Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
I Don't Miss You
In my previous post, I listed The Good, the people at Old Company whom I miss and who actually made working there at least remotely tolerable. Here, I introduce you to The Bad (those who meant well, but usually bungled, making my time more difficult), and The Ugly (those who made my life plain miserable.)
BOSSMAN
BossMan was a genuinely nice guy, but his managerial skills left a fair bit to be desired. He seemed distinctly detached from his employees, and never seemed to really grasp the depth of the mistakes or the transgressions they were making. He didn’t stay there late with us when the cards were down (he’d be accessible via his Crackberry until all hours, but it’s a different feeling when you’re chained to your desk until 3 in the morning.) He was a man of contradictions: he said he couldn’t stand “Yes-men,” but missed it when his engineers would do just that; he said he didn’t care about people’s feelings and that he’d fire people in an instant, yet he kept entirely too many of them long after their expiration date (and ironically, people who should have been kept on frequently went to the chopping block); he sort of floated along in a haze no matter how many problems Production brought to his attention, but rather than nip those problems in the bud at the onset and steer the Failboat back on course, he would wait until the problem became a project-threatening crisis and then he would yell at people for a while.
Ah, the yelling, the hallmark of our daily 9 a.m. stand-up meetings (no, seriously, sitting down was verboten because the meeting was going to be quick… or, more accurately, an hour long…) Every single day, it seemed, BossMan would bring fire and brimstone to the table. The trouble with yelling at the general population every day is that after a while, it just becomes an annoying buzz. He never yelled at Production – we never gave him reason – but the engineers were fair game. If you’re doing your job as a manager, there should be no need to yell at your employees.
When he wasn’t yelling, he was offering spotty direction. The big winner, the one that killed even the last shreds of my faith in his judgment, actually came to light in my last week. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that we had recalled the last submittal (the one that I killed myself to get out on time, and that I had set as the point when I could leave in good conscience), and one of the designers was adding client-required text to his section of the design report. Unfortunately, the new text increased the page count for his section (the first in the document), which would have caused us to repaginate and reprint the entire 200+ page report because the page numbering format was Page X of Y, and if this section increased in size, “Y” would also increase, meaning that every page would have to be altered. BossMan refused to reprint the whole thing based on cost, but we had to keep the page numbering static, and the new text was critical. BossMan’s solution: number the first few pages in the section 13A, 13B, 14A, and 14B, etc., until we were back on track to end at the original page 26. My professionalism forbade that (though I think I would have paid money to see Commander’s reaction to that suggestion), and I instead altered the font size just enough to retain the original pagination. But seriously. Page 13A?? You would be willing to submit that to the client?
At his core, BossMan was a truly nice person. Not nice enough to make up for the weak management, which is why he’s found in The Bad, but certainly too good to fall into The Ugly.
FLANDERS
Everyone knows Ned Flanders, the ever-chipper, uber-religious nemesis of Homer Simpson. That image you have in your mind is the perfect equivalent of one of our architects.
Flanders would take the time to make the rounds of the office every morning to say Hi to everyone. Flanders brought back gifts from visits to the client site. Flanders never cursed, never yelled, never had a bad thing to say about anybody. But Flanders was a straight-up buffoon.
The man could never meet a deadline, could never prioritize the work to be done, rarely finished one task before being distracted by another, was always rushing but producing little, could not get work out of his underlings, and was too soft-hearted to recommend firing those on his team who needed it. I grew to hate those morning rounds because I knew how much time that took up in a day and it was that much time he wasn’t spending on his work, which would be unconscionably late and often unfinished. He became an office joke because of it. He was quick to give me status updates on things he hadn’t provided me yet, and quicker still to say “I’m sorry” for his missed deadlines – to the point that the words "I'm sorry" are empty to me now, and they only inflamed me further. Don’t update me, don’t apologize – you’re wasting time that you could be spending on your work! He also regularly offered to buy the Production staff meals as a way to make up to us that we were there after hours, on weekends, at 2 a.m., working on things he’d given us only an hour before, and already very late. Because that will make up for it. You turned this in extremely late, but you bought us pizza, so it all washes. I don’t think anyone in the entire organization made me as regularly furious and frustrated as Flanders did.
But in the end, he always meant well, which is why he only rates The Bad instead of The Ugly.
LURCH
Why do we call him Lurch? He was tall, gangly, never seemed to have an expression or a reaction to anything, and never seemed to be rooted in the present.
Lurch used to be the lead architect. But he was quickly found out as incompetent, and was demoted. That should say something right there. Lurch should have been fired long ago, but as fate would have it, he became very sick and ended up on disability for a long while. He recovered from his illness substantially enough to return to work in May, much to the chagrin of most of the office. Don’t misunderstand – we were glad he was recovered and felt well enough to return to work. We were just sorry he returned to work. Lurch was the subject the only time I ever heard Flanders speak less than saintly about anyone: we were closing in on a submittal and client comment response, and Flanders was bordering on nervous breakdown (again). I was there late as well, and was making chitchat in the kitchenette with Flanders, when I heard him complain that Lurch wasn’t doing anything; that every time he gave Lurch a client comment to respond to, Lurch would sit at the design table and flip through the drawings again and again, until Flanders came back to realize that Lurch had neither done the response, nor even made a single note toward that end, so Flanders had to do that too. Basically, Lurch was sitting dumbly at the design table, taking up space and costing money. This all may sound callous of me. Rosie, how can you say such a thing about the recovering ill? But here’s how I see it: if the recovering ill are well enough to return to work, they need to be well enough to do work. There’s a certain amount of slack to be cut for them while they get back up to speed, but I have no respect for sitting still and making absolutely no progress while everyone else races around to meet deadlines.
He narrowly misses The Ugly because a) I worked with him very little, and b) he was out of the office for over 6 months, so he didn’t have enough chances to piss me off.
BossMan was a genuinely nice guy, but his managerial skills left a fair bit to be desired. He seemed distinctly detached from his employees, and never seemed to really grasp the depth of the mistakes or the transgressions they were making. He didn’t stay there late with us when the cards were down (he’d be accessible via his Crackberry until all hours, but it’s a different feeling when you’re chained to your desk until 3 in the morning.) He was a man of contradictions: he said he couldn’t stand “Yes-men,” but missed it when his engineers would do just that; he said he didn’t care about people’s feelings and that he’d fire people in an instant, yet he kept entirely too many of them long after their expiration date (and ironically, people who should have been kept on frequently went to the chopping block); he sort of floated along in a haze no matter how many problems Production brought to his attention, but rather than nip those problems in the bud at the onset and steer the Failboat back on course, he would wait until the problem became a project-threatening crisis and then he would yell at people for a while.
Ah, the yelling, the hallmark of our daily 9 a.m. stand-up meetings (no, seriously, sitting down was verboten because the meeting was going to be quick… or, more accurately, an hour long…) Every single day, it seemed, BossMan would bring fire and brimstone to the table. The trouble with yelling at the general population every day is that after a while, it just becomes an annoying buzz. He never yelled at Production – we never gave him reason – but the engineers were fair game. If you’re doing your job as a manager, there should be no need to yell at your employees.
When he wasn’t yelling, he was offering spotty direction. The big winner, the one that killed even the last shreds of my faith in his judgment, actually came to light in my last week. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that we had recalled the last submittal (the one that I killed myself to get out on time, and that I had set as the point when I could leave in good conscience), and one of the designers was adding client-required text to his section of the design report. Unfortunately, the new text increased the page count for his section (the first in the document), which would have caused us to repaginate and reprint the entire 200+ page report because the page numbering format was Page X of Y, and if this section increased in size, “Y” would also increase, meaning that every page would have to be altered. BossMan refused to reprint the whole thing based on cost, but we had to keep the page numbering static, and the new text was critical. BossMan’s solution: number the first few pages in the section 13A, 13B, 14A, and 14B, etc., until we were back on track to end at the original page 26. My professionalism forbade that (though I think I would have paid money to see Commander’s reaction to that suggestion), and I instead altered the font size just enough to retain the original pagination. But seriously. Page 13A?? You would be willing to submit that to the client?
At his core, BossMan was a truly nice person. Not nice enough to make up for the weak management, which is why he’s found in The Bad, but certainly too good to fall into The Ugly.
FLANDERS
Everyone knows Ned Flanders, the ever-chipper, uber-religious nemesis of Homer Simpson. That image you have in your mind is the perfect equivalent of one of our architects.
Flanders would take the time to make the rounds of the office every morning to say Hi to everyone. Flanders brought back gifts from visits to the client site. Flanders never cursed, never yelled, never had a bad thing to say about anybody. But Flanders was a straight-up buffoon.
The man could never meet a deadline, could never prioritize the work to be done, rarely finished one task before being distracted by another, was always rushing but producing little, could not get work out of his underlings, and was too soft-hearted to recommend firing those on his team who needed it. I grew to hate those morning rounds because I knew how much time that took up in a day and it was that much time he wasn’t spending on his work, which would be unconscionably late and often unfinished. He became an office joke because of it. He was quick to give me status updates on things he hadn’t provided me yet, and quicker still to say “I’m sorry” for his missed deadlines – to the point that the words "I'm sorry" are empty to me now, and they only inflamed me further. Don’t update me, don’t apologize – you’re wasting time that you could be spending on your work! He also regularly offered to buy the Production staff meals as a way to make up to us that we were there after hours, on weekends, at 2 a.m., working on things he’d given us only an hour before, and already very late. Because that will make up for it. You turned this in extremely late, but you bought us pizza, so it all washes. I don’t think anyone in the entire organization made me as regularly furious and frustrated as Flanders did.
But in the end, he always meant well, which is why he only rates The Bad instead of The Ugly.
LURCH
Why do we call him Lurch? He was tall, gangly, never seemed to have an expression or a reaction to anything, and never seemed to be rooted in the present.
Lurch used to be the lead architect. But he was quickly found out as incompetent, and was demoted. That should say something right there. Lurch should have been fired long ago, but as fate would have it, he became very sick and ended up on disability for a long while. He recovered from his illness substantially enough to return to work in May, much to the chagrin of most of the office. Don’t misunderstand – we were glad he was recovered and felt well enough to return to work. We were just sorry he returned to work. Lurch was the subject the only time I ever heard Flanders speak less than saintly about anyone: we were closing in on a submittal and client comment response, and Flanders was bordering on nervous breakdown (again). I was there late as well, and was making chitchat in the kitchenette with Flanders, when I heard him complain that Lurch wasn’t doing anything; that every time he gave Lurch a client comment to respond to, Lurch would sit at the design table and flip through the drawings again and again, until Flanders came back to realize that Lurch had neither done the response, nor even made a single note toward that end, so Flanders had to do that too. Basically, Lurch was sitting dumbly at the design table, taking up space and costing money. This all may sound callous of me. Rosie, how can you say such a thing about the recovering ill? But here’s how I see it: if the recovering ill are well enough to return to work, they need to be well enough to do work. There’s a certain amount of slack to be cut for them while they get back up to speed, but I have no respect for sitting still and making absolutely no progress while everyone else races around to meet deadlines.
He narrowly misses The Ugly because a) I worked with him very little, and b) he was out of the office for over 6 months, so he didn’t have enough chances to piss me off.
CRUNCHY
Crunchy, an electrical engineer, seemed innocuous at first, but he quickly became one of the absolute worst people with whom I’ve ever worked. I named him Crunchy because he was very Granola: shopped exclusively at Whole Foods, biked to work, ingested nothing impure, and made sure everyone knew it and knew what was wrong with what THEY were doing. I heard him harass Awesome Admin 1 regularly as to the use of high-fructose corn syrup in this food item or that. Once when I was making a mid-day Target run, I good-naturedly asked him if he needed me to pick him up anything (I usually asked the people in my proximity). He gladly accepted, asking me to pick him up sugar-free, caffeine-free herbal cough drops. Do what now? (Turned out he wanted Ricola.)
The problem with Crunchy was that he hadn’t matured emotionally past the age of 8. Whiny, elitist, chauvinistic, self-righteous, and quick to anger, are all terms I would use to describe him. He would interrupt you in a heartbeat, but god help you if you returned the favor. His work was most important, far more important than yours, and if CADD was too busy with other work to do Crunchy’s drawings in the timeframe that Crunchy deemed acceptable, BossMan would often hear about it. He was never wrong. Never. And he would have screaming fights with you over the (open area!) design table if you thought otherwise. I distinctly remember one such fight with one of his underlings (who was as stubborn and as much of a bully as Crunchy was) back in August, in which Underling stormed off while Crunchy was talking and Crunchy demanded Underling’s badge on the spot, and in which the yelling got to be so overwhelming for Crunchy that he actually smacked the design table and screamed like a little boy having a temper tantrum.
I recall back in the spring when Awesome Admin 1 was still with us, and he asked her to fax something for him. Awesome Admin 1 was very busy, working furiously on the Specs for the approaching deadline. Crunchy got increasingly angry at her repeated refusals, and ended up spitting, “Fine, I’ll do it myself!” He spent probably more than five minutes trying to induce her to do it for him; it would have taken him less than two to walk over and do it himself in the first place.
I recall in May, when Crunchy was about to go on a two-week absence, he asked me to water his plants for him. It seemed a simple favor, so I said sure, no problem; how often should they be watered? He shrugged off the question as silly: “Oh just water them when you water everyone else’s plants.” In hindsight, I deeply truly wish I had simply said, “Okay, I’ll do that,” and let the damned things die. Instead, I ‘fessed up that I don’t water anyone’s plants, and he seemed annoyed at the inconvenience of having to offer a schedule.
I recall another time in late June. Note that, in preparation for this final submittal, I had printed out copies of everyone’s design reports for them to review, verify, and revise as necessary. Because Crunchy was only sporadically in the office anymore, I gave the reports for the electrical group to Crunchy’s second-in-command and let Crunchy know via email. Well, now it’s late June, the date BossMan declared as Pencils Down is tomorrow, and Crunchy has decided to start looking over his design reports. He asks me to print him copies of them. I dislike repeating work, especially if that work involves the wasting of paper, so I told him, “I printed all of your design reports and gave them to Second about a month ago, remember?” He huffs up, turns on his heel, and storms away, tossing poutily over his shoulder, “A month ago is like an ETERNITY now, Rosie!” Feel free to laugh. I did.
WEASEL
*Update 07/30/2008: I stand corrected. Lest anyone draw parallels between this individual and a certain fictional heroic mongoose, I have changed this person’s pseudonym from Rikki Tiki Tavi to Weasel. However, I hold that I cannot be held responsible for not knowing my Kipling, when I never actually read Kipling.*
Named for the creature like which he looked and behaved, this civil engineer was originally listed under merely The Bad, but the more I wrote, the more I remembered, and decided to reassign him.
Weasel was a junior civil engineer. But he wasn’t some 20-something out of college, paying his proverbial dues. He was mid-30s, and a three-time failure of the Professional Engineer (PE) exam. Apparently, fourth time was the charm (I don’t even know if they let you take the driving test four times!), because he FINALLY got his license in June. However, license in hand, he quit the same week I did. As I understand it, it was because BossMan refused to then give him the lead civil engineer spot.
Nor was this unfounded refusal. Weasel’s work was never complete. He’d say he was done, but the next day there he was, back at the design table, correcting something he’d forgotten about, after which he would say that he was *now* done. This sequence would repeat until the submittal went to print, and inevitably there would still be holes in his work big enough to drive a truck through. In those stand-up meetings, if BossMan was offering tips for or criticism of the group as a whole, Weasel was the only one to jump in and insist that whatever it was hadn’t been his fault because Thisperson hadn’t done such, and Thatperson never gave him such… Always very defensive and ready to redirect blame. A leader owns up to his misdoings, accepts that something could use adjustment, and looks for ways to ensure that such a problem doesn’t happen again. No, Weasel, you are no one’s leader.
As if the lack of professionalism wasn't bad enough, Weasel earned a reputation as a Taker. Anytime anything was provided free, he would take it. And take. And take, and take, and take. The concept of sharing or fairness seemed to elude him. CADDMan kept a pretzel barrel full of snacks for the CADDCrew - granola bars, single serve baggies of chips; Weasel would steal them every day, and never offered anything back. Awesome Admin 3 and I kept candy bowls at our desks to foster goodwill (and okay, to satisfy chocolate cravings); Weasel always had his hands in them. If a picnic or potluck were thrown, you could expect Weasel to whip out Tupperware and pack some (read: three days' worth) to take home with him. If there was leftover food from a meeting, Weasel would be on his second plateful by the time you got to the kitchen. Our office tried to institute something called Friday Treats, administered by Awesome Admin 2, in which two people on a rotating list would provide treats (bagels, doughnuts, cookies, etc) every Friday; Weasel wasn't on the list, but he was always at the Treats table. And the crowning glory: Awesome Admin 3 was gathering table items for a holiday potluck and had set out a cheap dollar-store white lacey tablecloth. When she looked for it the next day to prepare the table, the tablecloth was gone. She looked everywhere, asked everyone, sent out an email... and finally found it. Weasel had assumed that, since it was left out in the open, it was free for the taking. We never could figure out what he planned to do with it.
REDNECK
You remember Redneck. I wrote him an open letter last June. This is the same guy who could not control his bodily functions behind the invisible soundproof barrier that was the threshold to his open office. But I’ll give a light shading to him here, just for fun.
Redneck was Weasel's supervisor; the main point that was in Weasel’s favor for The Bad label rather than The Ugly was that Redneck made Weasel so much better by comparison.
Redneck was from Texas, and wanted everyone to know. It was hard to miss, between the accent, the expressions, the manners, and the attitude.
I distinctly remember an argument he tried to have with Awesome Admin 1 over something that was in fact his responsibility to do, but he was simply too lazy and too poor a time-manager to do it himself. Awesome Admin 1 steadfastly refused to do it – she had enough of her own work to do, and it was his responsibility. Redneck actually pulled out this chestnut (paraphrasing): Let’s compare what it would cost per hour for him to do it, to what it would cost per hour for her to do it, and see which of these scenarios cost the company less money. Say it with me: Asshole. Classless, elitist son of a bitch.
This is also the same guy that dragged the August design report so late that I ended up putting in 139 hours in two weeks, and caused the print shop to stay operational 24-hours a day for four straight days in order to meet the deadlines we imposed. The same guy that, when I demanded he stop working on a document because it was already past due and he was just going to have to deal with unfinished work, abjectly refused and got so ugly about it that Awesome Admin 3 had to get me out of the office before I did something I might regret.
KOMRAD
Old Company tended to have a revolving door when it came to staffing. After every submittal, BossMan would be given an edict to cut the fat, and about a quarter to a third of the staff would be sloughed off. Which would be followed shortly by a hiring frenzy when it was made plain that the remaining employees couldn’t handle all the work on their own. I know, I know.
Anyway, not wanting to be part of the blood-letting, our lead structural engineer jumped ship back in January, leaving a junior engineer all alone to handle, well, a metric ton of work that he was neither prepared nor trained for. He did beautifully, considering: his work was always in on time, succinct, and complete. But it came to light in May that he was afraid they were going to make him stamp the drawings, and since he was only a junior engineer, he didn’t want that much pressure. Nevermind that, as a junior engineer, he didn’t have a stamp with which to stamp the drawings, nor could he be listed as the engineer of record because he lacked a PE certification. So maybe that was just an excuse and he didn’t want to tell BossMan that it was simply an awful working environment. Whatever.
In June, we got a new structural engineer, a real live PE. I call him Komrad because he was Russian and it’s as good a nickname as any other (Boris wouldn’t work – there was a Boris already in the company). BossMan set him to answering client comments based on the existing drawings and calcs, and asked Komrad to alert him (BossMan) to any inconsistencies or problems. Everything’s going smoothly, and Komrad has his new calcs for the client comments in on time, and we – a first! – get a submittal out at the 4 p.m. pick-up time! (Normally Commander, Colonel, CADD, and I were there at 8 p.m., frantically trying to package these things up and get them to the shipper’s airport location.) We all breathe a sigh of relief. Until the next morning, when BossMan hands me a list of tracking numbers and tells me to fax the shipper and request the halt and return of all the packages we sent out the day before. It seems Komrad had not touched or even reviewed any material that he himself had not originated, and the comments could not be answered appropriately. Commander had realized this last night as he was trying to finish up the client comment spreadsheet and package it up for shipment. Gossip in the office held that Komrad was so obstinate and such a jerk about it all that Commander and Colonel had both been induced to yelling – yes, Commander CAN yell – and demanded BossMan find a new structural engineer because this guy was simply intolerable.
So it is because of Komrad, and certainly a few others but originally because of Komrad, that I was still in the office at 5:30 p.m. on my last day with Old Company, trying frantically to reprint the new material Komrad had been convinced to provide. I nearly had a nervous breakdown because there was no way I could get it all done, and I gave a very shoddy crash-course to Colonel on everything that was left as he and I were both trying to flee the office.
So I would like to thank you, Komrad, for making my last few days at Old Company pure and utter misery.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
I Miss You
In my solitude (officemate hasn’t materialized as yet), my mind drifts to the people who until recently surrounded me almost every day for 18 months. And I feel a little sad that you all, my lovely readers, didn’t get to play Fly-On-The-Wall and meet these people. Therefore, I would like to offer for your entertainment, a series of character sketches of the more colorful individuals with whom I used to work. Names have been changed to hide the guilty, to mask the innocent,… and to avoid any libel suits.
I begin with the Good: an overview of the people I left at Old Company only regretfully. In truth, my heart and gut still twist a little at having abandoned them. In spite of all the badness to be found there, Old Company was often a fun place to work, and it was largely because of the efforts of these people.
I’ll save the, um… The Rest… for another post.
CADDMAN AND THE CADDCREW
Note: I’ve seen CADD spelled with one D and with two. Acronymfinder.com agrees that both are acceptable. But I always go with two: first, because CADD with two Ds stands for Computer-Aided Drafting and Design, and drafting is important in the work we were doing; and second, to differentiate it from the term “cad,” which according to Dictionary.com is “an ill-bred man, esp. one who behaves in a dishonorable or irresponsible way toward women,” and all of CADD were incomparable gentlemen.
CADDMan and the CADDCrew were my fellow long-suffering Production staffers; they dealt with the drawings whereas I dealt with the documents. When I left, there were just four of them; the others had either run for the hills, or been subject to the callous layoffs that seemed to follow every submittal.
CADDMan gets the superhero name because he gave off a superhero vibe. Larger than life, he was a competitive weight lifter in his spare time, and he loved nothing better at the office than hassling the engineers. He’d insult them right to their faces, and they were never sure whether he was serious or joking, because he’d always follow it up with a big laugh. Most of them wrote it off as joking. Truth is, he was pretty much always serious.
The CADDCrew were my buddies, and we’d snipe about the engineers if we heard any of them make a particularly obnoxious comment or demand, or if they got abnormally out of line. They worked as many or more late nights than I did. What the engineers failed to internalize, while they often made themselves out to be holier-than-thou to us poor pathetic non-engineers, was that the CADDCrew could do most of what the engineers could do: one had earned a degree in mechanical engineering, another one in electrical engineering, and the third had drawn so many architectural drafts that he could probably design a building on his own. However, being the class acts that they were, the CADDCrew never saw fit to wave these facts in the faces of the engineers. Besides, it was more fun to watch CADDMan surreptitiously take the gauntlet to the ingrates.
AWESOME ADMINS 1, 2, and 3
I number these ladies only in the order in which I met them, but let me add that “Administrative Assistant” is a joke of a title compared to what all they did for us. While some of the engineers got some kind of sadistic pleasure in lording their titles, salaries, education, what have you, over them, the reality is that if the Admins all up and walked out, the place would instantly fall to pieces.
Awesome Admin 1 was present at my interview and became my first close friend in the office. We shared a cube wall, and she worked the specification documents while I worked the design reports. We kept each other sane, and she rescued me from more than one corner into which I had painted myself. We both realized that this was a sinking ship about the same time, but she got out first. We still talk most days over IM, but it was a much lonelier place without her there. Not to mention a lot (LOT!) more work! Granted this post is supposed to be about the people I left behind at Old Company, but I just can't talk about Old Company without including her.
Awesome Admin 2 played HR rep on my first day – lots of forms, introduced me around… she kind of became Mom At The Office for some of us, always ready with support and a smile no matter how rotten a day or how rotten the treatment. Her most shining moment, I think, was when she introduced our latest Structural engineer around the office, and she instructed him to be nice to me because it be bad for him if I got angry. And he did!
Awesome Admin 3: I was first attracted by the lure of the shiny candy bowl stationed outside her cube; in the longer run, she was a good friend with a good heart and entirely too generous a spirit. She didn’t really work in our group, but she may as well have, as much as we depended on her to bail us out of a bind. There was the evening in May when she and I spent hours installing spiral spines on deliverable materials because someone didn’t leave enough time to have them professionally done; there was every single submittal when she graciously stopped what she was working on to help me make CD covers and labels because lord knows I couldn’t figure out the printers myself; and there was the scary moment last August when she whisked me out of the office because I was thisclose to losing my temper with a certain Redneck.
COLONEL
Colonel was retired Army, and to be honest, I was never sure where I stood with him until the very end. His speech pattern and tone left a person unsure whether he was good-naturedly teasing them, or whether he was genuinely displeased. Colonel was a techie wizard and was always ready to dig up a program or whip up a macro to help with even the smallest details, and I didn’t always use them, so he’d come by and rib me for missing one typo rather than using the Find/Replace tool (I know I’m hypersensitive, but I honestly couldn’t tell whether he was teasing, or considered me incompetent). That may have sounded like I thought he was a jerk, but much to the contrary, Colonel was a man whose respect you wanted. When word of my notice got around, he came down to inform me that he didn’t recall giving me permission to leave – which was when I finally got it that he thought well of me. I still knew I had to go, but it was nice to know I’d be missed. Colonel was a good friend to me, and bears all my sympathy for having so much stuff dumped on him at the last second there.
COMMANDER
Last, but certainly never least, we have Commander. Commander was retired Navy, and whereas I wasn’t sure in the beginning whether Colonel thought I was incompetent, I knew Commander thought so. I could see it the first time we talked design reports. That’s okay. I like low expectations. It only made the victory that much more impressive when I knocked it out of the park, and it was that much more valuable when I earned his respect. (To be fair, Awesome Admin 1 informed me that my predecessor had set the bar pretty far down.) Commander oversaw the design report before I got there (okay, after I got there too, but he was glad to hand off the greater part of it) and, unlike the engineers, Commander could write – he’d done a fair amount of it for senior officers while in the Navy so he developed a very strong hand. Commander never yelled. He didn’t need to. But if his voice got tight and clipped, and his speech pattern slowed, you were wise to pay attention and watch yourself. A little grovelling probably wouldn't hurt at that point. He commanded respect like few I’ve ever seen in my career. Because of all of this, over the next year and a half, Commander ended up becoming something of a mentor to me. I cannot measure the amount I learned from him, including the ingraining of the difference between “shall” and “will” in government documents. In all honesty, if he’d been running the project from the start, I have a feeling I’d still be there, as might some other valuable individuals. Commander, in the immortal words of Dorothy to the Scarecrow, I think I’ll miss you most of all.
(Next post: The Bad, and The Ugly…)
I begin with the Good: an overview of the people I left at Old Company only regretfully. In truth, my heart and gut still twist a little at having abandoned them. In spite of all the badness to be found there, Old Company was often a fun place to work, and it was largely because of the efforts of these people.
I’ll save the, um… The Rest… for another post.
CADDMAN AND THE CADDCREW
Note: I’ve seen CADD spelled with one D and with two. Acronymfinder.com agrees that both are acceptable. But I always go with two: first, because CADD with two Ds stands for Computer-Aided Drafting and Design, and drafting is important in the work we were doing; and second, to differentiate it from the term “cad,” which according to Dictionary.com is “an ill-bred man, esp. one who behaves in a dishonorable or irresponsible way toward women,” and all of CADD were incomparable gentlemen.
CADDMan and the CADDCrew were my fellow long-suffering Production staffers; they dealt with the drawings whereas I dealt with the documents. When I left, there were just four of them; the others had either run for the hills, or been subject to the callous layoffs that seemed to follow every submittal.
CADDMan gets the superhero name because he gave off a superhero vibe. Larger than life, he was a competitive weight lifter in his spare time, and he loved nothing better at the office than hassling the engineers. He’d insult them right to their faces, and they were never sure whether he was serious or joking, because he’d always follow it up with a big laugh. Most of them wrote it off as joking. Truth is, he was pretty much always serious.
The CADDCrew were my buddies, and we’d snipe about the engineers if we heard any of them make a particularly obnoxious comment or demand, or if they got abnormally out of line. They worked as many or more late nights than I did. What the engineers failed to internalize, while they often made themselves out to be holier-than-thou to us poor pathetic non-engineers, was that the CADDCrew could do most of what the engineers could do: one had earned a degree in mechanical engineering, another one in electrical engineering, and the third had drawn so many architectural drafts that he could probably design a building on his own. However, being the class acts that they were, the CADDCrew never saw fit to wave these facts in the faces of the engineers. Besides, it was more fun to watch CADDMan surreptitiously take the gauntlet to the ingrates.
AWESOME ADMINS 1, 2, and 3
I number these ladies only in the order in which I met them, but let me add that “Administrative Assistant” is a joke of a title compared to what all they did for us. While some of the engineers got some kind of sadistic pleasure in lording their titles, salaries, education, what have you, over them, the reality is that if the Admins all up and walked out, the place would instantly fall to pieces.
Awesome Admin 1 was present at my interview and became my first close friend in the office. We shared a cube wall, and she worked the specification documents while I worked the design reports. We kept each other sane, and she rescued me from more than one corner into which I had painted myself. We both realized that this was a sinking ship about the same time, but she got out first. We still talk most days over IM, but it was a much lonelier place without her there. Not to mention a lot (LOT!) more work! Granted this post is supposed to be about the people I left behind at Old Company, but I just can't talk about Old Company without including her.
Awesome Admin 2 played HR rep on my first day – lots of forms, introduced me around… she kind of became Mom At The Office for some of us, always ready with support and a smile no matter how rotten a day or how rotten the treatment. Her most shining moment, I think, was when she introduced our latest Structural engineer around the office, and she instructed him to be nice to me because it be bad for him if I got angry. And he did!
Awesome Admin 3: I was first attracted by the lure of the shiny candy bowl stationed outside her cube; in the longer run, she was a good friend with a good heart and entirely too generous a spirit. She didn’t really work in our group, but she may as well have, as much as we depended on her to bail us out of a bind. There was the evening in May when she and I spent hours installing spiral spines on deliverable materials because someone didn’t leave enough time to have them professionally done; there was every single submittal when she graciously stopped what she was working on to help me make CD covers and labels because lord knows I couldn’t figure out the printers myself; and there was the scary moment last August when she whisked me out of the office because I was thisclose to losing my temper with a certain Redneck.
COLONEL
Colonel was retired Army, and to be honest, I was never sure where I stood with him until the very end. His speech pattern and tone left a person unsure whether he was good-naturedly teasing them, or whether he was genuinely displeased. Colonel was a techie wizard and was always ready to dig up a program or whip up a macro to help with even the smallest details, and I didn’t always use them, so he’d come by and rib me for missing one typo rather than using the Find/Replace tool (I know I’m hypersensitive, but I honestly couldn’t tell whether he was teasing, or considered me incompetent). That may have sounded like I thought he was a jerk, but much to the contrary, Colonel was a man whose respect you wanted. When word of my notice got around, he came down to inform me that he didn’t recall giving me permission to leave – which was when I finally got it that he thought well of me. I still knew I had to go, but it was nice to know I’d be missed. Colonel was a good friend to me, and bears all my sympathy for having so much stuff dumped on him at the last second there.
COMMANDER
Last, but certainly never least, we have Commander. Commander was retired Navy, and whereas I wasn’t sure in the beginning whether Colonel thought I was incompetent, I knew Commander thought so. I could see it the first time we talked design reports. That’s okay. I like low expectations. It only made the victory that much more impressive when I knocked it out of the park, and it was that much more valuable when I earned his respect. (To be fair, Awesome Admin 1 informed me that my predecessor had set the bar pretty far down.) Commander oversaw the design report before I got there (okay, after I got there too, but he was glad to hand off the greater part of it) and, unlike the engineers, Commander could write – he’d done a fair amount of it for senior officers while in the Navy so he developed a very strong hand. Commander never yelled. He didn’t need to. But if his voice got tight and clipped, and his speech pattern slowed, you were wise to pay attention and watch yourself. A little grovelling probably wouldn't hurt at that point. He commanded respect like few I’ve ever seen in my career. Because of all of this, over the next year and a half, Commander ended up becoming something of a mentor to me. I cannot measure the amount I learned from him, including the ingraining of the difference between “shall” and “will” in government documents. In all honesty, if he’d been running the project from the start, I have a feeling I’d still be there, as might some other valuable individuals. Commander, in the immortal words of Dorothy to the Scarecrow, I think I’ll miss you most of all.
(Next post: The Bad, and The Ugly…)
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Time for a Change
Well hello my little Rosie-fans! I bet you thought I’d abandoned you. What’s that? You know better than that now? Oh I had hoped so. By now you’re aware that my extended absences generally mean Submittal Time, and you’d partially be right. But there’s more – so much more.
I think everyone knew I was getting fed up with Company. Low appreciation and minimal respect from everyone but those least obligated to offer it. Late nights and long hours. Rotten attitudes, chauvinism, and elitism from engineers. A complete and utter disregard for deadlines except from the Production and QA staff. It was just getting to be too much, and as I looked down the road, I knew I couldn’t do this forever. Something had to change. And, as it was proven time and again, the thing to change was simply not going to be Management. So I decided to pick up and make camp elsewhere.
I originally had a bitter diatribe right here as to the events leading up to my grand exit, but I decided not to punish my good friends, and instead to let the past be the past already. Besides, most of you have heard it, and those who haven’t can guess (clue: a 22-hour day).
I write to you now from my new laptop in my new office (with a window!) at New Company. It’s only my second day, and I’m still a little overwhelmed and lonely and lost, but this is my fourth new job in three years, so I’m getting used to the feeling.
I think everyone knew I was getting fed up with Company. Low appreciation and minimal respect from everyone but those least obligated to offer it. Late nights and long hours. Rotten attitudes, chauvinism, and elitism from engineers. A complete and utter disregard for deadlines except from the Production and QA staff. It was just getting to be too much, and as I looked down the road, I knew I couldn’t do this forever. Something had to change. And, as it was proven time and again, the thing to change was simply not going to be Management. So I decided to pick up and make camp elsewhere.
I originally had a bitter diatribe right here as to the events leading up to my grand exit, but I decided not to punish my good friends, and instead to let the past be the past already. Besides, most of you have heard it, and those who haven’t can guess (clue: a 22-hour day).
I write to you now from my new laptop in my new office (with a window!) at New Company. It’s only my second day, and I’m still a little overwhelmed and lonely and lost, but this is my fourth new job in three years, so I’m getting used to the feeling.
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