Work, when is it appropriate to go running to sir.

[timwilky]

<rant>OK I have a problem with a customer in France. I have done all I can for them and have been invoicing them and they are begrudgingly paying for my service since March when I resurrected a legacy service for them.

Begrudgingly because another part of my organisation in France tasked with delivering the service client hasn't.

I send them weekly e mails asking for updates, they do not reply. I copy my boss in on this. A month ago, my boss asked me to advise the European director, which I did.

Prior to my holiday the director asked for an update, nothing to report.

I come back and still nothing.

So I have again emailed my French colleagues and for the first time copied in the European director, no response.

He then sends them a stroppy email demanding progress reports and installation plans by tomorrow. and within minutes they reply that they have done nothing because they no longer have the software.

For 6 months they have sat there. All they have to do is bloody ask. We got our copy of the damm software from them in France over 10 years ago in the first place.

I hate using the big stick. It makes me look like I cannot do my job. But ffs why can people not be honest and say what the problem is? It took me all of two minutes to ask someone to email them the software and installation procedure.

Grrrrrrhhhhh, bloody incompetent frogs.</rant>

ha ha I work for a French company too. This sounds all too familiar. Culturally the French are really sensitive to escalations through the management chain, if you go above or around them they really don't like it.

I've adopted the policy that you have to cover your backside, because again in my experience they don't work fast, they're not pro-active, whole departments shoot out to long lunches every day and they really will tuck you up unless you have covered your tracks with an audit trail.

Some of the froggies in our Company are truly gifted, they're all nice socially as far as I have met them, but most of them are lazy French focks!

[Bri w]

I find the French stunningly good to work with, or at least until it is something they fundamentally disagree with. Then its shutters down, and blanked.

If I have something that has a deadline I'll let whoever I'm working with know the deadline. If they've not been forthcoming, after further prompting, I escalate it up the foodchain. I work for my boss and the company, not someone who's being a numpty.

I'll support anyone who needs help doing their job but I don't suffer people being idiots... I've got too much on my desk to do the cuddly cr%p.

I'm having a very similar problem at work over the past few days where failure to react has caused a customer complaint. It's me that has to put my name to it, so all fingers were pointed at me and I've had to go through all my emails and list out an audit trail of what I've done and when, and who from different departments have been asked to do what, or been asked for what information, when and how many times I've chased them, etc, etc

It's dropped a load of people in the sh!t because my audit trail shows who hasn't done their job properly, but if I didn't have that audit trail, it would have been me in the sh!t and even though I'd know it wasn't my area that fell down, I'd have to accept the bollocking because I wouldn't have been able to prove otherwise.

I'm sick to the back teeth of other people I work with not doing their jobs properly, or just ignoring emails and voicemails, and I will have no qualms in future about dropping people in it. I'm not at work to be liked by my colleagues, and I have no interest in being 'friends' with any of them. No more Mr Nice Guy, I do my job and from now on I EXPECT everyone else to do theirs.

[G]

Why did you not just pick up the phone and speak to them.

98% of my colleagues are European... Mainly Danish, they are to the outside world very lazy and have a very different culture. I'll rarely get a response to an email, but phone them or meet face to face and they are like your best mate when you've broken down the barriers.

[timwilky]

The system worked, I managed to get the name of the person tasked with the work. But he is a contractor, his name is in the public address book, but not his telephone number. I phoned his boss and asked him to get him to phone me he never has. His boss was a bit of a waste of time. He seemed to think that I wanted to do the installation and would not get it into his head that I am the project manager. I requested through the correct channels that the installation was done for the French customer.

To be honest, I think it was simply down to the fact that the revenue stream is being generated in the UK. If my French colleagues were seeing the cash then maybe they would be more inclined to do their job.

[Bluepete]

How was the beer Tim?

Pete