Oh, and I would just like to add, that a thread titled "People who don't do their work irritate me" is seriously adding to my guilt level. Could you possibly change that to "People who don't do their work irritate me but only if they are not using that extra time to contribute to the LoT community".

That would make me feel better.

I tried but the "revised" thread title is too long. ;)

I try so hard not to be a control freak. But in work situations, I simply must take total control if things are to be done, done on time, and done properly.

"If you want something done right, do it yourself" has always been my motto. I hate being that way, but too often when I leave things in the hands of others, those hands are either idle or incompetent.


Of course, when you are depending on work totally outside your sphere of ability ... you are at other people's mercy. A potentially bad bad situation that I always seek to avoid.


I often wonder if I'm a "do it yourself" kinda guy because it's never done "right" by others, or if it never seems to be done "right" by others because I'm a "do it yourself" kinda guy.

I may never know which chicken came before which egg, but I wish I could rely on others more often than it seems I can.

I'm in agreement with iSm.

If someone else must do what I need, I've gotten in the habit of giving earlier deadlines than necessary. "I've got a lot more work to do on this project so I need this in the next hour. Thanks." It's so hard to set a hard line but it usually works well. If the deadline is early enough, they can be late and it's still great.

I can't wait to be freed from the forced grouping with incompetent imbeciles... it ends in 3.5 hours.

Then I get real-world imbeciles. :)

ETA: I do what CP does and it's helped out a lot, even in group situations that have been less-than-favorable. For example, for my B2B Marketing class, for our final project, we broke the research and writing into 4 groups, with me doing the editing and "cohesion" stuff. So... homeboy decides to engage in some heavy-duty plagiarizing, which I caught simply because I had the time to do additional research. Early deadlines, as I have learned, not only help get things done on time, it is also gives extra time in the event that someone f*cks up.

Meeting deadlines is a pet peave of mine. I had my previous unit well trained when it came to deadlines. I'm still working on the new one. I have two people who have yet to come to the realization that deadlines are not suggestions. They'll learn....

As my high school journalism teacher put it - (he'd draw a line on the blackboard) "this is a line, you cross it you're dead". Some people just never get it.

The best was a few years ago when I did the yearbook for Maddy's school. The other mom "helping" me actually told me that we did not need to get anything to the printers by the specified dates as we were paying them to print it they could wait :rolleyes:

My job is getting vendors to do things. Sometimes it feels like my head is going to explode.

Having worked completely by myself for 10 years, I find this aspect to be the most difficult of office life. If I had access to the update database or authority to change it and assign the changes to the development database, I would happily do so. Sadly, it is outside my ability to even access it.

So how did the story end? Did it get fixed for the presentation, did you soft shoe it, are you in the market for a new job, are the police now looking for you?