince them to trust me with their largest (or second largest) investment, then rely on a parts guy to get the correct parts, a technician to do the job correctly and if I am lucky I get a bonus if the customer is happy. They all rely on me ;)

Why did I just have a flashback to Office Space with John Brown yelling "I have people skills dammit!".

I love that movie. One of the favs.

"Let me tell you about TPS reports."

You've definitely nailed my wife's job description, without doubt. Mine too, but to a lesser extent.

triumph7 wrote:

Why did I just have a flashback to Office Space with John Brown yelling "I have people skills dammit!".

Let me tell you about this idea I have for a game. It is called "Jump to conclusions"...

I used to do failure analysis from soup to nuts, crib to death, whatever you want to call it. I go in the field to document and photograph what happened, get the item back, photo it, cut it into smaller chunks, photo that, do chemical analysis, metallographic analysis looking at grain structure that kind of thing, sometimes do a dimensional inspection and then write a report on the findings.

Due to lack of funding a woman was transferred into my area, she is a higher grade so she's in charge now. EVERY step in the process is handles by three different Technicians and no one knows where the other two are, what findings there were that may change the course of the investigation, what errors may have been made by us or others chat change the outcome, "because I said so" doesn't fly when you're an adult, maybe on a 5 year old.

Now I got to work like a drone, do what is asked of me, provide no imput or suggestions based on my 30+ years as a tool maker, QC Inspector in the world of small arms and large bore cannon. As the only person within 200 miles qualified to perform some types of nondestructive testing, I just shut up. My Supervisor knows what's going on but is helpless to do anything. I'll be eligible to retire at a young age next summer; I probably will.

This miserable [insert bad word here] certainly took the wind out of my sails; management recognizes and regrets it. Too bad really, I used to enjoy coming to work.

....

Yep my old job was exactly like that I was completely reliant on someone else doing something before my job was complete. That person was my customers. I was doing tech support for an ISP. First they actually had to call me when there was a problem (you would be surprised how big of a problem this is), then they actually had to do what I told them to so I could fix the problem, again a huge problem, that is until I bring up the fact that there would be a charge for me to send out a tech if he found the problem was something I had already covered.

You would be amazed at how many times as soon as you bring up money people will automatically start doing exactly what you tell them.