Lunchtime, and over a dry tuna sandwich and a bowl of fruit I am trying to get through the last part of the day before the weekend. I have an absolutely poisonous headache that I am trying to get rid of. It’s probably not helping that I am passing the time before the meeting trying to get Flash files to play nice with the Blue Martini architecture. The Levi’s site evidently does it, but I’ll be damned if ours will.
I had a tiff with our copywriter yesterday about hand-coding HTML.
Me: “Have you started that tutorial on XHTML that I sent you the link for?”
Him: “I never received it.”
Me: “I’ll send it to you again.”
Him: “Ok, I think I did see that, but I don’t see why I should have to do IT’s job.”
Me: “Excuse me?”
Him: “Doing programming wasn’t part of my job description. I don’t see why IT can’t do it.”
Me: “IT? What IT department are you talking about? This is the Web Team – we ARE the IT department. It’s the only way you’re going to be able to update copy in the new attribute area, you have to know some simple tags.”
Him: “I still don’t think it’s my job. I’m not a technical person, I’m a creative. Someone should write some kind of a programme so that I can just paste copy in.”
Me: (getting pissed off at this point) “If ANY member of this team doesn’t consider themselves a technical person, they shouldn’t be here. This is a WEB team, for gods sake, and we all need the technical skills to do our jobs!!!”
*he stomps off*
And to think your HR woman told me ‘he has a more extensive skill set than you’.
A prima donna who shouldn’t be doing the job he is. Argh.
And it isn’t programming, FFS – it is a few tags!
I suppose he gets someone to press the little B in Word for him too?
Kill him, hide the body, and I’ll come and be your copywriter … :-)
How you manage to NOT strangle your co-workers impresses me.
He sounds like the sort I’d call “artsy”, but in that very derogatory tone of voice, implying a laziness about life that doesnt involve his own creativity and praise.
Mind you, I grew up around artists who were family friends and know many (including you!) who are both wildly creative and can handle the technical stuff (program the vcr, make a website, etc). I expect competence in my co-workers, but theyve done a good job here of weeding out the incompetent.
I know, I know – HUGE mistake here. :(
Tell me about it – I was sitting there with my mouth open in astonishment when I realised what he was actually saying.
It’s a deal. :)
He has an advertising agency background, which basically means sitting around, drinking Starbucks and re-writing the same bits and pieces for weeks. Oh, AND getting paid tons of money to do it. Hmmph.
I find it really irritating when people try to pull the “It’s not in my job description” crap. I find it doubly irritating when said person refers to some basic grasp of HTML as a form of programming…
There’s a lovely sentence in, IIRC, Illusions by Richard Bach which says, “Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they’re yours.”
I vote you make the next round of tea…. make sure you spit in his! :P