Don't try to help

You know when someone offers to assist you with something but ends up screwing everything up? Frustrating, right?

You know what else is frustrating? When someone decides they are going to help you out but don't tell you that they're going to help out, and then you don't understand why everything is all screwed up.

That one a bit more confusing? Let me explain.

I had a contractor recently decide (without my cognizance) he was going help speed up the hiring process by omitting critical information on an application. One of my clients requires DHS fingerprinting (Dept. of Human Services), and I always ask a candidate two questions before submitting an application:

1. Have you ever been fingerprinted by DHS before?

2. Have you lived out-of-state in the past 5 years?

This particularly (un)helpful candidate answered 'no' to both questions. Great. We move on to application submittal, which is promptly halted because the candidate has, in fact, been fingerprinted in the past. Oh, and the previous information already in the system further indicates that the candidate has, in fact, lived out-of-state in the past 5 years.

Gee. If only someone had known the answer to those two questions from the get-go.

The DHS, being a government agency, is slow as molasses with answering my query on how to change the out-of-state information on a previously submitted application, so now we're at an impasse until DHS gets back to me.

Since I am waiting for DHS to get back to me, I decided to kill a bit of time and ask the candidate he didn't give me accurate answers to the questions.

His response: "Oh, I didn't think it was a big deal and would help it go faster."

No. Just...no. If it wasn't a big deal, I wouldn't have bothered asking. I don't know why that isn't obvious.

But in any case: thanks but no thanks for your 'help'.