Escalations

Today, I had a customer escalate on me.  Now, with this customer, this is not a particularly novel concept, as they have escalated on me around four or five times already during the lifetime of this project.  In the past, it was for reasons pertaining to following the rules and doing my job as directed, and they just simply didn’t like my answers.  So, they escalated me, and instead of giving me support, my managers threw me under the bus and gave in to the customer.  Now, they think they can dictate my actions simply by going over my head.  Essentially, they’ve done away with the meaning and power of the concept “escalation” because they’ve used it so much.

So, why does this escalation today standout?  Well, it’s because they escalated on me for taking Paid Time Off.  That’s right!  They escalated on me for taking a vacation!  They complained that my brain holds all of the knowledge about the integrations on their project, and they don’t feel comfortable that I’m going to sufficiently pass that knowledge along to my back-up.  So, they’re afraid that he won’t do a good job, and their project will fail at the last minute.  They actually had the gall to tell my managers that I need to change my plans and take my PTO at a different time.

The funniest part is that this is the first vacation I’ve had all year, and one of the major reasons that I need to take it now is because I’m burned out from dealing with them.  I sent a text to my wife about this, and she started to panic thinking that all of the vacation planning we had just done was going to have to change.  She asked, “What are we going to do now?”  And I replied, “Give them the middle finger and enjoy our vacation.”  (NOTE:  This is the first time I’ve been able to use the middle finger emoticon on my iPhone.  It seems perfect that it should be in context with this particular customer.)