Unfiltered Story #57003

I was working in a call center on the email team. One evening I received an email from my boss, who was at our corporate headquarters doing testing, asking me to change the status of several hundred test accounts asap. I replied saying I was on it and printed out 6 or 7 pages of account numbers. About 15 minutes later…

Supervisor: Did you see the email from [boss]??

Me: Yes, I replied and am working on it *shows her the pages*

Supervisor: *snatches the pages out of my hands* YOU NEED TO LEARN TO DELEGATE!! DELEGATE!! DELEGATE!! *hands me back the completed pages, the page I was working on and one other page and left with the other 3*

A few minutes later I had finished my page and a half and went to collect the other pages so I could email the boss back and tell the accounts were reopened and ready for her to use. The first person had only finished half of their page so I took it back to my desk and finished it. I then went in search of the other two pages and found them both on the desks of coworkers who hadn’t even started them because they “were busy” (neither was on the phone and they were chatting with others when I walked up). I took both sheets back to my desk, finished them and emailed the boss. About an hour later the supervisor came back to check if I had finished my pages yet so she could let the boss know. I guess I understood the concept of ASAP better than she did and I would have had them done a lot faster if I hadn’t had to stop to go track down the pages she had handed out to people who either didn’t understand the concept of ASAP at ALL or she hadn’t bothered to tell them it was an ASAP project.