The one about the screaming woman....

Looking back, this is pretty funny..... but at the time I was so, so mad. It's been many years since I've been yelled at (and I mean YELLED at!) in my job. Funny how some people react.

I have to preface this with what my job is..... for this particular story. Not only do I run a global team of peeps (one reporting directly to me, the others in a matrix style), but I am responsible for the detail of the programming when it comes to performance reporting. This is not something that I've trained for - I've picked it up over the years. I've said many times that learning this has given me several career opportunities and I'm always floored about how easy it can be to WOW people:) That's my secret....and I'm keeping it. I'm forever thankful to Trevor for refusing me reporting resources when we worked together when I first joined my current company. ..... because without that I wouldn't be where I am today.

Anyway.....back to the weirdo. In one of the projects we launched this quarter a new team lead in the UK was responsible for co-ordinating with everyone globally to ensure that all requirements were taken care of. Two things happened. First in order for this project to execute the team needs a list of clients for their teams to go and visit. Seems easy, right? Yeah well.....not so much. Second, it's important that all the regions agree. What I should also say here is that my boss had distributed "final" documents to some VERY senior people around the company. What I didn't know when this happened was that a war was brewing under the surface.....trust me to be the catalyst!!

Let's take the first one - the list of clients. Now the thing that's really important is that the list is accurate and relevant to the topic of the project. I spent time on the phone with the owner of the project asking for the criteria. I explained the information I needed and tried to walk her through the process of a) why she needed to do it and b) how to do it. I had a Webex running so she could see what I was doing (it's a tool where she can go to a website and watch what I'm doing on my PC) but it was clear from right at the beginning that she had already decided my role in this..... which wasn't quite what I had planned! Hahhahahaha. Anyway..... she wanted a number of clients by product and country. Easy enough.....except that I know when dealing with her colleagues that while they will want that information they will want other information also (like exactly WHO to go and see and WHERE they are located). What a freaking dumb ass. So, after about half hour of me trying to explain this I gave up. She complained that I asked too many questions - as I explained to her many times it's important she's specific so that she can give the team the CORRECT information. In the end I sent her what she asked for..... I still can't believe she was screaming at me down the phone....no joke.

What got me was this. I took time out to give her information and recommendations (especially as I already knew what my boss was after.....because a) I confirmed my thinking was correct and b) I know her too flipping well!!) but it was ignored. She took what I sent her, deleted half of it, and then sent out basic info that was totally no help to anyone. Overnight all the other people asked for the specific client information that I had originally recommended. Now, I have no problem providing it - I'm just too damn busy to do things more than once....and would have preferred to do this originally. What really peed me off was that when someone emailed her with a request she had the audacity to reply to an email and said "well, Phil is our data whiz, so i'm sure she can provide this information". WTF. Who am I? Her admin? C'mon people....get with the program. What I didn't realize at this moment was that every other person in the team was already peed off with her - and I had no idea. I thought it was just me - and that maybe it was the moon or something giving me no tolerance. Everyone was coming to me with questions because they trust me. So, I fixed the data and sent it out. Problem over.....or so I thought....

The second thing that happened was even worse.....well, it took longer to fix. I was looking at the detailed programming to make sure that I could report correctly at the end of the month. I took the "final" documents my boss had distributed and started reconciling with the previous information. I had given this task to the person who works for me - figuring it'd take her about 2 hours to get this information together. Well after a day I was getting VERY frustrated with her that she didn't have the answers. So, at the end of the day we both sat down with the information in order to figure it out - my view being at that time was "blinking heck, give to me I'll do it myself!!". What I quickly realized was that it wasn't us.....it was the project owner. Hmmmmphf. To confirm my thinking I quickly sent emails off to people in Asia and Europe to give them the two sets of info I had and asked them to confirm what I should be programming. Well......this gave me the confirmation I needed that this woman is a total nut job.

So to finish the story....the following day at our global team meeting I asked her to present the project. I confirmed with her that all the regions had signed off on her project and that they were all happy. She said "yes". Now....given the story above AND the fact that all the regional heads were on this conference call I was pretty surprised she confirmed they were all happy. Well, can you imagine what happened when I said "Thanks....I'm not sure that's correct - and then opened it up to the regions". Sit back and watching the fireworks..... was pretty funny to me. Luckily everyone else trusts me - the question is do I try and turn her around, or just wait for her to bury herself.

Maybe this woman just needs some mentoring, maybe she's nuts - who flipping knows. All I know is that this coming week all these people are in NYC at a global management meeting - and she has to face all these people that she's peed off. This should be fun! How dumb must she feel? Or maybe she's too stupid to even know.....

Luckily I'm a smartarse and I can fix everything.....it just means there was loads of stuff I couldn't get done and I have to work over my 3 day weekend! That said....that's why these guys trust me - they know I have their back!

Ok, ranting and raving over....