Excellence in Government

Apparently I am excellent.

I always had a sneaking suspicion, but the other day I received an invitation to an Excellence in Government reception an my suspicions were confirmed.

Thinking it was some type of mass email sent out, I called my friend and asked if she was gonna come.

"To what?"

She hadn't gotten the email. Must only be going to a select few. And she's a much more disciplined worker than I am. I've never been recognized for my excellence at a job. Needless to say, she has. I wonder if they'll serve scotch?

The whole experience is very stroking to the ego, especially since I was invited to some random luncheon of CFOs the other day. I don't know if they're looking for seat fillers, but they just sat and talked for 45 minutes about problems that I won't have for another 10 years. I'll definitely forget whatever it was they said, especially since I haven't worked in finance for years. But lunch was good and I got some compliments for dressing up.

I mentioned the story to my boss and he told me that after his many years in gov, he could go to a luncheon and reception everynight of the week and some weekends if he truly wanted too.
"But I want hot wings and Miller Lite."

touche`

The Straw Man

When I first started working at the government, I worked with a guy I'll call the Straw Man. He was great. Always friendly, willing to stop and get beers after work and shoot the shit. The only problem was that he doesn't know how to work. I'll give you an example.

One time we need him to call a friend of his at another office and find something out. Not a hard request right? A month went by and nothing happened. The team leader told me that I should ask him about it a every day until it happened and the second time I asked him, he told me I was good at being a bother. But he still didn't do it. So eventually the team leader and I went down and talked to them about it. Thanks Straw Man.

He got his name because at every meeting he refers to something as being "as strawman we all put together." Which is interesting cause a straw man is a rhetorical device used to set other people up for a fall. He's got some other great one liners he liked to put out there.

"I'd like to start teeing up..."

"I just threw it over the transom.."

My first presentation to the division director, he corrected a minor mistake I made about the difference between GPS and Lat/Long.

The most frustrating part about the story is that he was promoted out of our branch, even after all the BS he fed everyone.

Incompetence Squared

Today I saw my worst case of incompetence yet in the federal government.


But a little background first. I manage a gov database that contains locations of interest. That probably sounds a lot more ominous than it should, but I'm keeping the blog very generic, so please bear with me. There's another guy, who I'll call Roo, that wanted to create a way for people to go out to these sites and upload satellite data from Blackberrys with custom GPS units. Sounds good, but our job is to run IT projects, not develop tools. Anyway, many of us think Roo is a slacker, including the boss who began asking for products.

Roo responded by saying that he wanted to present to the branch, which would prepare him for a conference presentation. The boss agreed and some weeks ago the presentation came. This was the worst presentation I've ever seen in my life. Communicating with his audience wasn't his objective. But I persevered. Halfway through I noticed a bullet point about creating records in my database, which it couldn't since the records are only about things Congress mandated us to do. So I asked him if the point was true.

"Yes."

"No its not." I explained the situation to him. Which produced quite an enjoyably retarded scene.

Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to us running the database, Roo's project was all about uploading these records. For some bizarre reason, he never asked us about our end, basically wasting his effort.

On Nothing.

HEY! I'm saying your tax $$ were wasted by this jerk!

I was also shocked to learn that his idea would still need a laptop to download data from the unit and put it in the database.

So today we're in the branch meeting again and Roo asks me if I use type X of databases.

"No."

"Then my project doesn't work"

MY GOD!!!

He's spent almost a year on this and he never checked to see if it was even inside the realm of reality. I press him on it and there is no way for it to work, even if I would let him. The boss is so shocked that he ends the meeting and stalks off.

HOW INCOMPETENT

Yet I remember when my team leader complaining about GPS units. Something about expensive custom units for peoples PDAs. The boss was okaying this for Roo's project.

"What are we doing!?" the leader would ask rhetorically, pained grimace on his face. "Roo is buying hardware when we're software providers. This is Washington Post stuff." At the time I thought he was being a drama queen, but I was wrong. Apparently the boss gave Roo permission to go ahead, even against the strong protestations of the branch's highest ranking member. Once I remembered that, I figured out why Roo never discussed his project with us. He new my team leader would torpedo the project as an expensive way to do something we already could do. So during the requirements phase of the project, we weren't consulted.


Then the boss didn't manage Roo at all, even though Roo once fell asleep on the can and was found because people heard his snoring. So he had no clue as to what Roo was doing, which was apparently nothing productive. Now he's furious with Roo, which doesn't surprise me, but he's also partially responsible. So is it a mixture of incompetence and unconsciousness? I found this nice graphic to illustrate the point.

After the meeting Roo sent out some cryptic email to the entire branch about how he was offended by our conversation. I think he's trying to cover his ass, but do you know what happens when people mess up like that?