The UnSub

It has been a hectic week. There is definite satisfaction from resolving issues with capable and willing managers and engineers. It is one of the better projects that I had seen so far from the 3 different companies that crossed my path.

During the early days of National Service with the Ministry HQ, I had enjoyed good support from administrative staff. Afterall, my early “corporate” experience started off as a staff assistant to my unit chief and director at MHQ. I have a good understanding of the roles and tasks of a typical administrative staff.

However, my current experience with office administration is far from satisfactory. I can live with the fact that the same admin staff who broke my cabinet key had failed to make replacement upon repeated requests. I can live with the fact that we have a slow procurement process that is complicated.

What I find annoying and to many extent infuriating is the fact that she is quick to draft email to remind us of punctuality when who worked till late to resolve issues and step in office later than people who cannot find some of us. Some of these issues are not apparent but can only solved and analyzed at wee hours when everyone is suppose to be sleeping.

She is quick to chase reports because management is asking for it. She is busy with making food and generating tonnes of non-essential emails to ask when is everyone free for what not events. It is clear that there are more important issues at hand than socializing events.

The prettier ladies from my previous 2 non-CMMI5 offices are capable of processing more administrative tasks that I had given them in a week than what my current admin can do in a year.

Perhaps I am the type of person who does not consider superficial social events as something meaningful or significant in life. Perhaps I am not happy because she is not processing my transport claims and procurements not as quickly as I expected it to be. But why is she chasing people quickly to clear claims by repeating Finance’s email and yet not approve claims when it reached her end?

Officially, these are the tasks that are relevant to an administrator because transport claims are related to working late because we have to, not because we like to, procurements are not my personal expenditure but are essential to product development.

Administrators key performance index is not measured by how well one cook or how often we use our welfare funds. It is measured by doing what will assist our work first. Perhaps her transfer is a good beginning to a more efficient office.

According to this article, there are growing number of personnels hired just to snoop on fellow workers’ emails. Interesting job scope!

A new colleague needed to get his sound card up to run our secure Voip to discuss work matters. Someone volunteered to help him setup the on-board soundcard on his new PC.

After a while, I noticed they are still trying to get the soundcard to work. Apparently, everything seemed correct but there was simply no sound from the headset. So our helpful colleague tried various means to eliminate the possibilities.

Soon, six of us gathered at the cubicle, each asking some questions so as to figure out what could have gone wrong. A funny remarked went, “let’s see how many engineers it takes to solve this soundcard issue.” So I suggested, “why not just install another soundcard?”.

We grabbed a soundcard that was collecting dust nearby, plugged it in, rebooted and it worked! Windoze Plug & Pray magic! I wondered why go through so much trouble just to figure out that the on-board soundcard wasn’t working when we could have simply found another card?

Sometimes, engineers get very obsessed or engrossed with solving a problem without realizing that their obsession may not lead to a solution or meet the main objective. I believe the same applies to life too, not just engineering.

Time to move on…. I will miss some of the people.