Now I thought this was a really worldly know phrase. turns out it isn’t… Which leads me to a funny story.
Firstly, for them that don’t know what the phrase means, here is a definition.
Right, on with the story.
Communications – a one word oxymoron in my experience. I have had dealings with many versions of teams that call themselves a “Communications” team, and basically they lack the general ability to, well, communicate. I am used to a scheduled approach to things. You know, you kind of have an idea when something is going to happen because you make arrangements, or you know of deadlines, or you make agreements etc… Well, the team I have to currently deal with have a different philosophy… and I don’t actually understand what it is. I have tried talking to them, but I was non-the-wiser afterwards. Ironically, they have won awards for “Communicating”, just not with anyone.
We just had a recent delivery where my guys worked their tits off to get some things into the system for them. We had agreed a timetable, and a specification of what was to change so all was well. We even got the delivery in place 2 hours ahead of schedule due to the work of my guys. Was there a thank you? was there bollocks, all they got was, ten minutes past three in the afternoon is a bit late or us, and it’s still not finished due to developer error.
(while there were a couple of low priority things (the colour of a background for example) that were left to meet the deadline, the “still not finished” bit referred to changes that were requested as the release was being made – yes, I know about all 4 of them… don’t think I don’t)
While under pressure, I did write an email, but I did tone it down big time. After sending it, it did not feel enough, so I thought of the moon on a stick analogy. Being an arty guy, I made a moon on a stick and on one side it had a full moon.
and on the other side it had a partial “moon”
I put a post it over the leprechauns arse and wrote a note as follows.
We weren’t quite sure on the specification for “Moon on a stick” so we “Covered” 2 of the most popular interpretations.
This was then left of the offenders desk, and I felt vindicated.
Now, like the Inland Revenue, it appears that if you want a job in communications (certainly round here anyway), you have to go though a process of “Sense-of-humour removal”, and you generally end up with a “Heightened I’m-an-arse insertion” as well to fill in the gap.
As I mentioned I was under the impression that “Moon on a stick” was a worldly know phrase, and the leprechaun was the only picture I could find in 10 minutes that filled my need.
Turns out that the guy did not know what “Moon on a stick” meant and had some Irish blood in him somewhere. So there was an email sent blathering on about professionalism or something, and I got a bolllocking.
On the one hand I actually really like the guy, but there is a real clash on how we work, and he really gets on my tits when he has a complete disregard for anyone but himself.
By the way, professionalism is defined quite nicely at Wikipedia but is summarised quite nicely at Wordnet
the expertness characteristic of a professional person
Having been a person for some 30-something years, I think that classifies as professional. I am certainly a professional menace.