Crunch Time

Last week in Cube City, we got a nastygram from the head of Number Crunching. We were all slapped on our wrists for submitting late timesheets for the week, or perhaps for not submitting them at all. What's funny (...or not) about the nastygram is that it contained a grammatical error about how embarrassing this must be for our team. Now that's embarrassing.

When the nastygram arrived in my inbox, I was in a meeting but read it anyway. The person sitting next to me read it too. She said, "Oh, I LOVE how the head of Number Crunching is telling us that the other team -- you know, the one that doesn't make a profit for the company -- got their timesheets submitted on time. They have like, what -- 5 people left on that team now due to all the layoffs? So is that really such a big feat?"

Good point. Game tied. But don't get me wrong. I can see why the head of Number Crunching wants us to bill our work on time. Otherwise, we're working for free, and that's no good. But the number cruncher's approach was unnecessary and ineffective. The catch is that we don't really have time to record our time, so the profit we're making probably isn't being recorded or realized. Everybody is annoyed with the problem, but nobody knows how to fix it. And that's what is most embarrassing about crunch time.