Behind the Design

Six guys in an office with no secretary. Each has a responsibility to look at the phone when it rings, answer it when someone else is on the phone. Which really means, _Mark_ answers the phone about 80% of the time. What it really means is ... Stop everything you are doing, answer the phone and either transfer it to the knucklehead who _should_ have answered the phone in the first place or deal with whatever customer has called that can't get in touch with the sales monkey who should have taken the call when the customer called his cell phone - then deal with whatever they need, which could mean writing a shipping request and sending it to our warehouse or ordering parts - or directing them to another person outside our office because our vendor can't understand to transfer customers to our new inside sales manager. Sometimes, it's a vendor or customer I have to deal with. Which typically isn't bad, because I'm the one who usually is the one who instigated t...

Why would anyone, who has had a specific job for well over five years, do anything that they are expected to do, when I sit here and have to basically hold their hand and do part of their job for them? Why? Because. That's why. And then, to top it off, East Coast Sales Monkey (ECSM) delivers it to his "project coordinator" and asks her to order it, with the ever present line "Mark will send the details." Mark will send the details. Am I a designer at this job anymore? Everyone wants me to do my actual job - and leaves it to me to tell everyone that this is not my job anymore because I do it to myself. I do. I do this to myself. Because no one else will do it. Including the person who _should_ be doing it. #WorkplaceRant