Sometimes It is Good to Yell and Scream

I’m not happy with in my current work environment. The company – my client – just has a very different style than I am used too.

I come from a very corporate environment. I’m used to project plans, product life cycles, deadlines that not only are set, but are met by all involved on the team. Most of the teams I have worked with actually strive to beat deadlines.

The current cubicle I call home has a very different work environment. They don’t use any form of project management. There are no project plans, no product life cycles, and deadlines – arrrgh! DEADLINES!!!

Deadlines might as well be written in crayon at this company, no one really cares. When someone misses a deadline – which is pretty much everyone on the team – they just act like nothing is wrong and expect everyone depending on that deadline to just accept their excuse.

When deadlines are missed, it has a chain reaction down the line, as everyone else’s time is now lengthened on working on the project. Still for some odd reason, that doesn’t bother anyone at my current client.

Without any formal project management structure in place, people literally just dump things on each other and expect them done immediately.

Managers constantly stop at my desk, while I’m busy working away, and ask me to do something which needs to be done now. But what about the last thing you just dumped on me that needs to be done now?

I often crawl into work around 9am and I often don’t leave until 6pm or later. Once I even stayed at the office until almost 10pm – all because of a failure to plan.

SO, you can imagine my joy, my amazement and my glee, when I was actually able to leave early on a Friday afternoon.

The week before, I went on a tyrant of a rage, yelling at people that were dumping things on my desk. One of the deliverables I have on a weekly basis depends on everyone else on the team getting things to me by the hard and fast deadline we’ve set Thursdays at noon.

My manager set that deadline – yet she regularly manages to send us things for this deliverable late Friday afternoon.

Being a manager – and the one that actually set the deadline – she leads by example. If she doesn’t have to meet the deadline, others don’t think they have to either, so they don’t.

One Friday before a long weekend, I was one of only four people still in the office after 5:30pm, because everyone just kept handing stuff off to me well past deadline. Everyone left around 3pm or earlier, leaving me to take care of their missed deadlines.

I don’t mind staying until the end of a business day on a Friday – even if it is the Friday of a long weekend. But having to stay late – hell being one of just a handful of people still in the office – is unacceptable.

So, last week, I yelled and screamed at anyone that dared tell me how important their late additions were to my deliverable. I told them point blank that by neglecting the deadline, it makes me have to stay late. And as it is a constantly reoccurring issue I’ve had since I began this contract some time ago, it is having an impact on whether or not I remain at this company.

This past week, low and behold, the deadline comes and goes, and still more stuff comes in. But, instead of it coming in Friday afternoon, it comes in Friday morning. It is still late, but at least it isn’t coming in at the last minute late.

I was still upset that deadlines don’t mean anything at this company. But, at least the materials were coming in early enough to include them without too much of a time lag on me.

I thanked everyone for trying to pull it together sooner. They smiled and probably thought that I wasn’t planning on leaving this unorganized office place.

I’ll still leave – but not just yet.

They bought themselves some precious little time, but that is all. I know as well as they do, they can’t pull it together. They have no experience or effort in this regard. They don’t care about deadlines, they don’t know how to project manage, and they don’t set goals and objectives for their projects to strive for and complete.

Those who fail to plan, fail.

This company has failed me. I will leave the second someone drops another project on my desk which causes me to work well past the witching hour, while everyone else is gone, enjoying their lives.

My time is valuable to me. It may not be valuable to them. But at least I know how to manage my time.

So, sometimes it pays to yell and scream. By yelling and screaming, I at least got them to think about what would happen if I just wasn’t there.

And I guess they didn’t like that idea too much, because then, one or more of them would have to do my job.