God this is so boring

[familychoice]

Handed over a site I'd built to clients last week, council funded organisation.

It's a fairly straightforward Wordpress thing, and before sign-off gave the 'website managers' a training session. One of them, the creative director manager didn't even attempt to disguise her disinterest (no reflection on my excellent and informative training skills) who loudly stated several times "God this is so boring, it's like learning Powerpoint or something". She didn't make any notes, apart from a few doodles, continually checked her phone for texts, wandered off a few times and finally left about two thirds of the way through to go and discuss comedy ringtones with a colleague in the office.

Her boss (director manager general of website management captain and resources) bravely stayed for the whole thing, and actually made notes and asked a few questions, though I was a bit concerned when she revealed she wouldn't be doing any of the updating, that it would be Miss Powerpointboringthing, and that she was going on holiday for 4 weeks on Monday (today). She did shoot a concerned look at Miss Powerpointboringthing at one point though, but instead of the ticking off I was expecting asked her if she wanted a coffee (as Miss Powerpointboringthing had just come back from a biscuit hunt and was sitting there with half a packet of Hobnobs) saying "I hate to see you sitting there with biscuits and no coffee".

So the sites live today, and it's now their baby. The bosses boss, sent me some changes this morning which I politely declined, reminding them the site had been signed off and they were now managing the site themselves. "No problem, I'll pass it on to Miss Powerpointboringthing" she said, causing a little shudder in the back of my mind.

[orydian]

Oh dear. Sure they''ll learn the hard way.

ory.

[suedenem]

Training sessions do tend to be incredibly dull, to be fair.  

Mrs Powerpointboringthing probably thinks she's 'above' doing site updates.  I'd have probably asked her "have I visited at an inconvenient time?  Would you like to rearrange for when you can give this your full attention?"

Still, on the up-side, you might get future work when they cock it all up, or a nice refresher training session (you've done all the prep...) when she inevitably forgets what you showed her.

[Dom]

I would have thrown in phrases like "purple monkey dishwasher", and, "you had me at hello" randomly into my sentences just to see if anyone noticed don't mention the war.

[familychoice]

Mrs Powerpointboringthing probably thinks she's 'above' doing site updates.  I'd have probably asked her "have I visited at an inconvenient time?  Would you like to rearrange for when you can give this your full attention?"

Still, on the up-side, you might get future work when they cock it all up, or a nice refresher training session (you've done all the prep...) when she inevitably forgets what you showed her.

It'd be nice to think that'd happen, but despite providing online guides and links to resources, a full training session, emails with login details and other useful info, and printed documentation for the custom elements of their installation (News categories and whatnot) I'll still expect an email when she's back from her days off saying "where was that thing you showed us where we can change the webb sight?"

It's all definitely below her despite the fact she's been taken on almost solely (at around 30k) to 'manage the website', and I was told she has 'a lot of experience building websites and managing large projects'. I queried this when her boss went off to make her some coffee, asking her what systems she'd worked with and was told she'd used "123 Reg?", "have you heard of that?". Before she walked off, bored again, I eventually gleaned she'd used their site builder thing once but had given up halfway through because it was "really slow and boring?".

To be fair though this is pretty typical of any organisation or local government department that I've worked with.

I'll be conducting the next training session naked, to ensure no-one disappears for biscuits during the boring bits.

[Steve Lampkins]

Double your follow-up training/hand-holding/updating prices.

[Dom]

It's all definitely below her despite the fact she's been taken on almost solely (at around 30k) to 'manage the website', and I was told she has 'a lot of experience building websites and managing large projects'. I queried this when her boss went off to make her some coffee, asking her what systems she'd worked with and was told she'd used "123 Reg?", "have you heard of that?". Before she walked off, bored again, I eventually gleaned she'd used their site builder thing once but had given up halfway through because it was "really slow and boring?".

Stuff like this really narks me off. I work my bum off for peanuts, after having racked up £17k in student loans no less, all the while pillocks like her earn £30k because she's got the audacity to claim on her CV that using some shitty 123 Reg site-builder qualifies as "lots of experience with large projects".

If I were to exaggerate my CV by her proportions, I'd have had experience with every major IT system in the world, and would have been President of Earth for the last 600 years.

[familychoice]

It's all definitely below her despite the fact she's been taken on almost solely (at around 30k) to 'manage the website', and I was told she has 'a lot of experience building websites and managing large projects'. I queried this when her boss went off to make her some coffee, asking her what systems she'd worked with and was told she'd used "123 Reg?", "have you heard of that?". Before she walked off, bored again, I eventually gleaned she'd used their site builder thing once but had given up halfway through because it was "really slow and boring?".

Stuff like this really narks me off. I work my bum off for peanuts, after having racked up £17k in student loans no less, all the while pillocks like her earn £30k because she's got the audacity to claim on her CV that using some shitty 123 Reg site-builder qualifies as "lots of experience with large projects".

If I were to exaggerate my CV by her proportions, I'd have had experience with every major IT system in the world, and would have been President of Earth for the last 600 years.

That's the way things work around here, it's who you know, not what you know that counts. I wouldn't have even made it to interview for that job, despite the fact I invented the internet.

[neal]

It's all definitely below her despite the fact she's been taken on almost solely (at around 30k) to 'manage the website', and I was told she has 'a lot of experience building websites and managing large projects'. I queried this when her boss went off to make her some coffee, asking her what systems she'd worked with and was told she'd used "123 Reg?", "have you heard of that?". Before she walked off, bored again, I eventually gleaned she'd used their site builder thing once but had given up halfway through because it was "really slow and boring?".

Stuff like this really narks me off. I work my bum off for peanuts, after having racked up £17k in student loans no less, all the while pillocks like her earn £30k because she's got the audacity to claim on her CV that using some shitty 123 Reg site-builder qualifies as "lots of experience with large projects".

If I were to exaggerate my CV by her proportions, I'd have had experience with every major IT system in the world, and would have been President of Earth for the last 600 years.

It's people like that who remind me I'm worth the amount I get paid (even if my intern does seem to know a bit more than I do; however, he does spend ALL his time configuring servers & writing code, even when he's on holiday)

[Dom]

It only serves to remind me how screwed over I'm getting.

I'm having a job review in the next couple of months. If I actually told them what I thought I was worth, and what I felt was necessary in terms of office supplies (dual monitors, etc) for me to do my job efficiently, then I'd probably be burned as a witch.

[familychoice]

I remember my first mistake as a new web design team manager was noticing that one of the team, a longer serving, hardworking, skilled chap was being grossly underpaid compared to newer members of the team with the same skills. In fact he was paid about half as much. I lobbied for him to have a payrise - big mistake as I was immediately identified by the directors as a 'troublemaker', and as the guy who's payrise I'd secured delighted in telling everyone down the pub afterwards that my descent from management status to general dogsbody was 'the fastest he'd ever seen'.

[familychoice]

I must be psychic, first attempt at updating the site and Mrs Powerpointthingy is asking for the loin details she's already been given. "Is it https://wordpress.com/wp-login.php?"

Yeah.

[Dom]

Awesome.

Did your reply end with some witty comment/reminder about how it's no longer your responsibility?

[familychoice]

Awesome.

Did your reply end with some witty comment/reminder about how it's no longer your responsibility?

No, I gave her the benefit of the doubt as her boss has gone on holiday for a month without passing on the details. She'll already be suffering enough as there's no-one there to make her tea now.

[Dom]

Poor woman. She deserves at least another 10K a year for putting up with that.

[neal]

Awesome.

Did your reply end with some witty comment/reminder about how it's no longer your responsibility?

No, I gave her the benefit of the doubt as her boss has gone on holiday for a month without passing on the details. She'll already be suffering enough as there's no-one there to make her tea now.

You do realise she's going to cock it all up and you'll get blamed for supplying a system with bugs in it..?

[familychoice]

Awesome.

Did your reply end with some witty comment/reminder about how it's no longer your responsibility?

No, I gave her the benefit of the doubt as her boss has gone on holiday for a month without passing on the details. She'll already be suffering enough as there's no-one there to make her tea now.

You do realise she's going to cock it all up and you'll get blamed for supplying a system with bugs in it..?

Actually I wish I hadn't been so nice now. Just discovered an answephone message she left before her email where it appears that it was my fault she didn't know the login address as the machine I'd 'installed' it on (the machine we did the training on) was her bosses machine. The fact that I hadn't 'installed' anything, that I was unaware that it wasn't her machine I was working on, that it's not my job to ensure her boss passes on the login details before she goes on holiday, etc. seems to pale into insignificance when I realise the horror that's to come when she actually manages to log in and start editing the site.

Just as well I didn't use Joomla.

[neal]

Just as well I didn't use Joomla.

You should have used ExpressionEngine and given her the jQuery docs as the 'user manual'

[robwhizz]

Just as well I didn't use Joomla.

You should have used ExpressionEngine and given her the jQuery docs as the 'user manual'

Should have built a static site and used SSIs to pull in text, installed Filezilla and given her a HTML book to learn how to make the text 'look pretty'.

[Haze]

I must be psychic, first attempt at updating the site and Mrs Powerpointthingy is asking for the loin details she's already been given. "Is it https://wordpress.com/wp-login.php?"

Yeah.

Perhaps an out of office reply saying you're in Australia for 6 months.....

[neal]

tell her if she goes to about:blank it brings up secret configuration for the site, but only from 03:00 to 04:00 every Monday morning, and then chuckle to yourself as she stays up on Sunday night to access the 'special files' & hence gets no sleep before work the next day.

[Dom]

... and given her a HTML book to learn how to make the text 'look pretty'.

Not so much 'given' as 'thrown at her head' I'd hope. And not one of those Sams Teach Yourself books either; a proper full-sized hard-back beast.