Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Not Psychic Enough

WastingTime  Yesterday's highlight (after spending an hour of my morning in the hallway due to a failure of the "security" system) has to have been the meeting.  

In my experience, a Monday morning meeting with a manager is rarely a good thing. The tip off that things are not going well are:

1. No doughnuts

2. No scheduled meeting

3. Conference bridge already open to the VP in another state

I didn't get fired, but it seems the 40 hours I put in last weekend have been erased from the corporate memory. They have issues contacting me after hours.

Now, I figured there might be an issue when I got the email from Friday night on Monday morning which let me know that I was on call for Sunday. I didn't know in time for Sunday, and therefore did not spend the whole day hovering over my email client just in case.

I was told I don't answer my phone. I let them know it never rang. My missed call log was empty in three separate contact numbers.

In the end, I was (for lack of a better term) bitched at for not answering a call on Sunday which they admitted was never placed.

They admitted that no one tried to call me, but I was still in a conference room being berated for not answering my phone. 

What the hell am I supposed to do with that?

What action item would you come away with?

I suppose I could burn up my cell minutes (which are, thanks to the fact that I pay for them, my cell minutes) calling all the managers every 15 minutes or so to find out if there was anything for me to do.

I did ask what my Service Level Agreement was for this job, because no one ever mentioned one. So, how long do I have to get to a computer and get working after hours and on weekends? The reply (I swear this was the reply) was "Instant".

By definition, my commute time could get me fired.

That's insane. I'm telling you that. I told them that. On some level, being members of the same species as the rest of us, they have to understand. But understanding has little place in corporate policy.

The action item I took away from this meeting is: Update your resume and find a better use for your time. I'm on it.

This is honestly the first time I've ever heard of anyone getting penalized for not answering a call which was never placed.

If someone uses the work "proactive" around me today I'm punching them in the neck.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I didn't call you and I resent the way you didn't respond to my lack of phone calls. How dare you ignore my lack of phone dialing and call that an excuse for not answering your cell?