Bringing the Drama

Sometimes at work the way things happen I feel like I’m in a cartoon. Things that happen would make a great comic strip. The other day was one of those times. Useful story acronyms: In The Room That I Was In (ITRTIWI), Lady Running The Meeting (LRTM).

Tuesday at work I had to go to a training class. I will have to go to the same training class again because of what happened. About 2 pm, I went down to the conference room for the meeting. It was going to be a teleconference with video, so basically a lady was going to be showing a video on her computer that we could all see. Everyone starts tying into the telecon and there are so many people talking at once. I was in a room of probably 50 or 60 people, but the commotion on the phone was crazy. The LRTM was taking roll of people who were online, so someone ITRTIWI told her “we have attendance sheets we can send you”. Other people are saying their name and spelling them out for her. One guy had two R’s in his name, so he says “Larry, L-A-R-R-Y.” The way he said the R’s sounded like a pirate. Some coworkers and I started laughing at the pirate tied in to the telecon. Then someone asks him to repeat it, so he does it again. More hilarity ensues. Then after all this has played out, the LRTM then drops this bomb, “oh, I can’t get the meeting software working, so everyone will just have to listen to the audio from the video.” WHAT? Then someone ITRTIWI figured out how to access the video. I think the LRTM had emailed them a link or something. THE VIDEO WAS ON A WEBSITE! It was a 60 Minutes video on cbsnews.com! So instead of just telling everyone “hey, everyone load up this webpage and we’ll all hit play at the same time”, there was mass confusion and people couldn’t figure out how to get the meeting software to work. Next thing I know, someone leading the meeting ITRTIWI says “why doesn’t everyone connect to us, and we can broadcast the video?” Great idea, so everyone tries to connect to us. I tried to suggest telling everyone the web address, but I was drowned in the cacophony of the moment. There is still a lot of talking on the telecon, people asking where they’re from and stuff. One lady was from Palo Alto. WHY? Then just when you think things will finally get rolling and we’ll watch this video on cyber crime or something, someone trips over the power cord and shuts the computer down, which shut the online meeting down, which threw EVERYONE online into panic. It was decided that the meeting would have to be rescheduled for another day when things did not go so horribly wrong. I’m not sure about the people on the telecon. At least I signed the attendance sheet.

Monday at work was insane. And I know people say they have crazy days at work, but Monday I was teetering on the edge of freak out most of the day. I don’t normally get that stressed about work. Sure I might see how things can be done better and feel frustrated that I can’t do anything about it and decisions that need to be made are higher than even my managers’ level, but nothing approaching Monday. I’ve been working on some analysis that’s due at the end of the week. It’s been going rather well I think, and I’m learning a lot. Last Thursday a couple of schedule people came to my desk to ask me about some work I had done in June and July. Apparently the drawing associated with that work is on the schedule for release. Why? Because someone thinks it should be, even though we don’t have the part finalized, someone needs to check a box. That’s not what caused the insanity. I came and worked OT over the weekend on the stuff I’m working on that’s due at the end of this week. Monday my manager looks at the stuff I had done over the summer and says to redo it using newer information. Basically do a month’s amount of work in a few hours. I totally understood, and knew if I had more notice that things were happening, I could have been working towards getting it done. I didn’t want to be the reason the drawing didn’t get released, so I started redoing the work wanting to get it done for 3 pm. Of course stuff didn’t work exactly right, so I had to ask for help, but my usual channels to go to for help were not available every time I had to go ask. So I was delayed, and I could see what I needed to do and what I wanted to do but I couldn’t do it. The lack of available help bothers me a lot about my job. It’s not something that appears to be getting any better, even after MONTHS of this happening. In a staff meeting Monday afternoon, they actually said “we know you analysis guys are overworked, but we won’t ask you to do the work of 5 people.” I’m doing the work of 3 people, so maybe technically they are correct. Anyway, so it came to the 3 pm meeting and it went fine, I didn’t get put on the spot for anything, and me not having the new analysis ready was never an issue. The freak out never really came, but it did come really close. Today seemed to be much calmer, which is fine, but the overall picture hasn’t changed a bit, which is not fine. Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about it.

Monday was balanced out with what I hope will be a seriously great experience using Craigslist. I don’t want to jinx it, so I’ll wait until the transaction is finalized Wednesday afternoon to type about it, but it definitely made up for a crappy day at work.

So I’ve been sitting next to KCOG for a month or so now and it’s been about what I expected. The old man sweater wearing, the simple questions about things he should know by now, the people coming by his desk to just talk, but what I didn’t plan on were the random conversation starters. The way we sit has our cube openings facing each other, so I can see him out of the corner of my eye and vice versa. Recently he has started to turn to me and just randomly say a statement like “I told them I didn’t want to go to that meeting” or “I was in an online conversation with someone from the bank and they kept asking me my name”. He does this so I have to turn and acknowledge him, and then he’ll continue the story. I always turn, because I’d feel bad otherwise, but the whole time I’m looking at him I’m thinking “I don’t care about any of this”. I’ve been able to avoid the random backrubs that I heard KCOG likes to give, so I figure I’m doing okay.

More recently, someone came to his desk and KCOG let him in on a little secret. Apparently KCOG knows about an investment opportunity and really wants to get “Guy who came by” in on it. KCOG was telling GWCB to talk to ‘the boss’ (ie wife) and if she’s cool with it, GWCB will just have to give KCOG his account number, routing number, and some other banking number. I thought “that sounds like a plan with disaster written all over it”.

BTW, I bookmarked a few news stories that I found interesting, here they are:

This lady was late on a couple of credit card payments, the bank jacked up her interest rate because she doesn’t have a full-time job and made late payments. To fight the higher rate, she made a youtube video telling the bank they were being terrible people. The bank eventually had some VP guy call her and lower her rate. Who started this fiasco? The lady getting the lowered interest rate. More of that great “it’s not my problem, someone fix it for me” attitude.

Two teenagers working at Domino’s managed to get everyone at their store fired by being complete morons. They’re being charged with food tampering, but I think they should be more afraid of their former co-workers kicking their ass.

If you ever wanted to track sex offenders on your iPhone, there’s an app for that.

(sorry for the downer post, but i just felt like typing this. more fun update before i leave for Big D tomorrow morning)

A couple of weeks ago I had posted on FB that I wanted a job where I could be respected. It was only partly in jest. They are moving our desks at work, and after a year or so of sitting near BO guy, they’re going to move me next to KCOG. I’ve tried to ask to move, like our manager who set out the seating chart mentioned we could do in the staff meeting. I did what he said to do by going to talk to our admin, who told me there were plenty of other people who asked to move. The seating arrangement doesn’t make any sense. His response to this, instead of just talking to each person, asking them why they wanted to move, and then making a decision, was to just rule out all requests. As if it was too hard to deal with things. Way to energize the team!

The way the desks are set up, the one opening to my new cube will be facing KCOG’s desk. KCOG seems to like to eavesdrop when I’m talking to people at desks around him as it is, so now he’s going to have a direct line of sight to me so he can listen in to phone conversations, what I’m doing on my computer, listening when people stop by. He’s the one person in my entire department I would not want to sit next to. I’d take sitting next to BO Guy (same distance away) because least he doesn’t kind of stalk people. We had reached an unspoken accord where he didn’t bother me much at all, at least directly. The loud phone calls to IT every other day didn’t help, but at least he wasn’t getting into my business. How KCOG wasn’t fired after the Christmas party fiasco is an unsolved mystery.

I’m not sure if any of this has to do with my manager’s belief that I’m a short-timer. The leadership program I’m in requires me to move between departments, which I have done, but I’m done with that aspect of it now. I have been in my current department over two years, and still get stuck working with guys like White Shoes, who do not know how to design. I’ve been the one changing the design of the parts we have a stake in, and I’m not even supposed to be the designer. He’s the manager’s golden boy, so he leads meetings, he gets responsibilities that I think maybe should get. At least someone else should get them so as to put a better face to the department. Whatever, none of that has changed.

The past few months I’ve been applying to jobs in Birmingham, and last week found a job in Nashville. It’s been a dream to move to Nashville for a very long time. There are not many engineering type jobs in Nashville, but one came up last week. The job posting said it was going to be listed until August 18. I went online last night (August 17) and the listing was gone. This was frustrating, because I was actually looking forward to applying for it, and even though I might have not been the best qualified, I would have written a great cover letter. The job I had applied for here to get a promotion got canceled, so it’s almost as if doors keep closing on me.

The funny thing is, a few years ago I hated NOLA, but liked my job. Now it’s the complete opposite. I don’t like going to work and being under-appreciated and undervalued. I want to do something that matters.

so this afternoon, i loaded up the text updated webpage for the USA/Spain soccer game. the way the US had been playing the last few weeks, and the fact that Spain had not lost in 3 years, made me think the US would be lucky to only lose by 2 goals. following soccer like i have the last couple of years, i know the US is not on par with the BEST TEAM ON THE PLANET. i’m guessing the players watched the pregame speech clip from Miracle or something.

i started reading the feed about the 20 minute mark in the game, and when the score updated to 1-0 USA, i had to read it a few times and refresh the page. the USA scored? they scored FIRST? what? after the first goal, i loaded up the text updates from the BBC. i scrolled back to see what they were saying, and i saw this quote from before the game that i thought was awesome:

Having been on the periphery of success for so long, Spain are now THE dominant force in world football. They are Euro 2008 champions, ranked number one on earth, haven’t been beaten in 35 games and have won their last 15 in a row. The perennial dark horses, Espana are now the hot favourites for next year’s World Cup. Faced with all of that, do USA give themselves a prayer of pulling off an enormous upset tonight? Of course they do. They’re Americans.

that’s right, because there is ALWAYS A CHANCE! the game got to halftime and it was still 1-0. i got to doing some other work, and kept an eye on the text updates. when the score changed to 2-0, i pounded my desk in amazement. how is this possible? how come no one else at work follows soccer? 2-0 on freaking Spain? this is Miracle on Ice stuff here! when full time was called, it was amazing. the US pulled the biggest upset in modern US soccer history. sure, they’ve beaten Mexico in Mexico, but Spain? SPAIN? Spain, the team loaded with players considered the best at their positions in the world, who were about to set a world record for consecutive victories as a national team? the same US team who were embarrassed last week against Italy and Brazil? INCREDIBLE!

i had seen a poll earlier this morning before the game asking “how much would it matter if the US beat Spain today?” 28% of the people on ESPN.com said “not at all”. hopefully after today some of them have changed their mind.

and then i came home and watched LSU handle Texas and win the CWS. while great, it was not as big a deal, because i guess i was expecting it, plus i’ve seen it 5 times before.

you know how lately bands from the late 90s and early 00s have been going “hey, we’re tired of working at the Gap, let’s go out on tour! i don’t hate you anymore!”? No Doubt and blink-182 (WTF?) are the latest bands to have this happen. i think it mostly started with Rage Against The Machine’s ‘reunion’. oh what, no new record? they got back together so they could be needed? what a bunch of BS. ANYWAY…..today i was perusing any available concerts coming to NOLA. i did see The Donnas are coming, a few years late for me, but still. the show that obviously is going to be the concert of the year is Sugar Ray being supported by Fastball! OMG! is it the One or Two Hit Wonders United tour? it must be. i laughed when i thought they’re going to be up on stage with people yelling for the 3 songs they know total and the bands are going to be wanting to play the songs they’ve written on their hiatuses from civilization the past 10 years.

random dude: “PLAY I WANNA FLY! I WANNA FLY!”
lead singer of SR: “no see, we all got together over the holidays and wrote a bunch of new songs for you guys!”
entire crowd: “BOOOOOOOOOO!”

it could possibly be a glorious moment, but one i’m not willing to shell out $30 to go see.

also strange today in addition to the usual shenanigans from BO Guy, i got a very nice compliment about how i should quit engineering and become a model, because i’m so handsome. sounds great right? well, this lady has been sitting near me for a couple of weeks. i knew her from a while back, and she was always so nice. like i think she probably makes cookies on the weekends for neighborhood kids. anyway, since she’s been sitting near me, i’ve noticed how much she hates NOLA. i don’t know exactly where she’s from, but she’s not from here, and she’s quick to point that out if she can. last week she brought in a blueberry pie she had made and offered me a piece. i turned her down because i don’t like blueberries, but when i told her she said “that’s okay, i don’t like crawfish”. what? i know maybe people don’t like NOLA, i get that. i think it’s stupid how the mayor of NOLA is quarantined in China for the swine flu. (what the hell is he doing in China?) i don’t like people openly criticizing it over and over again, especially when they are not from here. if she hates it so bad, then why doesn’t she leave? anyway, all that kind of stuff made me kind of not like her, and today the model comment threw everything off. i don’t know how to feel about her now….but at least she thinks i’m really really really ridiculously good looking. let’s go grab some orange mocha frappacinos!

today at work was the big review that we’ve been working on for weeks. i was nervous about the slides i had done being presented by my manager. i will now attempt to explain why in terms of being an NSync fan. i like NSync, i know most of their songs, but i haven’t been a fan long enough to know details that would make my fandom impressive to other fans….at least i don’t think so. my friend Chad, he knows JC’s hometown and birthday, Fat One’s g/f’s name, he’s friends with Justin on Facebook, where the band was discovered, and what each of their singles are. basically he’s a hardcore know it all as far as NSync goes. so anyway, my NSync slides got presented today and didn’t garner many questions, which is what i wanted. you don’t want a lot of questions at the reviews, because that means what you have presented is not enough information. the slides were even old slides from before i emailed newer slides that had me staying at work till 7:40 the other night. so things went totally fine for everyone involved, and i’m glad it’s over.

one of the adventures today was accidentally not having the mute button on my phone working right. i “tied in” to the meeting at my desk after lunch so i could work on some other stuff. i called in to the number and hit the mute button on my phone. i put the phone down and i heard “does someone have an open mic?” the guy who sits next to me asks “is it on mute?” i looked at the phone and the mute button was lit, so i said “yeah, you can say whatever you want!” then we hear “can someone mute their phone because we can hear you.” i hit the mute button again and apparently it has to be blinking for the mute to be on. as you can probably figure out, i don’t use my phone on mute very often.

since that fateful night with friends at the Greek Fest, i have been going non stop. work has been crazy lately with a big review coming up at the end of this week. that means we’ve been working on slides and reports lately. it’ll all be over once the review is over, and thanks to some forward thinking by one of my managers (i kind of have 5 different bosses/managers) we are done all the main stuff and this week are just tying up loose ends and checking details.

last weekend though, after working a few hours of OT, i went out with some friends in NOLA, hoping to meet up with a friend from Birmingham who was in town for a wedding. she didn’t show, but i still had a good time riding the street car and meeting friends of friends. btw, why does anyone order a beer if they don’t like beer? why order a beer and then only take a sip and be done with it? order a mixed drink or at least water! Sunday i met up with Jacob at the pub to watch some soccer. it was the first time all season we had gone to the pub together, which was a shame.

later in the evening, Whitney and i hit up Brandi Carlile. the show was much better than i thought it would be. i mean, i know my friend Brandi loves Brandi, but the past few months i had taken some of her songs off my iPod. she played a lot of new songs, and everything was acoustic. the new songs were great! and she covered Johnny Cash, the Beatles, and Radiohead. it was an excellent show. the crowd was unique as well, and some 60 something year old lady was trying to move me out of her way so she could move up. i stood my ground. i don’t care if she was only 5 feet tall, i was there first! also Whitney said her breath was horrible.

i’m going to yadda yadda work last week. amongst the highlights were walking past BO Guy on the way out one day and in the midst of saying “have a good night, see you tomorrow!” i took a big whiff of BO and almost suffocated at ’see you tomorrow’. things have been really weird with him lately. he’s been on the phone a lot with health food type people, and he asked some lady last week if avocados and tomatos were considered fresh vegetables. that’s not even the weirdest thing.

the other big things last week were the making of the homemade pasta sauce and the restoration of the front flower beds at my house. the restoration was a 3 day affair, but now i look like i have an actual landscaped front yard. here’s a picture my dad took Sunday afternoon:

actual mulch! hopefully the precautions we took with the weed screens will prevent the weeds from taking over again. also, i killed a few hundred ants in the process and that felt good.

last Friday night was finally the night of the Greek Fest 5k that I’ve been waiting for since at least April. the closer it got the more i found out about the festival; the gyros, the baklava sundaes, etc. i was STOKED about the food. I’d never had baklava, but I have seen my friend Alton make it on his show Good Eats.

i found my friends before the race, and we waited out the 1 mile run. the 5k was going to be at 7:20 pm. the race starts and the gaggle of people is kind of jog/walking really slow, so i broke out onto the other side of the neutral ground (median). i got back onto the right side of the street once i got some open space. the course was down and back along the bayou, which was nice cause they had recently repaved the road so it was nice and smooth. the race started and i was a little over a mile in when the guy who was in first raced past on the other side. I have no idea if he was Kenyan, but he could have been.

the only thing that bothered me about the race was the end. they had men go on one side and women go on the other. i was sprinting the last part of the race and passed a whole bunch of people. then the problem, they had one person handing out these slips to write your time down on, and the lady doing so in the men’s line was really slow about it. most likely they just didn’t have enough people doing it. so there was about 10 feet to go from the finish line to the stopped people. i was running all out to finish and then had to come to a screeching halt. It was a little dangerous.

After the finish line fiasco, I happened upon my friend Melanie’s husband Chris and we stood to watch people finish. We also talked about commuting and running. Kind of made me wish I lived in NOLA, but it’s too expensive for me. After venturing over to the festival, we made our way to the free beer for runners. By the time I made it to the beer truck, Chris had disappeared. I got my beer though, and remembered Corey (the keeper of my car key) said he’d be over by the place they were selling beer. There were probably 4 of those places, but I walked around and luckily he spotted me on his way back to the spot. I thought the festival was closing at 9 pm (which it did on Sunday), and it was 8:22, so I rushed back to my car (parked 5 blocks away) to get money for the gyros and baklava sundae I had been pining for all week. I got back and stood in a really long gyro line. Why did they only have one place to get gyros? I was in line next to these girls who were taunting people in the calamari line because they were disgusted by it. I hope they were just drunk and not stupid, but I think it may have been a little bit of both. By the time I got to the front of the line I decided I wasn’t just getting one gyro, so I bought two.

I was able to get in the sundae line by 8:55 and the line moved pretty quick so I got my sundae by 8:58. I went back to where my friends were and devoured the first gyro. I was very hungry. Nothing closed at 9 pm though, so I had pretty much been worrying for nothing. The gyro was fantastic, as was the baklava sundae. the sundae was definitely delicious enough to live up to the hype. It was a great night hanging out with friends and eating amazing food. i wish there was stuff like that more often.

(side note: after talking about the baklava sundaes, i have been challenged to make some for the first Saints preseason game in August. i accepted the challenge.)

i had a pretty crappy day at work yesterday. Nothing really bad like having to deal with KCOG or anything, but just having stuff to do, and you need some help with it, but no one has the time to help you. I hate those kind of days. I had been emailed a spreadsheet, but in order to work it, I needed help with it. Being able to use the spreadsheet would solve the issue of putting together a presentation for some analysis I have been working on. It was pretty much the last link for what I was going to do. I couldn’t get any help though, because other people who did know were also working on presentations. ARGH. I did the best I could with what I had and called it a day. I was hoping for a better day today, and it was much better. I was able to get the presentation done, even got a sparsely populated report done that I wasn’t sure about. I got an email about a part I’m trying to design with White Shoes, but the email didn’t really need to go to me. Linked from the email though was a report in the format of something I was doing, and it was already finished. I was able to see what a finished version looked like, and was able to get two reports done today. They looked so much better than before. I was pretty excited about them at the end of today. They’re still pretty green as far as information, but at least now they look presentable.

On my way home I heard on the radio about a truck driver who decided this afternoon during rush hour to jacknife his truck on the Twin Span. There are two other routes to get home, and I was taking the one less traveled. On the radio though, the DJ suggests them to which I told him to shut his mouth. There’s no need to direct more people to the backup route before I take it. Traveling the backup route today though I saw where they are filming The Expendables. So basically there’s a giant blockbuster movie filming near my work. It is very cool.

On my way home today, I stopped by the store to pick up a few things. I loaded everything in the refrigerator and then got changed to go run. I heard the fridge make some noise, but it wasn’t anything that scary. It wasn’t like the clicking sound I heard last time. I still was a little worried because when I opened the doors, it didn’t seem cool enough. I didn’t hear the compressor kick on or anything, and I heard water draining (!!!). I took off the grill part and checked the coils. They were pretty filthy, and the water draining was going into the drain pan. Still though, nothing was happening with the compressor. I grabbed the shop vac and cleaned off the coils as best I could. I googled for some answers in case I was going to have to FIX THE FRIDGE MYSELF AGAIN but didn’t find anything. A few minutes after I had vacuumed the coils, the compressor kicked on and everything went back to normal. I was so relieved. I had just bought all that fresh food, and two of the last sixers of Abita Strawberry. Think of the beer!

Of course, by the time fridge resolved itself, it was 8:30. So I’ll go run tomorrow, which is okay because I’m running in the Greek Fest run on Friday. I’m kind of excited about that btw, and hopeful for some cold beer and a gyro post race.