At Least I Could Take It Out On Others

I had a lousy day on Tuesday. But at least I could take out my frustration on others.

Well, actually, I was the delegate for my boss this week, as she has been on vacation. On Tuesday I got stuck in lab all day (and a bit into the evening), mainly because another guy begged off while he was working on a customer ticket. OK, that was fine. But meanwhile I was also getting requests from several other sources for help that my boss would normally be covering, so I had to find people to cover that. I had one unassigned customer ticket that needed addressing that day. So, I IM'd four guys that I thought could cover it, and asked for one of them to step forward and take the ticket.

None of them would. They all had their excuses.

So, then I talked to one of them individually to try to get him to take the ticket, because I knew what he was working on could get deferred. He kept coming up with excuses, and I finally got frustrated enough that I said "Forget it, I'll take care of it".

Then more tickets came in.

We got to four tickets when I e-mailed everyone in the group asking everyone to try to pick up one ticket. If they stepped up first they'd have their pick of the four - so they had the chance to grab the easiest. And I'd take the last one not assigned.

Then the fifth came in as I was sending the e-mail, so I e-mailed again.

Then the sixth came in as I was sending that e-mail, so I e-mailed again. I said that any ticket not taken would be assigned randomly to people by the end of the day, and no, I wasn't kidding.

That got results. Four of the six went quickly. Then I tracked down the remaining members of the group, rounded them up in one spot, and was about to do the random assignment. One of the three stepped up to take the second-to-last, so I took the last (the one I said I'd take earlier anyway).

So, we wound up the day with no unassigned tickets, and we've managed to keep the queue low all week. That's how it's done!

Of course, one of the ways the queue has stayed low was that I took care of 4 or 5 tickets in the past two days. But all of them were relatively easy, though, and mostly involved giving people some information (in a couple cases, setting them straight with something they should have known).

Ah, but I'll look forward to Tuesday, when my boss is back and I won't have to do they stuff that people come to her for.

Not so much else going on at the moment. I'll try to have a bit cheerier post tomorrow. No promises.