Sean Bossinger’s Doings

Wow… I haven't listened to the sound system on this laptop recently.  Especially not on battery power.  This song is quite apropos of me right now.  Let's take a ride on Iron John's shoulders, he has more gold than anybody in this world…  Of course, if your wide definition of gold is “knowledge” and how to run reports is part of that knowledge, then yes, I'm Iron John right now.  My boss is riding on my shoulders.

I got an e-mail earlier today - 11:30, I believe, this morning.  The e-mail was a garbled e-mail from my boss, who was having problems with her computer at the time, telling me she needed a report by 8:45 Monday morning (the first day of classes, when I'm supposed to be on the phone helping my staff take the calls that are coming in).  So, anyhow, I get the request more clarified, and she wants a report of calls that have come in since 8/1, and a breakdown of what each of those calls were.  Yes, each of the 16,000 or so calls that have come in since 8/1…

So, my wife, , rearranges her schedule, so that she can get to the barn to clean the stalls, and then get home at a time so that I can go in.  She gets home around 3:15 PM and we clean the house as we're having her mom over for dinner.  So, I catch a shower, and then climb in the car and drive to work - 30 miles - to bang my head against the wall for about a 1/2 hour before the next e-mail from the boss comes in, saying she misread the original request from her boss.  That she only needs the standard report that we deliver by 9:00 every Monday morning.

So I gave up about 3 hours with my family to create a report that no one needs, and no one will read.

I'm finding myself increasingly frustrated with my boss for blindly passing report requests through to me.  It's time to start managing the boss better…  For the past several weeks, all she has done with regard to reports being requested is pass those requests through to me.  I have been singularly unsuccessful at training her that she should ask what is going to be done with the data.  Most often, people who are requesting data will have no clue what they are truly looking for, and this is one of those cases.

Yes, my friends, I know it's my responsibility to say “no”…  I am learning.  I will learn.