Office Divide

There is a clear division in the office. Two co-workers, both originally part of the planning cell in the capital, are one unit, the other seven of us are the other. The Baton Rouge people are part of the cool kid click and do not do things with us non cool kids. They will turn down lunch invitations and always choose to drive with eachother.

Things came to a head over a recurring pain in the ass issue, The Recovery Value Tool. In theory, this is a checklist that we are supposed to go though to rate projects if they are important for recovery. The county volunteers that we work with feel, and with good reason, that the recovery value tool has been to remove projects that they think are important from the final plan with no consulation. They are also mad because the recovery value criteria were developed at the last minute in a black box and do not work well. Some projects that the feel are essential to recovery get very low ratings.

The cool kids were collegues with the people who developed the recovery value tool and like it. The rest of us saw how it was applied in the field and do not like it.

So, in a staff meeting we were discussing this issue (even though it honestly does not matter for our work) and the cool kids and not-cool kids got into an argument. Esentially the cool kids were defending the tool, saying people should just use it and don't worry about it because we have to use it. The non-cool kids were saying, we the tool sucks and we hate having to use it. The irony is that both points of view are correct.

This issue is actually a pretty good example of the different world views that developed between the planning cell and the people in the field. The people in the central office were under costant political pressure to meet every shifting goals and often felt that the field office was not responsive to the rules that were being sent from above.

In the field, we were much more interested in doing what we believed was the interest of the county and were not understanding of the political disucssions that were happening above us.

In any case, there is only a few weeks left so I suspect the cool kids and the not cool kids will never learn to see eye to eye.