Friday, September 19, 2008

WTH?

My new job has quickly disintegrated into full-blown chaos.

When I departed training on Monday, all new writers were tasked with completing two documents by 5 PM Wednesday. While that seems fast-paced, we all figured (Management and writers alike) that because we had completed our assessment assignments satisfactorily in about half a day, we should be able to hit that deadline. Well, we all assumed incorrectly. Upon waking up bright and early Tuesday and looking at the website to find my assignment materials, I found hundreds of pages that I had to perform gap analysis on before condensing the pertinent details into one short document. Since we were left without resources to whom we could pose questions, none of us were able to start writing. I took it upon myself to convey our common roadblock to Management (how I wound up being the team leader is beyond me), who was displeased by my communications. But I figured that it would have been unprofessional of me if I didn't inform them that I would be unable to deliver as per the stated schedule. We wound up having several telephone conferences, and I spent much of the week on the phone and IMing the various writers (B'H' for digital phone).

Last night I figured that of my employer is obviously that I simply produce. Forget accuracy or quality- the client obviously wants to just see words on a page in the (still-changing) agreed-upon format ASAP. While I was worried about submitting a document that contains errors to the client for review, because that will reflect poorly upon not only myself but my employers, evidently I was alone in my concern. So I figured the heck with it- I would just wake up bright and early and cobble something together for noon. And that's what I did. Not surprisingly, once I submitted my first document, Management suddenly became much more pleasant and accommodating. I have to work Sunday so that I can finish the second document, but at least I ended the week in their good graces (bli ayin hara).

This contract is certainly looking like it's going to be quite the adventure...

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