Monday, May 21, 2012

Angels and Saints

There is an expression in Italian that basically says there are some people who drive even the angels and saints insane. The idea of it is that angels and saints are hard to annoy. However there are those certain few who know how to push even the most patient people’s buttons.

The last few weeks of work have been very demanding both time-wise and energy-wise. With our team broken up into distinct areas, everyone has a lot of work on their plate. In addition to running the completion of a project, I have to do extra work because the other half of our team left their work to move onto another area.

Normally this wouldn’t be an issue as I’ve always worked what seems like 4 jobs at once. What has been annoying for me the last few weeks is the number of iterations I have had to do for a requirement that the business wants to implement as soon as possible. I have written the description into a number of documents based on the team’s processes. I have even gone over the documents with a number of stakeholders. After going over this business need a number of times and having all these people on calls, I began to get frustrated when people were still asking me questions about it, especially when the questions could have been answered by simply reading any of the numerous documents again!

One person in particular has claimed that she ‘can’t get her head around this requirement’ and I want to wrap the requirement around her head with a sledgehammer. Her comments have made everyone insane because it’s a very obvious thing. Despite the number of times we have gone over this request and ensured that everyone has understood, she has claimed she has. Yet, she keeps raising questions about the same thing over and over. At one point my boss asked me to join a call with the ‘wrapped around her head’ girl and I nearly lost it. I told my boss that she is the type of person that could make angels and saints go insane.

Normally I have a lot of patience with people but I have completely lost it with this person. If her mission was to drive everyone crazy, then she has been highly successful.

1 comment:

M said...

I love that expression!