June was Blooming

Fred's party...June in Bloom...come floral. Suprised Chris by actually turning up in something flowery...silk and see-through....nice "wedding" attire (though don't think anyone I know is planning on getting married in the near future!). Not many of us there and I'd given up a ticket to a party at the zoo (freebie from work...some fund-raising thingy). Just wasn't in the mood for work things so passed it on to someone else. Glad I did. Had a much better time. Lots and lots of dancing with my fave. Mmmmmmmmm.

So...work. Hmmm. Been interesting recently. My team is about half the size of the Personal team...which sucks but is about par for the course. Us poor Commercial people are usually the poor relations....volumes are never as big but we make a helluva lot more $$$$ per customer. So, the head of the department, who's meant to be impartial (but isn't), decides that we're short of testing resources at the end of the year. We have a release planned but he wants to cut it due to lack of testers. Really he wants to cut it so he can do a Personal release. Screw that. My boss and the guy in charge of product development fought him on it but still seems like it's going to be cut...or at least shrunk. Dammit. Chris is deeply depressed, although he keeps telling me that he doesn't care anymore. Yeah, right. The second someone starts on that line I know it's a lie.

Then we have the website, which we also look after. If I hear one more time that we don't have as much going on as the Personal side I'll scream. We have fewer people, how the hell are we meant to do as much as them? It's not possible! Then some bitch from the other team really bugged me. We had a three day meeting with the team from Chicago. Due to start at 8:30am, which is a little early for me but I was there, on time. The developers didn't turn up til after 9am so we started an hour late. When I pointed out the fact that we were behind the bitch makes some comment about how she always gets in at 7:30am. Yes, indeed you do but guess what....I'm not the one running for the door at 4;30pm....I hear them counting down the minutes (yes, totally serious).....plus I happen to have a team that's spread over 3,000 miles and 3 time zones. If I left at 4:30pm I'd miss their entire afternoon. Geddit?

Anyway, that last issue is about to be resolved....we're restructuring. The North American alliance is about to me no more. The US is handing Canada back to the Canadians. In some way that's nice.....too tough trying to manage two countries when nothing else is aligned. On the other hand, I now have to report into my boss's boss (at least we think that's the plan, not yet official). I do like him but he's really not into our side of the business so, up til now, I was just able to set my boss off and he'd go deal with the messy political stuff. I hate that....too prone to speaking my mind and I'm not sure how well that will go down.

Oh well.....that's life I guess.....never a dull moment.......