Hubuduh What?

thoughts on the workplace
2006-12-07 : 11:32 am

Today my company received what can only be referred to as a "Christmas Card" from one of our clients.

It consisted of an email with no text in the body, but with an attachment, of which I have taken a screen shot. For secret identity purposes, I have changed my company's name to "YourCompany" and our client's name to "Our Company." Like you do.

Seriously? Is this what our society has come to? Throw a piece of clipart and a greeting in 12 point Times New Roman red and call it a Christmas card?

Weak. Or as they say in the Army, piss poor (that's for you, Meany)

Correction: I just found out the Christmas card wasn't emailed, it was posted in our tech support tracker. Meaning, the client pushed the button on our site that says "Having trouble? Click here for tech support" and uploaded the document into that program. Sooooo funny...

Meanwhile, this is what it's like talking to programmers who exist entirely inside their own heads and egos.

A little back story: We do a Peapod order (that's a home delivery grocery service from Stop and Shop) every so often at my work, and I'm in charge of finding out what we still have and what we need to order. (Seriously, thank god I have big boobs because sometimes even THIS is too taxing for my little brain.) A lot of the programmers like to keep chocolate soy milk in the fridge for their coffee. Deb, who is not working today, asked me to include some in this order if we happened to be running out. I saw some yesterday, but no one is in the office today (we all communicate via instant message on home days.) Because of this I can't go see if what's in there is fresh or if it's almost out or whatever, so I figured I'd ask another programmer who drinks it if he happened to notice yesterday when we were all there what the status of the carton was.

Disclamer: In keeping with the mediocre quality of this blog, I'm only giving you a mediocre example, but I think you get the idea of what it's like to try to communicate with my coworkers:

Jenny:
Hey Kevin, do you drink chocolate soy milk? I'm doing a Peapod order and I know there's some in the fridge so I wasn't going to order any, but if it's old or almost gone then I will. I seem to remember that you put it in your coffee, so you might know.

Kevin:
yeah, i drink the chocolate soy
its not that important tho
i have plenty at home

Jenny:
Other people want it. I'm just trying to figure out if it's old.
What we have, that is

Kevin:
of course,
i've had bad soy before
i remember drinking it for a week straight, and wondering why my coffee tasted like mushrooms

Jenny:
Is that the carton that's in the fridge right now?

Kevin:
oh no
i'm just sharing an anecdote

Jenny:
ohhhh. mushrooms. really gross.

Kevin:
just thought it was amusing

Jenny:
it is.

Kevin:
yeah, pretty damn gross
i still can remember how it tasted

Jenny:
ok so you don't know about the carton in the fridge?

Kevin:
seems pretty fine to me

Jenny:
ok thanks

Kevin:
i used it yesterday

Jenny:
was it empty?

Kevin:
nope

See, it's not something that's altogether irritating, it just... makes you wonder. But this is how it is ALL the time. Especially with these guys. Like, I'll send out an email:

Hey guys, if you're receiving this email it means I haven't gotten your blahblah yet. Please get that to me by the end of today. Thanks!
Jenny

I'll get this back:

I sent it to you yesterday.
-Joe

My reply:

Okay, I didn't get it. Could you send it again?

Joe:

Why didn't you get it? I sent it at 12:42pm. I didn't receive anything back saying it didn't go through. Here's a screenshot of my Sent folder. See? It's right there.

My reply:

I believe you. I still didn't get it. Could you send it again?

Joe:

That's it. Our servers are total crap. What the hell! This is an open source email client so I'm going to go in and see if I can figure out why you didn't get it and try to fix it and techspeak techspeak techspeak!

My reply:

Meanwhile, could you send it again?

Sigh, thank god for laughter and maturity, right? (sometimes I shake all the Mt. Dews in the fridge RIGHT before lunch)