Tuesday, March 20, 2007

C is for cookie, that's good enough for me!

Two strikes against me this morning when I came in at 9 found out my boss had been looking for me already, and then when I went into his office and "apologized" for not coming back to me work on Friday after my home inspection and he looked at me disapprovingly.

Hey, first of all, nobody told me when I started here what time I was expected to arrive and until somebody does, I'll arrive when I want. I'm not cheating your multi billion dollar company out of 100 bucks a week. In fact, I'm actually doing a couple of hours a week pro bono. And second of all, there is no second of all.

I sound like the worst, most disgruntled employee ever, but in reality I'm not. I am polite to my coworkers. I go out of my way to help them even if it is outside the "parameters" of my job. I do what I am told and I learn quickly.

I'm not punctual though. It's not something I mention in the standard, "What are some of your faults?" question during an interview.

Theres a technical analyst in another department that is closely related to my department. He's been doing this for three years, so I am supposed to collaborate with him on stuff. This guy, he's alright, but he is kind of a blowhard, and a little condescending. For example, he's got it in his head, despite interviewing me and having a copy of my resume, that I am some guy who got a certificate in web design from the University of Phoenix, and by luck of the gods got this great job. Ooo. Long sentence. Where was I? And he feels the need to over explain everything to me. Its to the point where I avoid him at all cost.

The other day he was at my desk showing me some VB6 code he just did. He said, "Ok, now. I want you to look at that function. Go ahead and..." And when I right-clicked and went to "Definition" before he was finished his sentence, he said in a perfect Sesame Street voice, "Heyyy, alright look at you. You're gettin it." I must have blown his mind when I later clicked "Last Position."

He won't give me access to use his underground web server. Any changes to the SQL Server database must be made by him.

My boss has had this project on his mind since I started here. Actually he mentioned it to me in the interview. A dashboard. A place where he could quickly see all his most important stats in one place.

Five months later we are still ironing out all the details. Five months. He finally decided on TWO different stats. Just two. And he wants it to be a web page. Great. That means going through Mr. Hooper.

Mr. Hooper tells me that he can set up a Sharepoint site for me. "That'll be great for you to customize!"

If my life was an episode of Scrubs at that point the scene would cutaway to me flipping his desk over and bashing him over the head with his 21 inch LCD monitor.

Would you ever talk down to a colleague? I don't. Not even to the people who double click a link.

5 comments:

YouWho said...

Dude, that's not cool. Mr. Hooper's dead. Besides, he sounds more like Bob.

Your fantasy cutaway is not Scrubsy enough --no one singing, no marching band, no one in drag. Maybe season 1 Scrubs.

Link double-clicking... you made me LOL.

Big A said...

I have to work with a guy that I have to help with command-line stuff. Whenever he gets a prompt, he has to hit enter like 5 times to make sure the prompt is really there before he can enter a command. Drives me nuts.

gagknee said...

Ohhh, i'm sorry. You're totally right about Bob. I just picked Mr. Hooper out of mid air, more for nostalgia than anything else.

ah, you're right about my cutaway.

:) i'm glad someone caught that. it was funny in my mind at least.

gagknee said...

haha. big a. i do that sometimes. but only after i've already put in commands and/or bad commands.

YouWho said...

Well while we're all sharing... one of the most frustrating guys I had to deal with was a unix admin who when you said "ok, now cd into /var/apache2/logs/2006/05" he typed...

cd /
cd var
cd apache2
cd logs
cd 2006
cd 05

No matter where he was going, every time, one dir at a time. He was an old time unix admin guy, 20+ years in one job. Maybe he was overly cautious because he was using ksh and didn't have the tab and up-arrow features, I dunno.