Goddess of Billing. Queen of Math.
These are honorifics I’ve been christened with over the last few days. I kind of would like to know when they will be added to my name badge and if a raise comes with them.
Even though a few months ago, our boss and the uptight member of our intrepid integration team made us all sit down at a conference table and divvy up the interfaces by application/system/department, some of us, don’t exactly agree with the concept of “ownership”. Our uptight friend believes that “ownership” of an interface means that the person who “owns” it is responsible for it and no one else should touch it and he should touch no one else’s stuff. That doesn’t sound very integrated and quite frankly our world isn’t that compartmentalized.
Anyway, last May, the person who understood the big picture of our integrated world quit and walked out the door and left us to our own devises and most of the things that have been divvied up actually were his work, which since his absence, I have explored because people have asked me to change things and I have had to ferret out how things worked in order to make those changes. While Mr. Long Gone did leave some very detailed documentation on some things, he left some other things woefully undocumented at all. I have become an expert in these undocumented things because I love the challenge of it.
Now, one of those things that I peeled back and examined and even explained in detail in an email, is under the “ownership” of Mr. Uptight. Recently, the process that I had previously changed needed to be changed again. Since I was familiar with the process, I volunteered to do the work since I thought it would be easy for me to simply do it, but Mr. Uptight insisted that since he “owned” it, he would take responsibility and began an analysis of the process. Well, to me, that’s a complete waste of time (which is a waste of money) because I’ve already done all of the analysis and worked out what needs to be done and how to do it. I even went and talked to him about it, but he wouldn’t listen. Needless to say, that he did only part of the work and now, while he’s out on vacation, I have explained to our Integration Trainee how to do the whole thing right and he is doing the actual work today.
One of the other things that Mr. Long Gone did was set up the Billing interfaces in our newest interface engine when they upgraded the billing system. None of the other integration people were particularly familiar with the way the old billing interfaces worked except that they had instructions on what to do when something went wrong. Of course, there are no instructions for when something goes wrong for the new ones. Fortunately for me, one of my first projects when I arrived here to work was to write a billing interface for the old system so I understood the old system and when Mr. Long Gone was converting, I asked a lot of questions and kept up with what he was doing.
Before he left, I also had to write a brand new billing interface for a new application and test it. I became extremely familiar with how it all worked and what to do when it didn’t.
So, now, when something goes mucky, some of the others, aren’t quite as sure what they are doing and are perfectly happy to let me take over handling that even if they are the Duty Officer that week. Personally, I prefer it because then I know it’s done right.
Funny how 9 months ago, the person calling me Goddess of Billing was talking behind my back and saying that I wasn’t pulling my weight and didn’t know how to do my job.
Heh, she’s the one who refers to me as The Queen of Math too. If there’s some sort of mathematical calculation that has to be done in code, particularly in TCL code, she asks me to look at it, especially if something is going wrong with it. “You can solve it; you have that math minor.” I love math. In my TCL codes, I have some very complex mathematic equations going on and it makes her head hurt, I think, but I love the beauty of the logic. There’s an art to it.
And you know, flattery is everything. I am much more likely to help her and fix her problems and take over solving her issues if she comes knocking on my cubicle wall calling me Queen or Goddess of something.
I still want a sign erected or something.
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