fight for the user. some users aren't worth fighting for

"I fight for the user" - tron

important words for people in the ICT world and to be honest in any organisation. We need this fact foremost in our mind "how will this affect the users?"  

when i insisted on moving the PC it was not because the job said to do it. There was a user out there who need the equipment to work, i must now admit i have a softspot for this as i know what its like when the ICT supporting your disability is not available to you.  I chose for that user to be the 1 i fought for and in the end she got her stuff a week later i might add.

 Sometimes i try to be kind and apologetic when things are broken but reassuring that at some point it will be fixed. Today i was fixing laptops rolled out by a separate team i had nothing to do with. I was the 3rd person to start the fix but due to added complications was the first to finish the other 2 laptops had developed a serious error as i took the working laptop to its owner i was confronted by a woman wanting to know why if her laptop went in first had she not got it back yet by the end of the afternoon and 6 laptops later; 2 where working, 3 where still showing errors and 1 was still to be looked at. As we tried to leave i was again confronted by the woman wanting to know why hers was broken, when would she be getting a replacement, what was the point of making them wait 5 months giving them a laptop that would break a week later. 

Nothing we answered worked. We had put time and effort in to solve her problems and that we where not the cause of. Is this user worth fighting for?

Organism or Organisms, software or software suit, National Health Service or National Health Services ?

Thats my question which are we?
To many people on the outside the NHS is 1 big lumbaring giant that looks the like it could go at any minute you look and go thats 1 big organisation with some people working in 1 hospital and others working in another. I too was like this until today.

my previous place of work had been part time in a school where moving specialised computer equipment from 1 place to another so the disabled child could still work was simple enough it would go from 1 teachers room to the next.
So i thought my task would be simple, pick up the pc and move it to the new site so the woman with the disability could start work. I was wrong.
when i arrived i should have been suspicious as the woman at the boor seemed more eager for me to be installing new PCs for her. I told her i would if i had time but i really needed to move that pc i was sent for first.

I was then introduced to a new woman who She was the task force leader and as she saw it ruler of all she surveyed, queen of the whole desk from window to coloured printer and who was i to interfear with her rule.

Anyway long story short she was not going to let me have the PC because her department had payed for it with"from their own budget" when the disabled woman started working there but now she was in a different department they would have to buy a new one or i would need a replacement.

Now this was not in the request send to me i had no kit to replace the PC so i tried to reason with her;
Could i take the machine? No, it belongs to her budget
could i replace it with 1 of there machines in storage? No why? Because there part of her budget.

in the end she signed her own fate. She tried to put it in a situation i could understand. So looking like a fool and talking like she was new to English she explained with large gestures how if i was married i would not like my wife using my money. Get it? Me neither

 Using the voice i save for small children at the speed i use  for the elderly and the volume i need for the hard of hearing i told her she was wrong its more like kids and pocket money they don't want there sister using it because its theirs when in actual fact it was given to them by there parents. Everyone laughed either with me or at her i don't care.

It was here i realised that this woman was not an enemy,  the wicked witch ruling from her tower. She was a sad little woman and she had my pity.

I suppose if there is a conclusion to this it that people in the NHS have gone fundamentally wrong about how they work it not a case of right hand not knowing what the left is doing its them both thinking their their own people.
this will require more thinking.....