Trust issues (was Re: OT: [Sigia-l] Usability Prank)

[Andrew]

Hi Russ,

I think that you are right - in a team situation, trust is really 
important. I worked for about 18 years in places where talking to 
outsiders was strongly discouraged - and any "breach of trust" 
incidences (such as an over-cruel prank, or a wallet going missing) made 
life hard for everyone, as what happened in the office, stayed in the 
office.

In Alexandre's defence, it is tempting to do this sort of thing, albeit 
that there was probably a more sensitive way to resolve the situation.

A total aside: my mother was going for a promotion several years ago and 
asked her boss for a reference. Knowing that my mother was a snoop, her 
boss wrote up a dummy reference and left it in her in tray under a pile 
of papers. Sure enough, my mother rifled through the desk and found the 
dummy reference, which quickly reduced her to tears - it contained 
phrases like "Marion works well on the odd occassion that she turns up", 
"please take her, your loss will be our gain", and "she nearly has her 
drinking problem under control". As unfond as I am of her, I regret 
having found this story funny for so many years.

Trying now to bring it back on track: while I do not think that we are 
reasonably expected to love everyone universally within the industry, I 
think we do need to be friendly, approachable, and professional. I've 
worked in a couple of places where this year's cadet engineer may well 
be a sub-project manager within a year or two - and they tend to 
remember the people who treated them well when they were new, trust me. 
It is worth putting time into building professional relationships with 
everyone that we come into contact with, at least if we ever want to 
work in a particular spot again, or use them for references further down 
the track. There are several Australian government departments that now 
actively look for "people people" when recruiting - if this culture ever 
catches on, then we are looking at a future where trust issues become 
more important than they are now, at least within government work here 
in Oz.

Cheers, Andrew

Russ Unger wrote:

>Interesting.  As I read it, I thought, "Wow, that's kind of harsh--it's
>one of those things you consider doing, but never really do, and this
>person had the stones to do it."
>
>  
>
<snip>

-- 
_________________________________________
Andrew Boyd   andrew at pcug.org.au
"Do not ask me why I follow my heart, 
... ask your self why you do not... "
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