There are times it’s hard to be nice…
This afternoon my patience has severely been tested by a co-worker. The exchange was pretty simple: He wanted to make sure that he knew what was going to run in UAT this evening, as he wants to push the rollout of the application to more people. He specifically asked me if a series of cities were going to be included in the run.
"Yup" I responded.
Not 60 seconds later he asked the exact same question again!
I'm going to pause the story for a moment to reflect on this behavior in general. Skipping medical conditions, there's no good reason for this kind of behavior. I can't think of a one.
- If I'm wrong well… I won't check again in such a quick time - I just looked.
- If I'm lying I'm not about to be that stupid to confess so soon
- If I didn't read it right I'm not going to think this time is any different. After all, it's not that hard a question.
Yeah, I can't see a good reason to ask again. One thing does pop to mind:
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein
Back to our story...
I wrote back:
Remember when we had that talk about communicating effectively? When you asked me something, and I pointed out that I'd just used those exact words? Well… I can point you to the code, or you can trust me that: "Yes, those are in the Original Six and Top 40"
I realize it was a little snippy, but I wanted to try and re-enforce the point that we had talked about this behavior in the past, and that indeed, this was one of those times that I had told him exactly what he wanted to know, and it wasn't likely to change with the second request.
I think it's just hard to be nice all the time.