a bunch of putzes

This morning, one of the higher-ups that infest... I mean... that *manage* our team got around to telling me they're deploying a major change to our system in September. I diplomatically pointed out that, a few days right after that, we are obligated to participate in a department-wide exercise testing the backup environments of all teams. A few minutes ago, I attended a meeting where I brought this up again, still diplomatically, but with some slight snark in it, and pointed out that it might be imprudent to switch to our backup environment before we've fully exercised the modified system in its real-world environment. You may be asking yourself why my higher-ups would schedule a deployment so close to a backup exercise the date of which I had warned them about in early May. The answer? I was tempted to ask if they ever read my emails, even the ones marked 'important'. I wisely refrained. The upshot? I now have to ask for an exception so that we can delay our backup exercise and run it standalone. You can bet that I'll make it clear to the exception-granter that I work for a bunch of putzes.