The boss's office was stuffy. Of course, it was always that way, because of the very large, poorly planned South-facing windows that lined the entire back wall. The sun baked against the glass relentlessly, and the building's A/C and the boss's little "retro cool" osscilating fan fought a constantly losing battle over the room's temperature. We were having a chat, the boss and I, about various subjects, as we often do once we've finished dicussing business. As I sat there staring out the window at songbirds wheeling over the mutilated tree branches - or the pitiful stumps that remained of branches that had been inexpertly hacked at with chainsaws by men who would never be considered professional arborists so that our management would't have their view of nature blocked by...more nature - a shadow appeared in the doorway.
If this had been a movie, there would have been porteneous music to foreshadow the sense of dread I felt when our IR&A manager was summoned into the room by my boss. But it's just life, so there was only the whisper of feet on industrial carpet and the futile whoosh of air from the vents to provide the soundtrack to that moment. It seems they needed a favor, this manager and my boss. And since I am everybody's everything, I had no choice but to be pulled into yet another bout of poor planning and over-thinking. So I listened to their tale of needing portable memory devices for sharing data with a group of consultants. They threw out terms like "thumb drive", "flash drive", "data security", "encryption". My head swam with the cacophany of buzzwords. They showed me lists of portable drives from websites that would take days to have delivered. They didn't give me a deadline. It just needed to be done. And so, as the doer, I was assigned to do.
After the IR&A manager walked out, satisfied that he had successfully shifted this project to a more appropriate staffing level (because, I have come to understand, the prevailing mentality happens to be "GOD FORBID someone with a PhD be expected to figure out how to buy his own project supplies!"), my boss instructed me to contact our Webmaster regarding the actual security needs for the project. This baffled me, because we have an IT department for the technical stuff, so I asked the obvious question of "Not IT?". No. Not IT. The Webmaster. She was very firm on that point. So off I went, back to the security and safety of my chilly little office - which has no windows and a desk situated under what must be the hardest working air vent in three counties. I placed a call to the Webmaster, and left a message. I continued the rest of my mundane day and went home. Fade to black, story over, right? No. No it's not.
My call, as it happens, was apparently not much of a priority to our Webmaster, because it was not returned until the following day - just after I received a "status update" call from the IR&A manager. It is at this point that I should probably mention that do-nothings who micromanage and relentlessly "follow-up" on the doers make my short list of those unique individuals who would be better served by being tossed into a live volcano to appease obscure and tempermental gods. The manager seemed upset at my delay in solving his problem. He said it was a vital project, and he needed those items immediately. IMMEDIATELY. As in, today. Of course. Why is there never a damn volcano handy when you most need one, I have to wonder?
I hustled, did some quick reasearch into vendor options and shipping contraints, and discovered that our internal office supplier at our other site potentially had just the thing. So I alerted my boss, who, being the appeaser, said she was traveling to a meeting at that site later in the morning, anyway. So she would pick up the single item we had agreed on the previous day. It was to be a test subject, to make sure that the data could be protected the way the manager thought he wanted, and the file upload wasn't too cumbersome. No problem. I left a message for a sales rep to call me, confident that I could get this taken care of quickly.
And then the calls from the manager and the Webmaster started. First it was "Oh, we should get all of them now, so that if it works on one we can just finish the project. But if it doesn't work, we can try to return them for a refund"...says the person who has no idea of the hassle and work involved in trying to send back these drives and reverse the charge. And then what? Try to order another portable drive in time to meet their completely insane deadline? Then, a little bit later, when I try to confirm the actual merchandise order, the manager says to up it to an order of 20. So I frantically call my boss and leave a rambling and slightly frazzled message about having to go to some other building and pick up a large number of USB drives, and I might need to be told what account to charge, (pause to remind myself to breathe) and here's my extension if any of this isn't clear. I am starting to think that this is all a little insane.
Later in the day I receive the following message from the Webmaster: "Just a thought: Since the computer store is indicating they are able to password protect these -- just make sure that they do in fact password protect them." Which would be fine, if anyone had said any such damn thing. They're brand new. In the package. We would need to secure the data, once it is imported to the device. It is really as simple as setting a password. Then later I get: "Just saw the second option for secure (brand name redacted) USB Drives... I think this is the type we want to test. Security is provided by the USB Drive itself." My boss returns from the off-site meeting laden with portable memory hardware, and next thing I know I get an email stating that the Webmaster doesn't think these drives are what he wanted. The boss says that the Webmaster expected the things to come to him already encrypted. I am really starting to fully realize the lack of volcanoes in my life...
*It's all true. Pathetic...but true.
2 comments:
thats like when they encrypt the Prez's blackberry, it can't be done BEFORE he uses it, it has to send out the encrypted message 'in transit', or in use. if the Webmaster wants shit, why can't they order it themselves? afterall, they know what they want, can't they just place an order in a reasonable amount of time? this is a reason why Tampa laughs at us. stuff like this.
"It is at this point that I should probably mention that do-nothings who micromanage and relentlessly "follow-up" on the doers make my short list of those unique individuals who would be better served by being tossed into a live volcano to appease obscure and tempermental gods." I lol-ed. a lot. :)
The problem here, actually, is that neither the particular manager in question or our Webmaster (who, to his credit, knows his web stuff well enough and is a very likable person in general) don't know what the hell they're doing, in this case. They don't know the first bleeding thing about mobile data security - or, that's how it would seem after the *endless* conversations I had with both of them. First the Webmaster says he will *just* need it be protected by a password. THEN, when the flash drives are dropped off, he claims he in fact needs encryption. And then he expects it to COME with the security in place? You've got to be kidding...And I bought that particular brand specifically because they are not junk-laden U3s and can be encrypted, according to the manufacturer's website - which I thoughtfully sent as a pdf to all parties involved. And they still manged to be clueless and counter-productive as all hell.
I've decided to tell Santa to screw the pony-riding monkey astronaut and to bring me a volcano instead. I still want the candy, though...
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