Today I was in a meeting with a couple of managers and their staff discussing ways to make this stupid report I work on all week, better. One of the main issues is that the staff responsible for submitting information to me are largely unresponsive. I waste a ton of time everyday following up with people, and most of the time, my requests require more than one effort from me. I do a lot of following up; I get really sick of following up. I have a hard time understanding why I have to baby-sit people who make at least three to four times the amount of money I do. Mostly the follow up is done through email, which the managers agree is the most effective way to communicate with their staff, but there are times when I need to speak to people. Then it gets messier, because folks at my department are masters of distraction - or they think they are. They think that by not answering the question or by bringing up another topic altogether, I might forget what it was I originally asked them. Generally: I don't forget. My boss has, on more than one occasion, told these people that when I ask for something it's the same as if she asks for it. I have told them that these reports are prepared at the request of the executives: it's not because I have a need for this information! They shouldn't need to be reminded of that. Truth is, I don't have time to monkey around or deal with their bullshit excuses, and I'm sick of excuses or having to make excuses for them. I need what I need when I need it. Period. I can't tell my boss that I don't have what she wants because "they didn't give it to me." She doesn't care about that, and having told her that once and gotten busted for it, will never do it again. It sucks, but that's the way it is.
Anyway, so one of the problems we've been having involves one of the units giving me the date certain candidates are fingerprinted. This problem has a simple solution: the fingerprint technicians need to maintain a log. This was my idea, and even though it's pretty simple (and obvious) I'm quite proud of it. Frankly I'm a bit shocked they don't already keep a log of everybody they fingerprint, but: they don't. It seems like such a common sense solution but okay, they don't. So while I was making this suggestion, one of the other supervisors, no more than 10 words into my sentence, interrupted me. She said, "Well, I can tell you how we used to do it - " and I got pissed off. First of all, this lady always interrupts everybody. She's a habitual interrupter, and it annoys me. Interrupting is rude and in her case, unproductive, because she has a way of bringing up the olden days as if that's going to solve today's problems. She likes to digress, not unlike some of these blog entries, and I know that's a pain in the ass. But where my blog can be read leisurely, on your own time (or not read at all: "Oh, she's rambling again... [click!]"), work stuff is always rushed. Chaos is the standard around here. Information is always needed right now, or better yet, ten minutes ago. How am I going to solve this problem today, lady? Right now? Not yesterday. Anyway, so I got pissed. These are her people who aren't providing me with the info, and she too is notorious for ignoring emails and making me run around after her trying to dig up answers to questions that were originally asked last week. So I said, when she interrupted me, "Can I finish what I was saying first?"
The whole room (there were about five or six of us in the meeting) got very quiet. The managers (one was this woman's supervisor) sort of made a little noise - like "Oh!" I said thank you and continued on. Then people asked questions, we made a decision, and nobody, least of all me, turned to this lady and said anything about what she was going to say earlier. Maybe I should have, but I didn't. Later, we were talking about something else, and she made another attempt ("to go back to what I was saying before,") and eventually I guess she got it out, but it was just as I suspected: ancient history, not going to help us in this situation, and in fact, brought up more questions as to why they stopped doing whatever it was they had been doing all those years ago. When, I might point out, she was the only person in the room working here. Fucking dinosaur.
Afterwards, I felt bad for about a second. It is not my way to interrupt an interrupter! Then I thought about it and decided it was the right thing to do. I needed to get my point across, I deserved to say what I had to say, which turned out to have everyone's approval, and she needs to shut the fuck up once in a while and grow some manners.
Later I said to one of the supervisors who had been in there, who knows this woman fairly well, "Did I make an enemy earlier today?"
He said "No, but you might have gained four friends."
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