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I don't usually have a problem with Mondays, but I've just got back from a really bad day at the New Deal(1) training pipe(2) and feel like bitching about it, so I will. The day started out as usual, tired and groggy, and was followed by a 39 minute wait for a bus whose propaganda claims it runs every 7-8 minutes, causing me to arrive late. So right away I started out "annoyed". When I did arrive I was confronted with absolute chaos, and noisy chaos at that. So I buggered off to the canteen and had a drink of some of the most vile tapwater I think I've ever come across. No one would miss me, and I wasn't in any mood to deal with the current activity in the training wing. I should probably fill you in on recent events.
Roughly one week earlier I witnessed the computer three along from the one I've been doing my work on being removed, without warning, because "Someone upstairs moved offices and needed a computer". Now I haven't decided if what came next was deduction, prescience or simple paranoia, but I spent the next four days covertly performing a three-tier backup of every single byte of data I had stored in that building (roughly 70 Meg of data). Friday morning, about an hour after finishing the last backup disk for off-site storage (read: home computer) I got unceremoniously turfed off my computer (note: this happens quite often there, but that's best kept for a separate rant, and this was different) and, on querying, discovered that my machine, and it's 70 Meg of my data, along with four others adjacent to it, were being moved to another department and being replaced with what turned out to very old, possibly third-hand computers, that were quite unsuitable for running the system-intensive graphics packages I was using, and required, for my qualification. If I hadn't finished my backup, I'd have been livid, as it was I'd made the backup, but had yet to verify it's integrity, so I was just pissed.
Having been left high and dry, I decided to spend the rest of the day keeping track of what was going on. Which could easily have been quite amusing if I wasn't already so angry/upset. It goes something like this... Smaller secondary training dept (another New Deal pipe, but not as busy) contacts person in charge of Install & Maintenance informing him that they are expecting an unusually large number of new trainees the following Monday (remember it's Friday at this point) and need n more computers set up to run dongle protected unnecessarily extravagant multimedia assessment package. So he start moving said machines (including mine) from the main training wing, to theirs. Once that's done and part way through the "cleaning up the mess" stage, upper management bod walks in and tells him that things aren't right, and proceeds to inform him of the actual changed needed. Actual details of this aren't clear, but it involves swapping computers around three different departments, fuckloads of work with way too much heavy lifting. I&M guy gets upset has a rant at upper management guy because he was only given 5 minutes warning instead of the regulation 4 weeks, that the information he was given was wrong, and that this is a big job which requires his full attention for at least 2 working days in order to complete by the deadline and if he's bothered before it's finished... you get the idea. Upper management guy immediately apologises and retreats to minimum safe distance until I&M guy calms down. My machine disappears from tracking and things are mostly quiet that afternoon since all the I&M trainees(3) are busy tearing apart the other departments involved in the big switcharound. Oh, and the hardware audit that was started the day before appears to have been put on hold.
So, now we're back up to date, I'm sat in the canteen seriously contemplating going back home and sulking for the rest of the day. It probably would have been a good idea too. After about 10 minutes I head back to the training wing, wander through the chaos that appeared to be all the I&M trainees moving computers around with Mr In-charge-of-all-this desperately trying to keep all this activity co-ordinated. He appeared to be failing. I turn around, shaking my head in what in any other place would have been disbelief, and walk straight back out to reception and sit down next to a friend of mine who's just convinced $TRAININGCO to employ him as an office plebeian in the smaller secondary training dept that started all this mess, and share a mini-rant with him. It soon becomes apparent that he's not paying attention, and we're being interrupted.
I head off back into the chaotic training wing and spend a few hours hovering around the I&M trainees keeping track of everything they're screwing up, wondering why half the computers on the training wing no longer have access to a printer, generally hiding my irritation at all the extra crap I've been dealt in the past few days and avoiding anyone who might want to ask me a question. Now on mondays, the I&M trainees get to take lunch early so that they can run weekly maintenance on all the training wing machines while everyone else is out to lunch, and I use that time to take a look around the I&M room, something I haven't had a chance to do since I was last in there and one of them must have got upset and asked one of the trainers to tell me to fuck off and stay out of "their" rooms(4). Whilst I'm in there I notice a sign I'd knocked up a couple of weeks earlier about computers being uncooperative sulky bastards pinned up on the wall, except somethings not right with this one. The graphics aren't laid out evenly and are the wrong size. Instantly I know that they've opened the file in the wrong package and the import filter has screwed up the formatting. A mistake I'd never have made.
Now I'm no longer just upset, I'm down right angry. They've stolen my files and didn't even have the sense to open them correctly. If I'd wanted the work public, I'd have open-sourced it like any sensible person. I hadn't, yet. It also brings up the possibility that they've used my work for more than humourous content. I'm fast approaching livid, and if I hadn't got a complete (and now verified) backup, I would have been. I seek out I&M guy and ask for access to the machine I've been working on so that I can delete all my files. He's not sure where it is. Hardly surprising. Says he'll deal with it. I know he won't because he doesn't know where on the drive I've hidden the files so that they escape the weekly slice and dice maintenance, or which machine it is. More bitching and he agrees to let me have access once they've been networked together. Now this particular place doesn't have any machines networked yet, and setting up a network has been planned for months and not materialised, so this comment doesn't give me much hope. And from what I've been able to gather, they're going to implement a 10Base2 network. Not the most reliable or easy to troubleshoot network, combine this with their stunning lack of clue, competance and real-life experience, and I'm sure they're going to have a nightmarish time.
So, now I find myself firmly surrounded by crap and in a thoroughly bad mood. I spend most of the rest of the day skiving and finishing up jobs I've been doing for the other deparments, most to the irritation of I&M guy since his trainees need said work for their portfolios, even though my work has a level of excellence unsurpassed by anyone in the building, including I&M guy, whose just started an NVQ level 4, despite repeatedly demostrating a frightening lack of clue and luserish tendencies.
(1) UK Government project to reduce unemployment statistics by putting people into a not working, but not officially unemployed either classification. Thus allowing huge numbers of people to vanish from all their statistics so they come out smelling of roses in time for the next election
(2) You know the sort, you go in one end and after some indeterminate period of time emerge from the other end, and while your stuck in the middle there isn't much you can do about it, or all the shit that is invariably around to clog up the pipe
(3) Bloody no-nothing elitist lusers that couldn't even piss on a spark plug without detailed instructions, let alone fix an actual problem. They're probably off spelling words with numbers in some AOL chatroom right now
(4) I told you they were elitist. Oh and if any of you are reading this, if your going to insult me, at least do it yourself so I can LART you.