Wrong again

Wow ... actually, apparently Hell is just having a phone. Or at least yesterday was devoted to phone-hell. I was working from home yesterday, partly in order to intermittently make calls in the morning to resolve various issues about our new house & other things: arranging a mover to give us a quote, setting up a handyman to do various bits of work, arranging for Cat & the handyman to have access to the house next week, calling IRS, calling Arkansas Tax Department, calling my doctors office to try and get a blood sample organised (four times, without success). This last was in fact my prime reason for working from home, I was aiming to go & get the bloodtest in the afternoon, not that it worked out, for some odd reason.

Aaaanyway, after all that, I got sucked into a pointless teleconference with some clients, some developers, and other IT staff, for 120 minutes, of which I was needed for maybe 2 minutes. Apparently the project manager feels a lot more important and valuable by sucking in any and all people who might be even peripherally involved into one titanic meeting, rather than several smaller (and shorter!) meetings that might be more efficient for everyone involved (except the project manager, naturally). Oh joy. And I have 4 more of these titanic meetings scheduled for the next 5 days (plus one that I declined for a time conflict).

Immediately after that, I had to join my regular pre-Change meeting to review changes scheduled for Thursday, which trundled on for half an hour. About five minutes after that, I got phoned up by two of our company's middle-managers (not my boss, others on his level more or less), and quizzed about technical details on a proposed project - however, the proposal had changed since I'd last seen it, and they didn't bother communicating that to me until halfway through the meeting, to endless confusion. They also seemed to expect me to read their minds about their intentions and desires.

The whole thing also raised a tricky ethical question about whether to provide what the client wants (i.e. makes us look good now), or what is actually in the best interests of the client longterm but appears initially less beneficial. Of course the logical thing would be to demonstrate this, but that is seen as undoable, for reasons not explained to me.

I deliberately punted* on providing a recommendation, as I didnt want anything to do with suggesting anything unethical, or anything contrary to our company's interests (or at least, the -managers- best interests, in terms of looking good: after all, by the time the longterm issues are apparent, they will be long-gone, and possibly our company will be as well).

After all that, my poor phone ear was buzzing and red.

Oh, and the work we want the handyman to do (as I dont think I've talked about that before), we want the master bedroom repainted, the hallway carpets lifted and the underlying hardwood floors repolished, and a few minor things (replacing antiquated power fittings in a couple of spots, securing & replacing a couple of other bits). We've deliberately left 10 days between the time we take possession, and our moving day, so that there is unoccupied time available for him to do the work: and we were fortunate enough to get a personal recommendation for this guy, from a woman at work who has just bought a house & had him do similar work for her.



*Heh, American sporting metaphor! Just meaning, to put off, to push away and defer - from gridiron, where a team will punt the ball in order to force the opposition further away from their goalline.