An update on my work situation

[Alan H]

For those that remember, I wrote about two months ago about a problematic co-worker who didn't directly make an issue of my kilts, but tried to work them in sideways in a barrage of complaints about service. She's one of those people who are never happy, you know? The problem was that she's very good at what she does and very good at making the people who come to her for help, very happy. By circumstance, she's been in a very secure and unassailable position, and the faculty that she helps are very vocal about how good she is. Anyway, I took a few of your suggestions, and here's what's happened in the last two months.

1. I proposed to her, my manager, my other co-worker that does support in the lab, and her manager that we have a meeting. I had to wait a couple of weeks because when I wrote, two months ago, we'd just HAD a meeting about support in the lab. I provided an agenda via e-mail for this meeting.

A.. I propose for discussion, monthly reviews of support of the lab. How are we doing for you, our client? Are we serving your needs? We instituted monthly reviews, of which there have now been two. She's been unable to document any unreasonable issue.

B.. I propose that we put in place "metrics" (it's the current buzz-word around the department) for I. support hours spent in the lab and II. faculty useage of the lab. My co-worker (who I enlisted in the cause beforehand) drew up some excel spreadsheet templates. These spreadsheets are for daily use. Each week we mail them to my manager, who's the Associate Director of our department. In them we document how many hours of time we spend on particular problems in the lab. What SHE has to do now, is document how many hours a week she spends on direct face-to-face faculty support in the lab, and how many hours a week she spends on phone support and e-mail support for our online Course Management system.

All this has been in place for six weeks, now. Here's the outcome.

A. Management has discovered that she and the two other staff down there spend the overwhelming majority of their time on the online/e-mail support issues, and next to nothing on face-to-face support.

B. Our turnaround time is less than four hours for a response to her calls, and with only one exception, "fixing the problem" happens in less than 48 hours. In six weeks the one problem we couldn't fix in 48 hours was a laptop that had to be sent out to Apple for repair. It took two weeks, but she had assistance with backing up files and a substitute laptop within 24 hours of letting us know about the problem.

Nowhere in any of the documentation...spreadsheets, meeting agendas, e-mails... has there been a single mention of kilts.

The FALLOUT from all this is .... and this is so unexepected that it's almost funny... that she's being reassigned. The whole lab is being moved upstairs this summer onto the main floor. Students will have access to it as well as faculty. She will not have her own little room, locked away from anyone she doesn't want to have enter it. Management has realized that having three staff and three student employees looking after six computers, a video editing station, a dubbing station and four scanners which get used by at most, a twenty faculty a quarter, is not cost efficient. Not only that, but of those twenty faculty that come in, fifteen of them do nothing but scan reams of paper and make pdf's out of it. That's less than two faculty drop-in's or appointments per week. The majority of what they do could be more-than-adequately-supported by student help, not staff. The money poured into that lab is totally out of line with the number of people it services.

The two other staff members have been reassigned to online course support ONLY, and have had their desks moved (to a much nicer location, BTW). She's still in her lab, but come July first we relocate it onto the main floor, out in the open. She'll have a cubicle on the second floor like the rest of us. Instead of complaining about how none of the equipment that is available for student use (which is what I take care of) never works, SHE will be responsible for maintaining the equipment for student use as well as her own. She'll have the help of my other co-worker (who made the excel spreadsheets) She'll also be responsible for helping faculty when they drop in. She'll have to juggle six competing requests at a time, eight hours a day every day like the rest of us do, rather than having two a week and complaining about how busy she is.

During this time, our department has taken two Project Management workshops. Now, I HATE that stuff, but I can see that at least for four or five of the recurring projects that we do every year, to put together a work breakdown plan and develop a critical path for them would be really helpful. I proposed a meeting (tomorrow) where we start developing the work breakdown sheet and define milestones for our annual new hardware rollout project. My boss put me in charge of the meeting and developing the plan and the critical path.

Guess who will have to sit through those meetings, having NO idea what's going on, now that she's part of the student support team? Fate works in mysterious ways, sometimes.

And nowhere, not ONE SINGLE TIME in all of this...and it's all documented crosswise and backwards, are my kilts mentioned as an issue.

BTW, the annual Advisory Board meeting was this weekend. Friday was the Big Deal. Twenty-four CEO's, former congressman, librarians from Edinborough, Trinity College, Melbourne University, Cal and Yale were all there to help the Library Directors envision where we're going, what we should be doing, and what the future holds. This is a **Big Freakin' Deal**. Who did technical support for that?

Yours Truly. Yup, me and me friend and co-worker Deni took care of everything.

And everything went smooth as silk.

You know what? I wore my Black Watch kilt all day.

At drinks before dinner the Associate Director of the libraries, a British woman, flirted with me outrageously. Then after dinner, the (I SWEAR this is true) CEO of Logitech downloaded to his palm pilot the words to a little song about a wee lassie who sneaks up on the Scotsman that's asleep. She lifts his kilt and ties a blue ribbon on his ******. When he wakes up and goes to relieve himself, he discovers the blue ribbon and says "I don't know where you've been, my lad...but you've obviously won first prize".

The Associate Director of the Libraries and Chief General Council for the University giggled their way through the song while I snapped pictures and someone else captured the event on their cell phone. I WANT that sound file!!! It was all in good fun.

After the day was over, the Director of the University Libraries (who's an Irishman, last name "Keller") thanked me and my coworker Deni personally for all the work we'd done and said he thought the kilt was great. "We don't see enough of that tradition." says He.

I think the issue of kilts in the University Libraries is well and truly put to rest.

[Yaish]

One of the best stories I'm sure I'll hear all week. Thats awesome!

[cavscout]

Sweet!!

Reminds me of the Dam scene from "Force Ten from Navarone" where the Demo guy takes a bit of explosive and detonates it. Everyone is upset cause the dam didn't go up in a cloud of dust and he just sits back to watch the "forces of nature" take their course!

Mission Accomplished.

Congrats.

[Doc Hudson]

BRAVO!!!!!!!!BRAVO!!!!!!!!BRAVO!!!!!!!!

WELL DONE SIR!!!! WELL DONE!!!!!!

[Rufus]

Alan, it sounds like we work in the exact same sort of office on a University campus (Instructional Technology Resource Center), except that I'm the student employee running the video editing booth.

I lucked out with kilt wearing at my job. One of the managers was an immigrant from Ireland, so she told me when I ordered my first kilt that I had free reign to wear it to the office. I was just thinking that almost all of the pictures in my gallery were taken at work.

I'm glad to hear that things are going well with the kilt wearing at work, and sounds like things can only get better from here on out!

[GMan]

Alan,

What a great thing to hear

You must have had a good celebration over those drinks.

[MACKAY]

... It's a Karma thing ... she just wouldn't understand.

Brian Mackay

[Graham]

Well done, well flippin done!

[bubba]

Bet she's wishing she'd have kept her mouth shut and her prejudices to herself about now.

[Thistle Stop]

Alan, that is a brilliant story! Thanks for telling us about the new developments, and keep us informed as the saga unfolds! Kudos to you for putting the focus on the right issues. Your kilt-wearing will be a non-issue from now on!