Corporate policies and bureaucracy: compounding simple tasks
Posted: November 18th, 2004 | Author: telcor | Filed under: Information Technology (IT), Work | No Comments »Corporate policies and bureaucracy can cause difficulties for employees
as is well documentated.
Such often place employees in awkward circumstances and require contorted
actions to perform even minor tasks. This happened to me recently. My task?
Simple, I needed to create some simple graphics for a web site.
Easy, just submit the specifications to the graphics department, right?
Wrong. The request is declined as un-necessary duty. What to do now? The requirements
for the web site stipulate specific graphics. Submit a purchasing requisition
for a graphics program? Declined, I’m not a member of Graphics. Find and
download one of the freely available
programs? Cannot, it violates Corporate policy, grounds for termination.
What then? Look at the programs alread on my computer, which are capable
of creating graphics?
- Paint
- The little paint program that cames with all Microsoft
Windows™ operating systems. - Microsoft Word
- Autodesk QuickCAD 8
- A 2-D Drawing program, no longer developed
- Poseidon for UML
- A diagramming package
- Microsoft Publisher
- A desktop publishing program
- IrfanView
- A graphics viewer
Paint was immediatly out of the question, its controls were too simple. QuickCAD seemed promising until learning
it doesn’t support exporting to GIF or PNG. Word? No way. Same for Poseidon, nothing like using the wrong tool for
the job. Publisher was my last hope. It has same basic bitmap and drawing tools. And, lo and behold, it allows
one to export to GIF and PNG. With one problem, the size of the object in Publisher does not match the size
exported.
For example, create a square 100px x 100px
and save as a picture (the way Publisher exports). If exported as a GIF, the result is 101px x 101px.
If exported as a PNG, it’s worse: 159px x 160px!?!
What oddity.
IrfanView saved me here, allowing me to resize the image properly.
There you have it, another tale of an employee going through contortions to accomplish a simple
task. Thanks to Corporate policies and bureaucracy.