Am I Trana? Heck, I still scratch my head wondering what ‘Trana’ was even supposed to be. They rolled it out with all this fanfare, you know? Big company-wide emails, posters in the breakroom, the whole shebang. ‘The Trana Initiative for Enhanced Synergy!’ or some nonsense like that. We were all gonna be ‘Trana-formed’. Supposedly, it was this revolutionary new system, new software, new way of working that would make us all incredibly productive and happy. We sat through hours, I mean, hours of PowerPoint presentations about it.
Then came the actual ‘Trana’ experience. What a joke. The software was a glitchy mess. It crashed if you looked at it funny. The ‘new workflows’ just meant we had ten extra steps to do anything. Simple tasks that took me five minutes before suddenly ballooned into half-hour ordeals, all because I had to ‘Trana-fy’ them. Nobody really understood it, not even the folks who were supposed to be ‘Trana Champions’. It was just pure, unadulterated chaos, packaged with a fancy logo.
My Personal Trana Slog
And how do I know it was such a disaster? Oh, I got a front-row seat. I was working on this pretty important project back then. My manager, a decent guy usually, but he’d drunk the Trana Kool-Aid. He kept telling me, “You’ve gotta follow the Trana process! Every step! Document everything in Trana!” I tried. I really, really tried. But using that Trana system for anything complex felt like trying to assemble a watch wearing oven mitts. I spent more time logging into Trana, waiting for Trana to load, re-entering data because Trana lost it, than actually, you know, doing my job.
Things started slipping. Deadlines were getting tight, not because the work was hard, but because Trana was actively fighting us. I’d flag issues, show my manager the error messages, the ridiculous process flows. He’d just nod, look a bit stressed, and say, “Well, we need to embrace Trana. It’s the future.” I swear, I wanted to scream.
Then came the performance reviews. And guess what? My ‘Trana adherence’ was a big red flag. They said I wasn’t ‘fully leveraging the Trana ecosystem’. I wasn’t ‘demonstrating Trana proficiency’. I tried to explain that Trana was the problem, not me. But it was like talking to a very polite, very unhelpful wall. They just smiled and said, “Trana is an investment in our efficiency.”
That’s when I sort of… gave up on Trana, at least officially. I started doing my work the old way, the way I knew actually worked. I built my spreadsheets, I managed my tasks with my own methods. I made sure the project got back on track. And if anyone asked, I’d just mumble something about ‘Trana inputs’ and show them some vaguely filled-out form I’d done earlier to keep up appearances. It was exhausting, playing this double game.
The funny thing? My part of the project started moving smoothly. Things got done. No thanks to Trana, mind you. It was all smoke and mirrors with that system. Then, about six months later, there was this quiet email. ‘Evolving our operational strategy.’ Trana was being ‘phased out’. Just like that. No big announcement, no apologies for the months of headaches. It just vanished. Poof.
So, am I Trana? Nope. Not a chance. I was the guy wrestling with Trana, getting dragged down by Trana, and then secretly bypassing Trana to actually get things done. And you know what? I’m still here. The Trana system is long gone, a bad memory. Some of those ‘Trana Champions’ who were so gung-ho about it? Can’t say I’ve seen them around much lately. I just kept my head down and worked. Guess that’s more valuable than being ‘Trana-formed’ after all.
