Defiant

I know it's overwhelming when I post all those pictures and long lists, so I'll keep things short today (or at least attempt to).

For the record, I turned on the furnace this week on October 18.  This is better than the previous two years when I turned it on in September, and on par with three years ago.

I got an e-mail at work at the end of the day on Thursday that got me a little bit hot under the collar.  Yes people, it can happen.  It's rare, but it does happen.  It was from a general manager of a different group.  I almost replied that day right before I left, but I remembered the flaming e-mail rule and let it sit overnight hoping that in the light of the morning on Friday it wouldn't seem so bad.  It still ticked me off a little when I read it again on Friday morning, so I replied to it mostly according to how I had originally intended.  I told him that I wasn't finishing my work because I was waiting on another guy to finish his work, which I had been asking for repeatedly.  If they wanted me to circumvent the process, then they needed to talk to my project leader.  I tried to figure out why this particular e-mail rubbed me the wrong way so much.  I think there were several reasons:

• First of all, the guy who sent the e-mail (call him M) was telling me what I should do.  M is not my boss or project leader, and I do not report to him in any way in the reporting structure.  None of my bosses report to him either.  I already have one boss and three project leaders, so I don't need another guy coming around and trying to tell me what to do and set priorities, thank you very much.  It may have been slightly inappropriate for him to e-mail me directly seeing how he's a general manager and I'm a lowly senior engineer.  He probably should have talked to my project leader first.
• Secondly, M was implying that I was purposely creating delays and prolonging a major quality issue.  This is partially true, but only because I'm assigned to another mega project that requires some of my time and is higher priority.  Also, I couldn't finish my work because I have been waiting on another guy (D) to get me some specifications so I can correctly complete my calculations.  I have been repeatedly asking D for these specifications for the last four weeks with little to show for it.  Also, it may or may not be debatable whether this is a major quality issue.  Sometimes people exaggerate - he didn't give me any specific numbers.
• I'm fairly certain that M's e-mail was spawned by a meeting to cover the issue where both M and D were there but I was not because I wasn't invited to the meeting.  I may have been indirectly invited by some forwarded e-mail a week ago when I replied and told them if they wanted me at the meeting that they should send me a meeting invite so the meetings show up on my calendar.  It takes one minute for them to do that, so if they seriously need my input, they can easily add me.  From the tone of the e-mail, it seemed as though D had told M that I was the hold-up and made me the scapegoat when D shares at least partial responsibility for being the hold-up.
• I have received almost no communication from D over the last 3 weeks asking me for anything or asking for status updates, which kind of implied that it wasn't his top priority.  Then suddenly I get an e-mail from M saying it should be my top priority.  I really dislike it when things go from not being an issue to being a major issue with no explanation of why.  I prefer a slower escalation process.  Procrastination or lack of due diligence on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.  Just sayin'. 

I ended up talking to my project leader and we came up with a compromise action plan for this issue.  So all in all it wasn't a huge deal other than I may have made an enemy of a general manager at work by being slightly defiant in an e-mail.  Oh well, I'm not trying to be CEO anyway. I thought I'd let you in on a little excitement at work and how the politics go.  Now you know what my buttons are.  Don't push them!  This was probably compounded by the stress from my other major project that week that may have blown things out of proportion.

Other than that, it was beautiful weather this weekend.  The woikas are coming later this week.  Rock climbing will resume after a three year hiatus.  That's the excitement around here.