crazyOf course, what kept me late was writing a cranky, scathing email which isn't going to do anything for my popularity with the bosses. I may critique myself out of a job before I'm quite ready, at the rate I'm going...
How to sum up? Well, there's a procedure at work that I handle in a non-standard fashion, because it works better that way. In fact, if we followed the "standard procedure" things would grind to a halt entirely - i.e. the procedure wouldn't take place at all. However, my boss's boss's boss (I'm sure I've massacred the pluralizations of that, sorry
rjl20 et al) has gotten on some kind of tear about everyone following the standard procedure. And so the shit has come rolling down the hill, and culminated today in an email from my psycho-ex-boss (who would be involved in the process under the 'standard procedure' - and is a major reason why the customer won't participate in the 'standard procedure') sounding the alert that Things Must Change.Well, that's just entirely too bad, because I ain't changing. Not even if BBBoss should descend from the heavens to instruct me. I aim to do it quietly - but I am not exchanging any more localized systems that work for standardized processes that don't.
I wasn't quite so baldly insubordinate in my email as I'm being here, certainly. I did not say "No, I will not follow the standard procedure." But I formally expressed my dismay, reiterated my reasons for the adoption of the new way being a Bad Thing, and generally dug my heels in. I've had enough of the renaming, the reorganizing, and the forced adoption of practices that are less efficient, more complicated, and just flat out stupid. It's making me crazy - and I'm not too far off from thinking there is some literal truth in that phrase, considering.
Booze Allen Hamilton (the consultants on the IRS redesign) must be laughing all the way to the bank. Mind you, I knew we were doomed when I looked at the preliminary study - right there in black and white it said that the organizational model IRS had decided to pursue was currently being discredited and abandoned in private industry as unworkable, but since it was the only model that fit the somewhat arbitrary criteria, they were going to go with it anyway. Were I not so faithful to the notion that it is useless to ascribe a conspiracy where human stupidity provides an adequate explanation, I'd think that some secret cabal had sat down to really fuck up the IRS with an eye to abolishing it and the current tax code, and starting over with a flat tax administered by some other agency. Or something like - and it doesn't help me dismiss my paranoia that W. still hasn't managed to name a new Commissioner. Bob Wenzel is acting, sure - but he was planning to retire five years ago, and Rossotti convinced him to stay on and help with the reorg. The man is going to die in the traces, as far as I can tell...
Anyway, by all time and the void that spawned us, it's just more evidence I need to be doing Something Else. If it turns out not to be Graduate School, then yak herding, maybe. Maybe I should try the crazy mendicant lifestyle, or join a cult, or... You begin to see what I mean about the crazy-making, I think.
