Go to the Source

One thing that chaps my hide worse than riding on a horse naked is when people that have a problem with someone don't go directly to the source of the problem. Instead, they get other people involved and create a sticky web of entangled threads that takes a double degree in physics and chemistry to break through.

Case in point: Work....always work!

I arrived this morning to another wonderful week full of special orders and stupid questions. Not long after the day started, my boss asked me about an order that my co-worker placed on Friday. The customer wanted it delivered on Saturday, but the order failed to show up. Instead of waiting till Monday to ask the person that placed the order, he called up some other individual that had no idea about the order to begin with and that phone call started a flurry of emails back and forth questioning our special order procedures and why it wasn't ordered as wanted by the customer. By the time this morning rolled around, everyone was buried under an avalanche of emails.

The simple solution was to call myself or my co-worker directly. No one could have done anything about it during the weekend anyway because the supplier was closed. When I was asked, my first thought was that the little town didn't get Saturday delivery. But then I called the supplier and found out they had shipped the order ground instead of next day Saturday delivery. Case closed. Yeah, the customer still didn't get the part today, but at least the blame now rests squarely on the shipper, not the person that placed the order. But to melt down the large snow drift piled high on the call center, more emails and phone calls and faxed proofs had to be made in order to "prove" that we were blameless.

What a way to start off a week! I hope I heal before tomorrow and I won't have a repeat of the "chapped hide syndrome".