Thursday, December 13, 2007

Jump to Conclusions

There's a new contractor at work that they hired to replace me. Yesterday, he spent the day with the other contractor. Unfortunately, the other contractor was out sick today (not really a good day to take off, what, with me leaving tomorrow), so the new contractor had to spend the day with me.

I got nothing done.

He looks and sounds like the guy in Office Space who invented the Jump to Conclusions mat. Hence, the picture.

His breath smells bad and his BO got progressively worse during the course of the day, but thats not the worst of it. It was his aggressive invasion of my personal space and the way he "suggested" a better way to do just about everything that I was doing.

He sat right behind me with his elbows on my desk, bumping into me, sweating, and breathing hot air on my ear.

I gave up programming after about a half hour. I couldn't think with him jabbering in my ear. Use DateDiff...That won't work there...I built a control that does this...blah blah blah. I decided to fill out forms to get him his access, and fill out a 10 page questionnaire for IT about our ancillary apps.

Things got so bad at one point I actually went over to my old department for a couple hours on two separate occasions and helped them with some stuff that I have been putting off for months. They were happy. I was just happy to get away.

The first time I left I didn't tell him because he was on the phone, and when I came back he was all indignant and said that he "shoulda just gone home because they aren't paying him to surf the net all day." My response was simply, take advantage of it while you can.

The second time I left he was in my office so I said that I had to head over to Corporate Actions. He volunteered to come, but I stopped him by saying that its probably better if they don't know who he is. "Maintain your anonymity."

He finally left at 5:10. I got more done in the next 20 minutes than I had all day. Well, I got stuff done that I wanted to get done.

Get this, he actually interviewed at the company where my new job is. He probably annoyed the crap out of the hiring manager. One of the things they told me when they interviewed me was that they wanted to hire someone who would fit in with the group.

Yeah.

No comments: