Sunday, October 3, 2010

Dizzy

I've worked for the same company since early 2004, although technically I was a temp for the first 13 months so on paper I've only worked there 5 years. In that time the company has changed names twice and I have changed job titles 6 times. When I was hired into a permanent position I interviewed replacement temps with my supervisor. I didn't like the girl she selected. Not at all. She was a bubble-headed redneck who giggled in the interview. A lot. But the guy I wanted to hire turned us down so we took a chance on "Dizzy".

Fast-forward 5 1/2 years and Dizzy still works as a temp in that department. I worked beside her for 18 months before changing departments. She wasn't terrible but she had limited software skills and no inclination to improve them. It frustrated me because I am the type who likes to learn shortcuts and find ways to improve processes. Dizzy did things the hard way. She was slow to pick up new systems and was often scrambling to fix her mistakes.

I lost whatever respect I had for Dizzy when I had to start dealing with her as an end-user. The girl asked the same questions over and over. She couldn't retain anything we told her. The final nail in the coffin was when she accidentally tagged a record to be deleted and, not knowing how to correct her error, she told an outside vendor they had to recreate the file and asked my department to delete our version of it. I explained to her why this was a bad idea and told her how to re-import the file from our system. A week later Dizzy emailed asking us to delete a "duplication" that occurred when the vendor recreated their file. I was spitting mad. I still am, a little bit.
 
My old supervisor loves her. I can't explain why. She wasn't allowed to back fill when I left the position. I think she feels guilty about not hiring Dizzy permanently because every time there's a job opening in my department I hear from her. The funny thing (to me) is that I never hear about how qualified Dizzy is, just that she deserves to be hired because she works so hard. Yeah. If she were a little smarter she wouldn't have to work so hard.

Fortunately, in my last department the supervisor knew the kind of dingbat we were dealing with and swore she would never hire Dizzy. But now there's an opening in my new department. I saw Dizzy's resume in the pile of candidates to be interviewed next week and I nearly choked. This group has never worked with her but some of them know her from taking smoke breaks together. They may even like her. I told our Lead a little about her and why I didn't think she would be a good fit. I don't know if that was an ethical thing to do or not. I really don't want to work with her again. I might go crazy.

4 comments:

The Joe said...

the mob owes me a favor... just sayin

Erin J said...

I would have totally told my boss that personally! You have to work with her for Pete's sake!!! P.S. When can you go out to lunch or something!!!

One of a dozen said...

Erin! We definitely need to go to lunch. Facebook just isn't the same - and for that matter, pictures of Lunden are nowhere near as fun as seeing her in person :) Let's do Culvers one of these Saturdays. Can't go wrong with Culvers!

Joe, do you hold someone's marker? If not, collecting that favor might be tough.

The Joe said...

somewhere with my odds and ends I have a ring.