ROUNDUP: Employee experience dilemma

[Atticus Fisher <Atticus_Fisher -at- pciwiz -dot- com>]

Everyone:

Before I begin, I would just like to take this opportunity to state:

1) ALL characters in my original posting were purely fictional. Any
similarities to Lisas living or deceased is purely coincidental. 

2) No Lisas were harmed during the making of this film.

Thanks, everyone, for the multitude of responses. They have been most
helpful. You know you're on to something meaty when Plato pipes up ;-)

By way of clarification and/or providing additional information, I offer the
following:

--myself and co-worker are really nice guys. Really. Hey, I'll be the first
to admit that I'm an idiot when it comes to TW. I've been doing it for only
a year. We want to mentor Fake Lisa as much as possible, and are eager to
help her learn the TW (and general writing) ropes any way we can. That has
always been our intent. It is obvious that she wants to make the right
decisions and do a good job. 

--FL is indeed a fast learner. Before coming to our dept. she spent a good 8
months in tech. support. In many ways, she knows the software more
intimately than we do since she interacted with clients on a daily basis. We
can learn from her. 

--the software she is documenting is quite complex, involving database
concepts and extensive demographic and marketing analysis tools. She does
seem to be getting the hang of it pretty quickly, though.

As usually happens, there seem to be two camps: those that think jumping in
with a big project with minimal assistance is an effective baptism by fire;
and those that think a more structured mentoring process is necessary. I
suppose there has to be a happy medium. No, my co-worker and myself are not
obligated to do a thing in this situation. We could do absolutely nothing
and there would be no harm to us or our careers at this company (except for
the fact that certain, um, sets of documentation would look, well, a bit
different from the rest) but I feel we would be doing a disservice to Lisa,
our department, and the company. Many of pointed out that you were in Lisa's
shoes at one point, and were very much thankful for your mentors. We have
the opportunity to take on that role and give someone a hand.

I suppose we just think that management didn't handle the situation in the
best manner, and we should have been given a more active role in the "hiring
process" from the start. 

Finally--yes, Andrew, I'll be the first to admit that my MFA degree is a
worthless piece of doo-doo and that getting the job done is what matters. I
don't lord the degree over anyone, 'cause Lord Knows what would the point
be? 

And finally--hope to see some of ya'll in Orlando next week (I'm the guy
with the funny name and blond dreads).

Keep comments coming, if you have anything further to say.....

Cheers, 
Atticus