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…)
1 comment:
Caddcrew and the Colonel got the goods out on time. Colonel told me this morning that your explicit instructions were instrumental in their efforts. He spoke highly of you as always. I was in St. Louis setting old fat bald guy national records. Remember "I'll always love you" (Whitney Houston)
RED LIGHT!!!! Caddman
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