NeonBlue Dreams
When automated isn’t really automated

I’m all for nice automated things that save time and money…that’s if they are really automated…

Take my employers’ new system for booking meeting rooms. In the old days we used to have to phone the post room, who rather confusingly also dealt with meeting room bookings, amongst a host of other things. So, you’d phone Quadir, who’d check the date you wanted in a big A4 diary kept especially for the purpose, and which rooms were available. If there was a free room available you could reserve it (though it’s always been the case that if those higher up the food chain simply must have a room for something, then the poor underlings get unceremoniously turfed out, but I guess that’s one of the perks of the job, along with loads more dosh. a bigger pension, and if you’re lucky, a space in the staff car park). Anyhow, I digress. Once your room booking was confirmed you could then also book refreshments for your meeting, if required. For internal meetings only tea and coffee were allowed – if you wanted biscuits you had to bring your own. For meetings involving people from “outside”, biscuits were allowed as well! If your meeting either started or ended at lunch time you could also order sandwiches…obviously if they were internal meetings though you were expected to take a packed lunch. Anyhow, room and any catering required booked, Quadir would ask you for your cost code, and all was sorted.

Then came automisation…except it isn’t really.

Today I had to book a meeting room, as a meeting for tomorrow mysteriously got requested to be canceled at the eleventh hour. These days there’s a fancy interactive calendar on the intranet, and after selecting the day you’re interested in you can check out who else has got meetings, marveling at the strange and mysterious titles of some meetings, and whether there’s a suitable room available when you want it. Clicking on the time for the column for that particular room takes you through to a form where you specify the name of your meeting, confirm the time and duration you want the room for, specify the layout of tables and chairs you want, and if required, book your catering (obviously adhering to the “no biscuits” rule). Simple. That done you click “submit” and off your booking goes…only it’s not really booked, because despite what it says on the confirmation page on the intranet, until the request is checked out by a real human person (presumably in case those bigwigs upstairs simply must have a room or anything) your booking isn’t confirmed, and you still have to wait for Quadir to either email you or phone you to confirm you’ve actually booked it.

Then comes the second part of the mission – to cancel the room booked for tomorrow as it’s no longer required.

Problem! Nowhere on the system on the intranet is there anything you can press or any instructions on how to go about canceling a booking.

This is where it gets complicated. I figured I probably needed to phone the post room like we used to in the good old days, but we no longer have an internal phone book, on the grounds it apparently isn’t needed. If we need a number, we can look on the properties of whoever we need to ring on Outlook – the problem with that is that usually with all the shuffling of offices and jobs, phone numbers on the email system are a couple of years out of date because no-one’s taken responsibility for making sure all the information’s correct, and it lists users on the system as individuals along with their email addresses, not locations.

The second method is to use our fancy new VOIP phone system, which has a built-in phonebook. The phonebook’s great, if you know the full name of the person you want to ring, as you search it by surname. It’s not so great if you don’t know the person’s surname, or you want to talk to someone about “widgets” for example, but you don’t know which office deals with widgets.

I don’t know Quadir’s surname – I used to play pool with the guy in the staffroom back a few years ago when Quadir and his mate Maz used to pop up there at lunchtime and me and James (ex-manager) used to go up there for a quick game or two too, to break the monotony of the day, but I never thought to ask his surname. I’d no need to.

So in the end, I ended up having to ring switchboard to be asked to be put through to the post room…hardly very automated at all. I did eventually get to speak to Quadir, who canceled tomorrow’s booking for me and confirmed the new one. I did forget to ask him what his surname is though. That might come in useful next time I need to use the automated system to book a room…

Postscript: (15th July) And just to prove the point that if you’re higher up the food chain you can do whatever you damned well please, guess who got ousted from the totally automated room they’d gone to such lengths to secure? Yep, the day before the rescheduled meeting I got a phone call taken by one of my colleagues to say that the bigwigs absolutely must have that room, so would we mind awfully vacating it? Not a request however, but an order. So the booking promptly got canceled. No mention of booking another room; we just got canceled.

On my return of course I uttered a few Anglo-Saxon words and promptly got on the phone to Quadir, bypassing the automated system except to check on it if any other room was available. There I found that indeed the bigwigs’ designated room itself was free, so why the hell they couldn’t use that and simply had to have ours, I’ll never know so I booked that instead.

The email I sent to the rest of the team (with some details edited to protect the innocent) read:

Dear All, Unfortunately we have been evicted from the room we had booked for tomorrow’s <edited> meeting. This is due to the fact that if you’re only a lowly <edited> team, those higher up the food chain (i.e. <edited>) can do whatever they damned well wish, including evicting aforementioned <edited> teams from legitimately booked rooms. Luckily for us though the <edited> room is available (why the hell they couldn’t use their own room I’ll never know!), so we shall be reconvening there. If we get evicted from there though if anyone else higher up the food chain comes along, we’re out of luck, as that’s the last room available, so we may end up in the car park.
Please bring your umbrella in case of inclement weather.
Me

One of the middle ranking managers in the team asked if anyone had commented on my email. Normally such an email would have attracted comments about the need to be respectful of those higher up the food chain. No-one though made any comment. Presumably they all agreed that sometimes things suck when you’re low in the pecking order.

Unfortunately I shall be on leave on the day of the next meeting. Some other sucker can deal with the automated booking system.

Me, I’ll just be phoning Quadir.

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