….to borrow a phrase my teenager likes to use.

Fail #1: 

Pointing out to intelligent IT people that rounding is happening – but rounding to a whole number is not.  Difference for those non-number geeks – a whole number is just that …1, 2, 3 – no fractions or decimals.  If I round the number 99.9 to 100.0 – rounding worked.  But if you are looking for 99.9 to become 100 – you have to tell me how you want me to round that number or I’ll round it using the same number format as you gave me.  If I have to tell another ‘smart’ person that it IS rounded.

Ironically – I went through this yesterday with my 10 year old. And she got it immediately.  Not a hard concept, but in IT with systems needing to talk to each other and the like, this seemingly minor difference is a big deal.

Fail #2:

If in each daily status meeting, I tell you “the five documents for that country are forthcoming. You should have them by tomorrow” – when you get the five documents, you cannot exclaimed “There are FIVE documents!! You didn’t tell us there were FIVE!”

Uhm, well…I kinda did – daily – for weeks now.

“Your process is screwed up – fix it” was the answer we got when we tried to gently point it out.

I refrained from replying “you need to understand that hearing is not the same as listening. I can’t make you listen.”

Fail #3: 

Remember my post about the IT manager who has me on her shit list?

She continued to try to a transactional integration for a report.  What this means – in non-geek speak – is instead of running a report against a static set of data, they are trying to create the report using live, as it’s happening, data.  Doing it this way is a support nightmare, bad architecture, and basically causes reports to be treated like financial transaction instead of like they should be – just a report.

She got squashed hard by her boss and the CIO for creating a stupid solution.  She is still harping on the idea that throw away is bad – and her stuff is throw away.  Yes, continue arguing.  And when her career comes to a sudden end, I hope she sees it the true cause.

Fail #4:

Conversation with my bro last night:

Me: Hey when you stopped taking this one medication, did you have strange side effects as your body came off of it?

Him: What you have to understand, is you have to be diligent about your thoughts and consciously make changes to your thinking when you stop taking it.

Me: I’m not talking about that – I’m talking about ‘did your joints ache?’ sort of stuff.

Him: ….so when you get up in the morning, you need to tell yourself “today is a good day”….

Me: I get that – not what I’m asking….

Him: ….And then when you do that…

Me:  You know what….never mind…..

<head-wall>

I could go further, but that could go from fail-funny to fail-depressing.