Unproductive Stress

My mom stayed with me for a week because my brother went outstation. Other than that, I have been busy at work, preparing materials for my training next week. I have to keep my sanity in between the stress of making sure the system works fine and annoying, exasperating, irritating JD. Both stresses are unproductive and I wonder how I can avoid them.

The production system is working fine most of the time. I'm using the testing environment for my system training and every time before training, something did not work. Sigh! There's no dedicated IT support team to help. I just have to call several people from different unit to fix the problem. So I'll call A, explain the problem and she said it's not her area so please call B. I call B, explain the problem and B will then ask me to call C first to check on XYZ. I call C and ask him to check on XYZ, he's not at his place. D takes the call and promise to give the message to C. Sometimes C will call me back, sometimes D forgot to relay the message to C or C just put my problem on hold because he has production issues to solve.

When I finally get reply from C, I'll call B who will then say it is actually A's problem. When I call A to give the message, she will huff and puff and said she'll check and get back to me. This will continue on and on until the day before my training or until the day I conducted the training. The senior trainers who have done system training before understand perfectly what I'm going through the days before my system training. They'll help wherever they can including getting JD off my back. I'm very grateful for that.

JD is the most annoying, exasperating and irritating person I have ever work with. I know those words have similar meaning but I really want to use all of them. That's how annoying, exasperating and irritating she is. She joins the company one month after I did with 14 years industry experience. I'm a newbie in the industry. But, JD has been acting like she's fresh out of school even after 8 months in the company. What happen to her 14 years industry experience? How has she survive all these years behaving like this? And how on earth she's selected to join the company? Someone make a judgment error during the selection and that someone has left our unit. Not due to JD though. And now we're stuck with JD.

She said she also did system training in her previous organization but she didn't have a single clue about PC. She even asked me what to do when she got "It is now safe to turn off your computer" message. I was initially cordial towards her but when she keeps asking about her PC problem which is not a problem really, I began to get irritated. Hey! I got my work to do. I'm not here to serve you. My other colleagues are not IT savvy too and I did help them every now and then. But JD, I don't know what else to say. We have IT support team for end user PC problems but my unit thought they don't have to wait for them if I can solve their problem. I did, many times, but I don't want to if I'm rushing for my deadline. If you're PC illiterate at this time and age, you have to do something about it if your work involves PC. Didn't we have to upgrade our knowledge if we want to have that edge in our career?

I just don't think it is fair. I'm sure she's paid more than me based on her resumes alone. I broke my back learning about the new industry, learn everything I needed to know to do my job and yet she manages without doing much. She thought she can escape by saying she didn't know. She also thought she can escape by saying she only know the old policy at her previous organization. She can't be a trainer there, an educator, and didn't educate herself with the latest changes in policy and practices. Isn't it unfair? Unfair to me, unfair to our other colleagues, and unfair to the people who are more capable and should be selected for the position instead of her.

She has no social intelligence at all. If I said I'm busy, she'll keep on asking me questions with a big smile on her face. Some senior trainers have briefed her about the proper ways to do this and that, she'll continue being her 'blur' self and has to be told about things again and again. As for her dressing sense, she needs to get on the What Not To Wear program if there is one here. A colleague noticed she's been wearing the same black with brown thin stripe pants for a few days. Just to be sure, I started observing her pants from Monday and true enough, she wears the same pants right up to Saturday. A colleague remarked even a male cat can give birth at her place. That's how messy she is.

Anyway, whatever it is, I will not be bothered if she do her job and let me do mine. But I kept being disturbed by her silly questions and requests. If she is a fresh grad and didn't come with 14 years industry experience, I don't think I would mind entertaining no matter how silly the questions and requests are. But you better learn fast. That is a required skill in a job, more important than your paper qualification.

Now, how do I make these unproductive stresses go away. As to the system, I'm considering operating it just like another production system. I wonder whether we have enough system resources to do that. As for JD, can I pretend she didn't exist? Whenever she asks silly questions, can I just pretend I didn't hear her and continue with my work? If she didn't listen to me when I said I'm busy and keep asking me to help her with things, maybe I too can choose not to listen to her. I'd probably give that a try next week and see how it goes.

So this weekend I'll stay at home to brush up on my trainer's material. I better come up with something just in case the system decided to play up on me again during the training.