I’m scheduling interviews for a project and I received the following (lightly edited) email at 10 AM today, illustrating the problems of “groupware.”
That works for Susan! If this works for others, please feel free to add it to Susan’s calendar (I’m leaving at 10:30am today). Just ignore any conflicts that show at that time.
First of all, I’m not an internal employee (read the email sig much?), so I can’t add it myself, she has to do it for me. And, uh, what does an assistant do if not manage the boss’s schedule?? In this case, direct other people to add it to the schedule, I guess… Everyone needs someone to supervise.
But further, note the last line: “Just ignore any conflicts that show at that time.” So, when the boss looks at her schedule she has to manually filter what she is doing when, instead of just having one item per time slot.
It’s no wonder there are so many problems in the world. People don’t do their jobs, or don’t know what their jobs are, and then somehow people think they can do more than one thing, or be in more than one place, all at the same time. By the time they head home to find out their government is torturing people to manufacture evidence of terrorism to perpetuate it’s own power, they’re too exhausted to think. Mission accomplished.
Update: I requested that she add it, since I couldn’t, and received the following reply:
Sorry, lost my mind. ;o)
Honesty duly noted.