I could rant about the fact that it took me 40 minutes to drive less than seven miles on interstate 35 today, but nobody likes to listen to other people rant about traffic.
I could rant about the fact that I have to spend another four hours of my personal time at practicum tonight, but that’s getting old.
Or, I could rant about the fact that Microsoft Front Page, when installed on a Web server, apparently prohibits the viewing of files with ampersands in their names, meaning when the TWU Web server was rebuilt from scratch last week and all of Front Page’s extensions were enabled (for the first time for us), about 270 files across our Web site stopped working because they have the “&” symbol in their name. But geez — who the hell wants to (and can) geek out with me on THAT rant?
So, let’s rant about this: People who (repeatedly) ignore directions.
This could go the route of those on I-35 just now who, for miles, ignored the “left lane ends” signs, causing us all to back up for seven miles. But again, nobody likes those rants.
What I’m speaking of, specifically, are a small but critical number of people I support in my job who apparently have managed to miss the dozen or so e-mails I’ve sent out in the last week with details about the major server crash we had last Wednesday while I was in Houston.
Literally, every e-mail I’ve sent has said, in some form, “You cannot make changes to your Web site” … until late Monday, when they started saying, “You will not be able to make changes to your Web site until you e-mail me these three things.” The latter statement has been made to the Web folks en masse no less than four times in the last 48 hours. And yet, I’m STILL getting e-mails and calls from people saying, “Liz, I don’t think my password is working anymore,” or, “Liz, I can’t log onto my Web site!”
{sigh}
I really don’t know how anyone could miss the point in three consecutive e-mails with subjects (and high priority red exclamation points) like “URGENT: Web access not working” or “URGENT: Instructions for accessing your Web site.”
And yet, I’ve had at least a half-dozen people reply — REPLY!!!! — to one of those messages with the text, “Liz, why can’t I make changes to my Web page?”
{sigh}
I don’t want to believe the people I love so dearly here at work are really that blind. And I know they’re busy — I’m busy, too. But still. How else could you explain that kind of pervasive, um, lack of … everything?