Rant on Coporate Life

My current day serves as evidence of the inefficiences of the corporate business model.

One of my main goals for the day, aside from my usual daily archiving and footage request duties, was to finish up with the gathering of information I needed for our entries for the 2008 Gemini Awards, and have the packages for each entry sent off by early afternoon.

It's 3:00pm now. I started the day at 6:30am needing nothing more than a few jpegs for marketing purposes, a 1-page biography from a crew member, and a handful of signatures. Incidentally, I started yesterday needing the same few things. I have yet to accomplish any of the above. Through a combination of not returning my emails, not returning my phone calls, and just generally staying up in carpet city all day (the third floor) the 2 or 3 people who have what I need have managed to shrug me off for approx. 3 days now.

It seems impossible to do anything fast here. It's become standard practice for me to send off an email requesting that I be given permission to purchase something (.. let's say a hundred bucks worth of CD-Rs or something..), then just go out and buy them, and then wait a few days until I finally get the affirmative response before going upstairs to hand in my receipts.

I think people plan their days entirely chronologically with no attention to the efficiency or relative simplicity of simply 'doing some things really quick right now...' For example, it seems extremely odd.. and wearing.. to me that I'll send off an email saying, 'can you do this little 2 paragraph write-up for me so I can send this off in the next hour?' and get the response... 'ohhh... no that's gonna be tomorrow afternoon at the earliest...'

... and then see that person chatting over coffee about their daughter's soccer game with a bunch of co-workers down at the cafeteria.

By all means, take breaks, have conversations.. but what I'm asking for will (should..) take a maximum of approx. 8 minutes to accomplish. Heck.. do it right now!! Send it off and be done with me.

Rather, I wait. I'm waiting. Right now. For a 2 paragraph writeup, and a signature. Screw the jpegs. I'll find my own and call it a day. And if I'm lucky, it'll be around Monday afternoon, following another 2 or 3 emails.

Lame. Big time.

Is it not entirely rediculous that I can make phone calls inside my own company, to my own bosses, and be ignored? I don't mean that my messages will be ignored (though that happens as well...). I mean that the call will be immediately forwarded to their blackberry, and they will physically hit 'ignore' on the phone, so as to send me to a voicemail.. which they will then ignore. Note: a normal voicemail will pick up after approx. 5 rings. A blackberry sent to voicemail via 'ignore' will go to voicemail after 1 or 2 rings. nobody sets their desk phone to go to voicemail after 1 ring.

Is it not a problem that I see it as the 'utterly ideal' that I might actually call a co-worker and that the phone would be answered? By a person? With an immediate response to my question?

I called HR yesterday with a question. She said 'ya ya, of course Jonny.. I'll look into that and get right back to you.' The original call was at approx. 9:30am. At approx. 3:00pm, I called HR again. She picked up and said, 'Jonny! Hi.. funny, I was just about to call you..'

Nope. You were not just about to call me.

I get approximately 12 emails a day that read, 'Ya Dennis, I know who you should be talking to. I'll take care of it. Signed, Jeff.' End of sentence. I, of course, am not Dennis. Or Jeff. I scroll down to find another body of text.. presumably the email to which Jeff was responding. It reads, 'Jeff, I need the tapes Marlene mentioned RIGHT NOW. Bring them by? Signed, Dennis.' I scroll down further to find another body of text, which reads, 'Dennis, do you have those tapes we talked about? Signed, Marlene.' Further down..'Marlene, I need the tapes about the moose and the badger. Signed Greg.' And then I say.. 'screw it.' and call up Jeff and ask what he needs.

ugh.
J