For a moment there I thought the Internet was flatlining on me, until I realized that the cleaning lady had pulled another of her usual "mess with the rest" stunts and pulled the cord half out, which considering the usual architecture of the Internet cable, that's pretty much more painful and irking that it would otherwise be. Let's leave to the side how the hired cleaning company hires a crew that can't leave things where they found them - in the best of cases - which makes coming back from lunch a real adventure of "Find The Pendrive With Your Week's Work" game a regularly scheduled one-hour entertainment, if it's not a case of "thought it was helping by sending to recycle all the papers on your desk" and had shredded an important expedient full of un-digitalized originals. No, let's concentrate only on the technological damage.
If you work in a large company where everybody has a computer, and there are printers, phones, fax machines, scanners and so on around, you're probably acquainted with the post-its fixed on the screens saying "DO NOT CLEAN HERE". It's not by mistake. With unexplainable strenght cleaning crews can punch keys out of the keyboars, fragment a screen, send hardrive into a coma no I.T. Master can bring it back from. It escapes anyone's mind how is it possible that there's a human being not secluded in the desert, who doesn't understand how delicate and important these machines are. Maybe they don't have a computer at home, but shouldn't their employer tell you about how to clean around a computer and what should they pay attention to? But even so, have they really never, ever touched a computer in their lives?
It happens also with the hired help at home, for those who have. I've heard of the cleaning lady sticking a metal pot in the microwave and setting it for 20 minutes to make soup, or smashing the phone with their hands as if it were made of egg shells. One would say that it's not like you expect them to have these same things at their own homes, but if their job involves handling these things, shouldn't they know better?
Some would say that you should be patient and understanding that "they are humble people" and "not everybody knows how to handle these things" and so on, BUT STILL, it's their job. Should't they know? It's like, if you are a doctor, shouldn't you be aware of what hurts and the damage something you do to cure, can do? As it happens, it's not a matter here of how humble you are or not, whether you actively use these things or not, but a matter of work attitude, and this happens outside the cleaning and housekeeping industry. It's not strange to find professionals who display their diplomas and all sorts of titles around, flaunt them like a peacock tail, and yet are incapable of doing a job well. People so incompetent they can't even compose a remotely sense-making letter, who can't add too numbers and get the result well, who can't follow a simple one-o-one logic to explain something. It's their job, but they are blatantly ignoring the details and parts that would take you from a mediocre hacking into the task to a work properly done.
So, shall we rant at the cleaning lady for nearly breaking the Internet cable and leaving us for over 15 days without internet while the I.T. department processes the request for a new cable and install it, or shall we put her in perspective regarding the mindblowing incompetence of those sporting three-letter titles before or after their names, who don't even know where to put a period in a sentence? And whatever we do, shall that move us to understanding, filing the incompetence of others under "you can't expect everybody being as knowledgeable as you" or are you right about getting upset at people for refusing to put to work a small portion of their Hyne-given-brains and do the small effort of actually doing the job they are paid to be done?
Needless to say, I take the second choice on both takes: nothing excuses laziness and incompetence.
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