People Who Make Our Jobs Harder

People who make our jobs harder never cease to amaze me. Because of some fleeting whimsy, they dole out orders, execute actions or change procedure giving little forethought to the consequences.

For example, a co-worker of mine has to clean out a database filled with contacts from imported lists. These lists sometimes contain duplicates, sometimes not.

How do you know?

An indicator in the form of a question mark appears next to each name. So, you can ferret out the ones that are duplicates. Then, merge them with the originals already existing in the database.

Did I mention that there are thousands of contacts?

Yes, it’s a boring, tedious and repetitive task, but it needs to get done. But having a little help made the work easier, nonetheless.

Unfortunately, somebody decided they didn’t like the way question marks looked in the database. They removed them. Every. Single. One. Also, the double whammy is that this certain somebody needs to have the list free and clear of duplicate contacts because they desperately want to avoid calling existing customers. If not, they’ll be in trouble. BIG TROUBLE.

Of course this person was told about the “mistake.” Their response, “I didn’t like the question marks.”

Now, my co-worker has to go through each and every contact. Search for duplicates, whether they exist or not. It slows down the project. And perhaps, the department’s time line is shot.

Oh well. Somebody didn’t like question marks.

So, you see folks, people who make your job harder don’t have good reasons for making it that way. And if they do, you know why up front – not afterwards. But usually, they make things harder for themselves, whether they realize it or not.

Plainly, that just makes them idiots.