Ok, so I haven't experienced that Office Space moment of having several people tell me the exact same thing. That would require people at my workplace to actually communicate, something we don't do all that effectively.
What I find more aggravating than hearing the same thing from several people is redundant communication from one person. I've joked that this one person could be replaced by a parrot. He's very good at repeating what he hears over and over, but original thoughts from him are rare. As I see it, the parrot would be cheaper and less likely to cause problems.
I also think keeping a parrot's cage clean would use less paper than this particular coworker.
My favorite redundant communication from Parrot is meeting notices. Under normal circumstances, people send you a meeting notice in Outlook, you respond and then go to the meeting when it happens. While this works for most people, it is not good enough for Parrot. First, you will receive an e-mail with the meeting notice. Shortly thereafter you should expect a print out of that meting notice with your name highlighted on the attendees list.
If you are not at your desk when he stops by with the printout, he'll leave it at your desk, but he'll still need to verbally confirm that you did indeed get the e-mail, and the printout of the e-mail. So expect your phone to ring or for Parrot to keep stopping by until he "touches base" with you.
Once the meeting starts you had better be there on time. If you are a minute late, you'll probably go back to your desk to find a voicemail awaiting you. Parrot will start dialing phone numbers as soon as the meeting was supposed to start. He must track you down and remind you yet again that a meeting is taking place.
As you can probably tell by this post, pointless redundancy annoys me. So I had to investigate what could cause someone to do all this extra work. My best estimate is lack of reading comprehension. I foolishly believed that anyone with a high school diploma or GED, let alone a college degree, should at least have basic reading comprehension skills. Isn't reading comprehension critical for today's e-mail filled workplace? Well, I have learned that if you send Parrot an e-mail or worse, a report, you will be asked to go over it with him.
This is only true if your job position is below his. He wouldn't ask his managers or an equal to sit through reading everything, but as someone lower on the totem pole, my time isn't worth anything, so I may as well sit and go over this 20 page report that he hasn't even bothered to read. Maybe I'm making assumptions I shouldn't, but I could have sworn reports are written to be read. That the idea behind a report is to have the information accessible to anyone at anytime, and so the author doesn't have to be present to explain everything....because it's EXPLAINED IN THE REPORT!
Lessons learned:
- Reading comprehension may not be a skill all coworkers possess.
- Don't waste your time writing an e-mail or report to Parrot, he will need to hear it all verbally.
- Make sure everyone knows that you got that memo.
