Gossip!

Ooooh.....I got good gossip.....

(1) Guy downstairs from me appears to moving out. Hallelujah! I am so tired of his family (noise monsters from hell) arriving first thing Sunday morning and screaming the place down. And I will love not to listen to his strange grunting noises. I have thought long and hard about what he's up to down there....on his own....and can only come up with images that make my stomach turn.

(2) Went to the dance studio Friday night and, as I was putting on my shoes, who walked in but Joe and Pat. Having a lesson? No, we're just here to practice. Really....how very interesting! Does that mean Pat has stolen Joe away from the clutches of Kathleen, "I'm such a good dancer and I'm going to tell you all", (she isn't and she does)? It's very funny as Sharon was joking only the other day about the two of them going out.....many a true word and all that!

(3) Also on Friday, I saw Kim and Eva, "I'm gonna wear low cut tops even though I'm far too old and show too much wrinkly cleavage plus I'll wear shoes that are too high so I can clutch helplessly on any guy that passes". Guess they're still an item then. Who knows what she sees in him....unless she likes arrogant guys that sleep around. Who knows what he sees in her...must have money cos there's not a lot else going on inside that head of hers.......Robin's gonna love this!!!!

Made some comment to Chris along the lines of "oooh, I see they're all in tonight" and got one of those looks...although there was a little giggle to be heard :-)

And while I'm ranting (or about to)......

This guy at work is irritating the hell out of me. There was an ad online somewhere with the wrong link in it (nothing to do with me, I might add). He calls four people and acts like it's the crisis of the week. It's just a dead link, get a life. Anyway, after I'd managed to stop half of the world running round like headless chickens, I sent him an email (in response to one of his criticising someone in my team, when it was nothing to do with her) suggesting that, in future, he act a little less dramatically and that he apologise (I'm paraphrasing....). Was so angry with him that I actually dreamed about him that evening. I had his head in my hands, holding him by the ears and was yelling at him. Woke up very stressed by it all.

Anyway, we ended up having a real argument in the conference room cos he clearly totally disagreed with me (and everyone else). Apparently, as a manager, it was his responsibility to chase down the offending culprit and resolve the situation. Leaving messages on voicemail was not sufficient...he had to speak to someone in person as he clearly doesn't trust any of us to act on anything he said. This is a production mistake so therefore it's high priority!!!! No, a high priority mistake is when (1) the website is hacked and is displaying porn (although that would be an improvement!) or (2) fraud occurs and all my money is cleaned out from my bank account or (3) something affects the transactional system. It's not when a damn ad, which has probably been out there for ages, has a bad link!!!!!!!!

Then it got better. He told me that a certain person in my team was being hyper-sensitive about things (probably if she's temporarily working for you when your person is on maternity leave cos noone else in your team has the brains to cover the work) and that he wasn't apologising to her. Really? Hyper-sensitive, huh? I read that e-mail you sent and I was pretty furious with you about it. Well I've never been told that my e-mail tone is misleading. First time for everything then!

He is such an idiot. And, when we move our cubes around, I'm going to be cube buddies with him. How long do you think I'll last?

I can't take this anymore from him. He publicly puts down my team (half the size of his) and interferes in projects (like telling the Insurance people we'll work with them when I have absolutely no interest in doing so). Acts like he's god's gift and yet I've seen him in meetings....he can't have a strategic discussion about anything, he won't do anything without the boss approving it first (he's also a jerk...I'll get to that in a moment) and he's lost all respect from anyone in NYC or NJ. We have to cover the maternity leave yet he's doing f*** all to support us with back-fill...but I guess that's cos his projects are so much more important than his. After all, he has so many customers. Yeah but we generated over $3m from just TWO that we signed up this year....what would you rather have....a ton of people that generate nothing or a few that pay our salaries? Seems pretty obvious to me!

Anyway, it sucks being associated with him......

When I started this it was going to be quite short but, as I get going, I feel I need to get all the frustrations out of my system. So...the boss:

He went away on vacation for two weeks (so his wife wouldn't divorce him), leaving me to pull together our plan for next year, which I did. He came back and we've had, so far, three meetings to discuss it (the second as he hadn't read it before the first meeting) and the third as he wanted to compare a ton of documents to see we had the right development items listed (we did). The best he could come up with that I hadn't filled the template out properly! OK, it's a draft, can we discuss the issues. No, I'd rather talk about the template and whether you followed the instructions correct.

After three such meetings I've come to the conclusion (or rather reaffirmed my prior belief) that he just doesn't get it and he doesn't want to. I was talking to my counterpart on the channel management side of things and he agreed. We're meant to have a meeting with the Head of Commercial in a couple of weeks and he's going to totally eat us (or our boss) alive. It might be a good thing for him to be humiliated like that but I have a feeling that shit runs downhill and it's all gonna land on us. So, do I prepare all my ammunition so that I can show him up in the meeting or go with the "flow" and just say "told you so" afterwards? Tough call!

Also (oh yeah, always more), there's a meeting that I want to go to (with the channel manager). We're not allowed as we're not important enough. Ignore the fact that I've been to the last two face to face meetings and attend the monthly phone calls. Also, please ignore the fact that you have no idea what we do and don't understand the nature of these meetings. Guess he just wants a free trip so he can hobnob with the not-so-big boys. Fine. You go then but if you even pick up that phone once to ask me what they're talking about I'll totally tell you how I feel about you...and it won't be flattering. (We WILL ignore the fact that the main reason I wanted to go was so I could catch up with my friend from Mexico....)

There, think that's it. Gotta go play now. ;-)