Sometimes you just have to step back and wonder if some people think before they act….

Take for example the flurry of activity this e-mail sent out by the number 2 guy where I work (please note, names and titles have been changed to protect… well everybody):

From: Mr. Number 2

Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2006 11:38 AM

To: Everybody Who Works Here That Isn’t a Contractor

Subject: Recall Log - All permanent staff must immediately verify/update your information with Admin

Importance: High

Greetings all permanent staff - after repeated demonstration that the recall log isn’t accurate (people are either not in it at all, or their info is incorrect), I have to mandate that you immediately contact/visit Admin (Mrs. Smith, or Mr. Roberts) to verify/correct your recall info.

Shift Change for permanent staff is not granted today until I hear back from Division Chiefs that everyone in their respective divisions has verified/updated their info.

I’ll admit that we may have systematic problems - i.e., there just might be more than one person who thinks they hold the golden recall log, and maybe more than one official log exists…please contact Mr. Elliot/Mrs. Smith if you believe you own the log.

Division Chiefs, I am standing by for reports, by 3:30…will allow shift change after I rcv all reports.

All staff - should your info be discovered incorrect/out of date in the future, initial action will include an administrative reprimand. Hopefully this heavy handed approach will correct a problem that’s been here for at least my two plus years as Mr. Number 2, probably longer.

It seems innocuous enough, except that there were a few problems with this plan.

Problem 1: We have approximately 350 permanent staff members. So Mr. Number 2 was forcing two people to verify the recall information for 350 people in just 4 hours, 3 if you take into account that he sent it out just as people were leaving for lunch.

Problem 2: If Mr. Number 2 had checked with somebody in Admin before sending his e-mail he would have discovered that Mr. Roberts is on vacation. This leaves just 1 person to verify the recall information for 350 people in 4 hours.

Problem 3: If Mr. Number 2 had checked the Admin staff calendar before sending his e-mail he would have discovered that not only was Mr. Roberts on vacation, but that Mrs. Smith was scheduled to be down with me conducting training all afternoon today, leaving NOBODY to verify the recall information for 350 people in 4 hours.

Mrs. Smith decided that there was no way that she was going to miss the training (which is a good thing since I really couldn’t do it myself), so she decided to auto-forward all of her e-mail to somebody else. Then she set her voice mail to state that she would be unavailable , DO NOT LEAVE ME A MESSAGE!

So we were running bets on whether or not this was going to happen. Even better, we were wondering just who would be the moron who wouldn’t make the call to Admin to verify their data.

Somehow the folks in Admin manage to pull this thing off with just 5 minutes to spare.