Last night and this morning, I helped two coworkers work through problems with an internal tool that I happen to have written the internal documentation and training for. It looked to me, from what I was able to see in the logs, like the problem was user error - both of them were, completely separately and independently, doing Operation X instead of Operation Y.
Which really made me think, "Gee, how crappy must my training and documentation have been, if it left them so confused? What the hell did I do wrong?"
Until I asked the second colleague, "Hey, why did you do X instead of Y?"
And she replied, "Oh, Y isn't visible in my user-interface."
It's looking like the tool administrator borked up a bunch of people's permissions. Fortunately, my documentation covers what to do in that case.
Noooo! What would we do without you? Someone has to keep patiently explaining to the HelpNever folks why their system is unusable, among other things.
I don't suppose there's much I can do to influence the decision on conversion to full-time, but if you think an effusive LinkedIn recommendation or the like would be helpful to your job search, I'm more than happy to write one.
Effusive recommendations are rarely the wrong step!
I am heartened by the general loathing for HelpNever that can be sensed amongst the people putting in the new system, but they're not even user experience people by proxy.
In the process of cleaning my cubicle, I found a large number of packets of microwave popcorn, which I helpfully left in the downstairs popcorn drawer of B. Just in case, you know, anyone wanted to pop a bag early-ish Thursday afternoon, say a little while before 3pm.
(Unrelated, guess who hasn't been able to be converted to full-time? Guess whose contract has a hard end date mid-February?)
I don't suppose there's much I can do to influence the decision on conversion to full-time, but if you think an effusive LinkedIn recommendation or the like would be helpful to your job search, I'm more than happy to write one.
Effusive recommendations are rarely the wrong step!
I am heartened by the general loathing for HelpNever that can be sensed amongst the people putting in the new system, but they're not even user experience people by proxy.