Dichotomy...

Oh. My. God. You know how most companies allow employees to schedule their own meetings and rooms using Outlook or Lotus Notes or what have you? When I first started here, we could do that. Then they took it away to "improve" the capabilities. Well, here it is two years later and they brought it back finally. No more having to coordinate with the receptionist (who is now a security guard)! So I go to schedule a meeting today in the conference room down the hall. Only I can't find room 5106 in Outlook's contact list. I thought maybe it was because my client hadn't synced with the Exchange server in a while, so I did that and still no luck. I reread the email telling us that we had this capability again. Oops, user error. It's not under "Conference Room 5106" like it used to be. It's now under prefix VAFF06 (our building code - since our global address book has all GD locations in it now). No problem. Oh wait, I still can't find it. Why? The room isn't called "Conference Room 5106" anymore. No no friends. It's called "VAFF06 Room USS Alabama (old 5-106)". What?? A further investigation revealed that all our conference rooms have been given Navy ship names. This helps no one! Everyone knows where room numbers are. When I get an invitation to a meeting in "USS Kitty Hawk" next week, I'm going to send security an email for a CV-63 visit request and book a plane ticket for her homeport in Japan, then see how long this new naming convention sticks around. Even if you put up big signs at the entrance to each conference room, you still have to wander all over the building to find the right boat, I mean room because it's not immediately obvious that USS Virginia is the 7th floor main conference room. I'd love to know which executive dreamed up this stellar plan...

Posted by Rev. Adam on Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 2:39 PM | Permalink