*le sigh*

Well, I was so swamped with work yesterday that I was unable to post, so I'm going to make up for it today with a nice, long rambling rant about things that have been on my mind....

First of all, have you ever wondered what it would be like if folks actually took your advice without you having to explain it?

I have.

Many, many times.

I went to school for six years after high school in order to get a nice big degree stating that I was "quite proficient" in my field of study.

I'd like to think that this piece of paper and my experience are what got me this job in the first place.

I'd also like to think that my years of being here on the job, and the efficiency of my work also speak well of my skills and schooling.

So why is it that when The Powers That Be decide to do something new, I don't get consulted until after something goes wrong, and then I'm supposed to fix it?

If they'd asked for my opinion when making the changes, then they could have seen the potential problems, and possibly avoided the extra work they're now making me do in order to rectify the problem!

Case in point:

We run IP phones all through my warehouse. This warehouse isn't some normal sized shack, it's a MONSTER warehouse. We have over 850,000 square feet here. I could play football in here with six teams, and still not get hit!

Anyway, with IP phones, you can't have the data cabling extend more than 300 feet without using a type of data repeater. This is basic tech-speak here. The reason for this is because after 300 feet, you lose data cohesion, and the signal weakens significantly. You add the repeater, and you can go another 300 feet.

Now, the "upgrade" they decided about was to utilize an area of the building that didn't seem to get much use. So they moved a large portion of my shipping department over there, including an office, a couple of printers, and three phones into that area.

Everything went fine, until they found out that there was no power over there, and no place to plug in the phones, computers, or printers.

Enter in the call to "Mr. Fix-It" (aka ME).

The nearest place I could tap into to run cabling was over 3,000 feet away. I contacted a low-voltage cabling installer, and got some bids. The cheapest run was going to cost the company somewhere in the range of 10,000 bucks.

This made my GM's eyes bug out interestingly, and I got a nice butt-chewing.

Like this problem was my fault. If they'd bothered to talk with me, I could have shown them where to put the desk so that we could have installed it all with _NO_ cabling issues, and still had some power to spare!

Was I asked? Did they bother to even look? Was there any point in trying to show them?

NO.

But now, six weeks after the fact, and 10,000 dollars later, they've seen what I was talking about, and I got the awesome question from my GM just yesterday..

"Why didn't we move the desk over there?"

God, how I love the observant people....