Work is crazy right now. Which makes me laugh, because when is work ever not crazy? Work is ALWAYS crazy. The stream of incoming work is always equal to or bigger than the stream of finished, closed work each day. Even though I truly love my job, and what I do, sometimes it’s a lot. Sometimes you just want to take a breath and sit back for a minute. Sometimes you just want to be able to really concentrate on designing something excellent, instead of putting out fires and scrambling to get things done as quickly as possible because you’ve been given a ridiculously short deadline for a major project yet again.
Right now, and since we got the ticket system we use for requests, which is years ago now, we’ve had a minimum of 2 days deadline that people can’t change. They can’t choose today’s date or tomorrow’s date for any ticket request they submit. But guess what they do? They pick the next possible date they can. Which often turns out to be only 2 days or even less, because if they submit a ticket late in the day, they can pick the day after tomorrow, which gives us in actuality ONE DAY. And they do it for every single request, no matter how complicated or complex and no matter how many deliverables are being asked for. If the 2 days out is a holiday, they select it. If the 2 days out is a WEEKEND, they select it. People don’t pay attention, they don’t read, and they fully expect to get their requests back as fast as humanly possible, even if we’re NOT ACTUALLY WORKING the day they’ve set as a deadline.
Of course, not EVERYONE does it. There are a few people who think ahead, but overwhelmingly, we get short deadlines for major projects and requests, and it’s honestly starting to wear. (It’s been wearying for years, if I’m honest).
SO, we finally got permission from our management to change the calendar date selector in tickets so that people cannot choose today’s date OR THE NEXT 5 DAYS. How much crying and screaming and outrage do we expect when that change goes live? ALL OF IT. No one would expect an agency that they pay for to handle the turnaround times that we routinely manage. We DO things same day. Next day. Two days. We get shit done, but we’re tired of being stressed out about it, every damn day. And that quickness in our turnaround times will continue even after the change goes through. We will get things done same day. Next day. Two days.
I put the ticket into our IT department a little more than a week ago. Nothing has happened yet. IT has acknowledged receipt of the request but no one has started on the updates we’ve requested. Most likely because, just like us, they are crazy busy.
And every single day, someone on my team asks me when it will be done. I’m going to have to whack some heads if that keeps up, because it’s getting to be just as stressful as getting tickets with 2-day deadlines.
Mood: aggravated
Music: Bob Marley & The Wailers—Jamming