I’m tired of hearing the word can’t. I work for a training organization that is funded by a grant. We’re frequently caught saying we can’t do this, that or the other to the grant funder. How does that work exactly? The last I heard when someone is paying your salary you should figure out how to make requests real. Or at least talk to the “boss” and conduct a needs analysis and then figure out how to do whatever that analysis shows needs to be done.
This can’t culture is also true for when we’re talking about our customers. We don’t sell anything but we have customers–those people who take our classes. Most of our classes are for a specific target audience, but we have a couple of classes that are available for outsiders. Those courses are out there because the grant funder asked for them. Consider these courses as those that serve the greater good. When there’s some confusion about which of these classes to take, I think it is our duty to explain which course is best. The easiest way to do that is to put an explanation on the website. Sounds simple? Pshaw.
When the mood of the organization is bleak and when morale rattles around in the bottom of the barrel, don’t you think there’d be some sort of attempt to make things better for those of us still here? If you said yes, you’re wrong. Someone wants to move into a bigger office that stands empty and she’s told she can’t. She then asks to have her furniture moved to make it more conducive to work and she’s told no. So, she takes time off to have the crick in her neck taken care of. And, then she takes another day off because the crick came back.
Then there’s the woman who lives in another city. She’d very much like to work at home two days a week. She’d like to take the advice of the state’s governor and telecommute. She’s told a committee will look into it. The committee that doesn’t exist and will never exist. So she makes an agreement with her supervisor that every once in awhile she’ll work from home.
There’s the other person who finds gross errors in a document that all trainees have to use. She rewrites the document but is told to chill out. The error-filled document gets used. The organization looks like an idiot every time someone uses the document to complete a class evaluation. In case you were wondering, the round buttons you use to choose options in a software package or on the web are called radio buttons, not radial buttons. But if you take one of our classes, you’ll go away with the wrong idea. Because we’re too damn lazy to do it right the first time.