Ah, the memories come flooding back. You could even say I miss them. No you couldn’t. I would be lying and lying’s not right. 10 stick out in my mind,
- The team meetings. I’m sure there are some people who found them useful. Often the manager as this is the only time he could find out what is going on. Too busy during the rest of the week. Everyone else knew what’s going on; otherwise they couldn’t do their job. Let me summarise the weekly team meeting I used to attend every week. For an hour. Summary. We had a problem last week. We solved it.” This is pretty much what everyone reported. EVERY WEEK!!
- “Protocol.” Or whatever you call it. True story: Manager emailed colleague to ask for some info. Colleague emailed me to ask for said info. I emailed relevant person who emailed information back to me. I emailed back to colleague who forwarded email to the manager. WE WERE ALL IN THE SAME ROOM! I did challenge the wisdom of this. I became known as a maverick who wanted to change things.
- Confidential waste. Maybe not that confidential. I’m sure this is an isolated case…but it was collected in a transparent bin bag! “Only bags available” was the reason stated.
- The Bomb scare. We were hastily evacuated after someone thought they saw a bomb in the corridor. Or something like that. It was decided we should all be sent home until the office was secure. Fortunately we were all allowed back in the building to collect our belonging s before going home…. Health and safety at its finest!
- Weekly reports. Everyone had to file a report on what they had done during the week. Did anyone read them? I copied and pasted the same report for months! Sadly this did not make them inaccurate.
- The phone call. “I will make a call and find out the answer” I was told at a meeting. Visions of a call floating across the far reaches of the organisation entered my mind. No, the phone call went to another room perhaps half a metre away. I know this as I could hear all the answers being given through the open door.
- A new beginning. A new website. The old one was to be decommissioned and deleted. New content would need to be written. A concept hard to grasp to at least two departments who had the clever of idea of referring users to the old website, complete with links.
- The away day. Staff waited with baited breath. Where were we going? Rumours were rife; it was going to be at a nice restaurant the other side of town, it was a team building day in an adventure park, a day at the beach. The moment of truth arrived: Our away day was….at the conference room of our own organisation. Hey it was across the road. True story.
- The website outrage. This needed responding to right away. What had happened? Had a nude pic of the manager been maliciously posted on the website? Had foul language been used in the about us page. Frantic emails were scribbled, phone calls made. Nothing could be found. What had happened? Finally the answer was found. The web site had had an outage. For five seconds. The power of a typo.
- The Olympics. London was hosting the Olympics. A strategy needed to be put in place to cope with the huge influx of people to the capital. The very top of the organisation met well in advance. Many meetings were held. What ingenious plan would they come up with? The best of the best. The top brass. Perhaps the web workers could work from home. Maybe the office hours could be altered. A plan had to be implemented. At last a plan had been carefully formulated. Staff were informed by an efficient email….”Business as usual”. Brilliance.
I left. I hereby promise that DP Web Development cuts the crap. I give a first class bespoke service creating the website YOU want. Why not contact me for a chat over a cup of coffee. Or tea if you prefer. Or a hot chocolate, I’m really fairly flexible.
