Beginning Anew

It's amazing how tensions can reach an unbelieveable level, only to be thrown over the edge by one misplaced and perhaps misintentioned comment or e-mail. Last night we had problems with our scheduling software outputting a corrupt file. This is an uncommon, but previously documented problem that from time to time raises its ugly head. Unfortunately, to solve this problem means that 2 people (myself and one person from the scheduling department) have to be disturbed after hours. Now I could go on about how that could have been averted if procedure had been followed and the logs had been prepared by the staff before 8pm, but at this point it's irrelevant.

The other person who was called in was NOT happy about being disturbed during her evening with her husband. I, being on call, am quite used to it. I don't like being taken away from a nice meal with my wife or the enjoyment of a movie to answer a phone call or to have to leave and go back to work, but you learn to deal with it.

The scheduling person sent a rather irresponsible and inaccurate e-mail about the support she recieved not only from me, but from my boss (who told her that he wasn't on call, he was at a rehearsal and she needed to call me) . She sent a segment of this workplace into an inferno of blown-out-of-proportion. My boss pointed out to her supervisor the inaccuracies and general bad attitude of the person during our support call last night, and that perhaps it was inappropriate to place blame on Engineering/MIS because we had no control over the export of schedules. IF there was blame to be placed, perhaps it should have been placed on the people who did not do their job before 8pm.

This was taken wrong, blown into quite an explosive argument, and even a few remarks were made claiming that our department was racist in some way. I put a stop to that immediately.

Why do people feel the need to stir? There was no purpose in the original call, there was no purpose in the e-mail... and there was no purpose in the responses given.

I have wasted minutes of my life dealing with this childish stuff... why?

So, next time someone ticks you off... before you fire that e-mail off, be sure and think about it ... read it out loud to someone and get a feeling for it before you send it off. It could really save everyone, including you, some heartache!