<rant>
This may be a doozy.
I have been working on a project at the “real” job for a few weeks now, and every day I wait for responses from the people who are ultimately responsible for the success of the project. I have no responsibility buy-in other than, “spend some time on this for the people who don’t write your paycheck.” This means I can drop the ball and it won’t fall on my head. Do I put full effort into the project anyway? Of course I do. I fully support success whenever possible. This does not mean that the responsible parties are responsible, however. I have been waiting two and a half weeks for a fully defined, but unverified, data set – that should take about one day to verify. I find it hard to believe that even an incompetent is unable to run through this data in two full weeks. The program requirements are also undefined because the project lead is disinterested in the output, but rather running around like a chicken with its head cut off over other smaller issues.
I asked the project lead for the newest project documents and he told me to edit them. As you can see, the two links are not equal. I copied my boss on a scathing (I thought) response letting him know that I am not here to format Word documents, and my boss replied with a much more direct, much nastier addition. Oddly, that did not stop him from sending the request three more times later. I fully expect blameshifting when someone realizes there is a problem, but I’m good. When the project is finished and everyone is happy, the project lead historically defines my role as “oh, he just gets data.” This will happen again, but every time it is a little more obvious to the men in charge.
I heard today that the project may not even be accepted when it’s finished because of bureaucratic mindlessness. Priceless.
</rant>
