Introductions.

You might think it strange or even foolish to have an important service migration on the day before a holiday but apparently The Bank thinks differently. We had a queue of over 100 and wait times of 20 minutes for several hours. Anticipating the heavy call volume, Help Desk Management bought us donuts as compensation for discouraging us from taking breaks. At one point, the mystery guy who has annexed the Site Manager's office (The site manager had called him a Strategist.) came around with the donuts.

Geis: "Not to be rude, but, who are you?"

He introduced himself.

Geis: "You've been here for what, three weeks? A month? What exactly are you doing here?"

Strategist: "I was going to send out a note to people soon. I'm the Service Delivery Manager."

Geis: "And what does the Service Delivery Manager do?"

Strategist: "I'm the liasion between The Bank and The Help Desk. The Site Manager and Operations Manager report to me."

Geis: "So, we now have an additional layer of management?"

Strategist: "Yes, you could put it that way."

Geis: "Terrific."

On numerous occasions over the past year, I have explicitly stated to management that I feel that local management really has no authority or power to solve the problems at the Help Desk. So, what do they do with this knowledge? They institutionalize that powerlessness by installing an additional level of bureaucracy.

Truly, I am living in a Dilbert world.