And I was in *such* a good mood

Fuck, what a day. Scary thing is, it isn't over.

Disclaimer: Unlike other blog entries from other folks, this is not a rant about the failings of my employer.

Dtrini always cautions me about writing about work stuff, but I'll be as generic as I can so I can rant with relative impunity.

One of my biggest work failings is that I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve about stuff, so I'm trying to hide out in my cube so people can't get worried about how pissed I am.

We've got a big project going on here, and unlike a lot of places, this internal project makes serious sense to execute. It's really about Best Practices for how we manage a lot of our operations and it will really pay off once we get some of our existing processes matured. We've got some of the pains of any other kind of startup so we have to bite the bullet now, or pay through the nose later.

I'm handling the development of the overall education strategy as well as being the communications guy. I was pretty jazzed about both aspects of the project because I get to sink my teeth into some new stuff. I'm not quite out of my depth but it's definitely bigger than a lot of stuff I've done in the past, so I'm treating this as a "rise to the challenge" opportunity. Corporately, we engaged a consulting firm to provide resources for us to support the staff SME (Subject Matter Experts) in their specific deliverables. I was equally jazzed about finally having some good, solid backing to implement some of my own education plans here (especially since I'll be assessed on them at my review.)

Long story short, the consulting firm's expert assigned to my deliverables is woefully underequipped to assist. He doesn't have the subject matter expertise in education, although he's certainly a process expert. But he hands me a document (granted, in draft format) that looked like it was written by a high school student (Gr. 10, max.) That's when I raised the red flag to the project sponsors.

After a couple of email exchanges with my boss's boss (since my really kick-ass boss is out with pneumonia, poor bastard) we decided to give the consultants a deadline to either produce or get passed over. Now as a former consultant, I know I'd respond immediately to an ultimatum like that. These guys? Not so much. The silence from them has been deafening. No response, no acknowledgement, nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Rien. Bupkes. SFA.

So, here I am suffering a near-terminal case of writers' block while I struggle with the finer points of this strategy document and these idiots are sitting there fat, dumb and happy. I know, I'm impatient. I just want someone to fucking EXECUTE already! I mean, how hard is it to say, "hey, ya know, we just can't fulfil this requirement" instead of yanking me along for the ride?

What really, genuinely bites is that I know I won't be able to just let this go for the night and my darling Wife has told me that she's made a nice dinner. I'm gonna try not to let my mood spoil it.

~fume~

I know....just breathe deeply.