Princess Fix IT

At work, we IT folk are contained within four walls with two badge access doors on each side. Well, they aren?t really walls but more of a suggestion of walls as their growth was somewhat stumped three feet from the ceiling and the badge access doors aren?t really doors either. They are more akin to stable doors as they are split in the middle horizontally so you may open the top without leaving the bottom half vulnerable. There is a wireless doorbell that takes approximately 5 seconds to ring once pushed and signs stating ?Authorized Personnel Only? affixed to each entryway. The walls react as if they are huge chunks of The Grand Canyon and amplify any sound from its contents 10 fold.

I call it The Fort.

The Fort took some getting used to as there were many comments, the occasional paper airplane that sailed over the near-ceiling walls and a variety of Ding Dong Ditch jokers. That?s cool. I would have behaved in the same manner, so who am I to rob these gentlemen the golden opportunities that are so plainly laid before them? It?s nice to not have the annoying users pop their heads over the cubicle walls into my domain, but then again I miss having access to my more enjoyable co-workers. How can you resist a near 7 foot tall sweetheart of a man draping himself across the confines of your workspace, looking down and saying, ?Hi there?? The amplified walls of the new fort are a complete pain?for our neighbors. The noise can get a bit obtrusive. Just a bit. It?s pretty tough to say ?Hey, we know you sold 3 million units on your last build and we probably owe our paychecks to you, but this is who we are, man!? Yeah, I don?t think that will fly. We all know that I, in particular, am not especially talented at reigning myself in and I believe some of my fellow IT folk are in the same predicament. Its tough when you hold a similar opinion that The Fort is a bit of a joke, to maintain a sense of pride at the same time.

So all this Fort related rambling, this leads me to the following?I want a suggestion box placed outside the Princess entrapping walls of my work existence. It seems when I speak to the users, they have great ideas, many good and valid points, but it seems no one actually says anything to the people in power. Is it just lip service? Is it simply co-worker camaraderie? Is it just something new to complain about? I?m of the belief that nothing will change until you take the proper measures to make that change occur. I suppose who's to say the users would take a suggestion box seriously and fill it with proper ideas and not things like, "I think the Princess should show us more of her tits" and "How much porn am I allowed to download on a daily basis?" We do have something similar to the suggestion box that is deemed the ?Quarterly Customer Care Survey.? I hate that title. These users are not my customers. They are my users. They don?t call an 800 number, pay me for my opinion or actually purchase anything. Let?s not forget this is only done on a quarterly basis, so what good is that? I?m confused. If these are our users, our whole reason for being there, why don?t their opinions count more? Why don?t they feel the need to put forth those opinions when it actually counts? Are the two directly related? I suppose that?s not for me to say, as I have no power nor influence in such matters, but it seems to me that we could be so much more to them than we are now.