BEWARE of TECH BABE

 After another disappointing call with the IT Operations Support Team...

 

Some people don't take warning's seriously. They'll learn.

Off-Site Meetings and Crawl Spaces

Unlike last year, Halloween in the office this year was a bust. Well, I take that back; not a complete bust. The two and a half day off-site meetings this week made it difficult to pull everything together. Even worse, they made us check in our Blackberries and iPhones to keep us from being distracted. That, of course, made it even more difficult to plan anything.

Day one was complete drag. Not because I was bored to death but because I was having anxiety attacks from parting with my geek devices. (No email, Facebook, or Twitter = Social Media Suicide.)

Day two's off-site was at a new fancy pants location - The Ritz. As soon as we all filed into the meeting room everyone had that "WHAT THE FUCK" look on their faces. We couldn't help but wonder how the company could spring for digs like this for a fucking off-site meeting with all the recent talks of budget cuts. We got over that real quick when they served us fancy meals with fancy drinks. The day was wrapping up and we were told we were all going to load into buses and be taken to yet another location for dinner. Destination unknown but a "surprise."

The buses came around and the first group filed in. HOLY SHIT! These were straight party buses complete with two 40" plasmas, laser lights, bumping sounds and a stripper pole! (The night just got better!) The immediate response from the meeting-goers was "fuck yeah!" (I included.) We all took a spin around the pole. (I made $5-cheap bastards.)

We arrive at our dinner destination...Hell's Kitchen! Not exactly, but just about. Everyone was a chef that night wearing aprons and chef hats. I, of course, turned my apron into a mini-dress, as expected. They broke us up into teams and assigned us to our kitchen stations: Salad, Dessert, Chicken and Flank Steak, Pizza, Grilled Veggies, and the Alcohol Pit! While the kitchen looked intimidating, being assigned to the salad station wasn't so bad. I quickly completed my task so I could move on the the bartending pit. Giving me full access to top shelf and premium spirits probably wasn't such a great idea. I was bombed! After kitchen duty and getting all liquored up, we were in for yet another treat! A Halloween maze!

We all loaded into the party buses again and I have to say the stripper pole was put to good use! Again, we were broken into groups and I gave my Halloween Maze disclaimer: "If you're a dude, press up against my ass. If you're a chick, I may dyke out momentarily. Point - STAY CLOSE! I also grab." Those instructions were closely adhered to when we went through a crawl space. Our group may have held up the line just a bit, but being smashed between two other girls was encouraged.

The night came to an end. I still had enough in me to make it to Tequila Thursday just in time for last call.

The entire department strolled in at about 10am the following morning. To liven things up a bit, I had my team dress up as jackasses to align with the donkey pinata and inflatable jackass hanging in my office. I gave them each a set of jackass ears, jackass tails and jackass teeth. We will forever be known as "The Jackass Crew" going forward. So not what I had planned for Halloween in the office, but given the amount of time we had to plan, we came through.

Sick Day

Apparently calling out on a sick day doesn't mean jack shit when you've got a company issued blackberry, laptop and VPN. Got hit with that nasty stomach virus and flu that's been circulating around the office for the past two weeks. I blame the kids. That's right. I fucking said it. Those little germ-infested rug rats pass it on to their parents, aka my co-workers who offer me Krispy Kreme doughnuts. (Fuckers!)

So to make up for my working sick day out of the office, I'm going to go into the office tomorrow and do jack shit! #fuckmondays

Change Control Board

The Change Control Board (CCB) is made up of Business Stakeholders, Project and Program Managers, IT Leads, and monkeys. The purpose of the CCB is to manage overall project scope, or de-scope, in this case. To submit a scope change to the CCB for review, the requestor is required to submit a formal ‘Change Request,’ otherwise known as a ‘CR.’ The past two weeks presented a series of deficiencies with the CCB process:

• There is no end date to submitting CRs; meaning, changes can occur throughout development and testing phases, making the overall project very difficult to manage.
• The CR process is being abused, based on the lack of skill set and knowledge of how to support a business requirement.
• A CR is required for any change to anything. That includes changing fonts from Times New Roman to Arial Narrow on project documents;
• Everyone on the project team keeps their own version of a CR log without sharing it with others and they proceed with the change anyway;
• Sending a CR to someone’s admin does not constitute communication and approval of the change; and
• Having to submit a CR to move whiteboards from one war-room to the next is not okay.

Needless to say, my boss and I had a field day, or week, rather, having to deal with the CCB’s non-sense. The CCB is nothing more than yet another layer of bureaucracy in the world of Project Management. We gave it a fair shot in the beginning, but refused to sit in a CCB Review meeting to discuss what side of the screen an ‘ENTER’ button should sit on or to dig through our overspent budget to support the move of whiteboards. We stopped attending and left it up to the monkeys to notify us of any changes being submitted that was worth our time. This, of course, bit us in the ass.

According to the project schedule, we were in the testing phase. All testing failed due to missing business rules and key functionality. When we asked why these things were missing, we were told, CRs were submitted to the CCB to defer these pieces until a later date. They basically de-scoped the project without filling us in. Why? Because their dev teams in India weren’t working to observe some religious holiday week and their on-shore dev teams were too busy working on personal hot chili recipes for blue-ribbon submission in a fucking strawberry fair. Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?

My boss and I spent the latter part of Friday afternoon to write-up and submit our formal and final change request:

CHANGE REQUESTED: Stop the CCB Process.

REASON FOR CHANGE: It sucks ass.

IMPACT TO PROJECT: Our own sanity.

IMPACT IF CHANGE NOT IMPLEMENTED: Do you recall where the term “postal” came from?

There’s a CCB Review meeting next Tuesday. Let’s see how this goes over. In the meantime, I'm taking the weekend off to refresh and recharge. Yes, that includes high consumption of alcohol and getting laid. I *heart* my job.

“Mumbai Place”

This week was blasted with the usual work drama of ball collecting and sitting in useless meetings with “Dicks.” I think I’ve proven I can handle that. However, there was a layer of unnecessary drama I was caught up in, thanks to my recently departed work spouse. (No, he’s not dead. He was canned.)

On Monday morning I received four voicemail messages from an unfamiliar female voice with a slight Hindi accent. I noticed there was no call back number and the calls were being transferred to my extension from the company operator. The unfamiliar voice never left a name or a phone number but left the following messages:

Message #1:

“Hi, I’m looking for [work spouse] and wanted to know if we can chat a bit. I’ll try again later.”

(Thought Bubble: Who the fuck are you and how did you get my number?)

Message #2:

“Hi, sorry to bother you but I really need to talk to you. I’ll try again later.”

(Thought Bubble: Good luck bitch.)

Message #3:

“I just need to know how close you were with [work spouse]. This is his fiancé.”

(Thought Bubble: What. The. Fuck. [work spouse] is engaged?!?! He told me his wife was coming from Mumbai to live with him here. So confused.)

Message #4:

“You’re either ignoring my calls or really busy.”

(Thought Bubble: What is this? 9-0-2-Jai-Ho? Bitch please!)

I had a sliver of free time on my calendar at 11:30am and wouldn’t you know? The bitch’s timing was impeccable. I answered this time. Here’s the gist…her name is ‘Sharona’ and apparently affianced with [work spouse] yet has no clue that he hasn’t been working here for over two months now. I immediately cleared the air and freed her wandering mind of the thought of me and her fiancé of ever having sex. She went on and explained the last thing she knew was he was taking a leave of absence to go back to Mumbai. She then proceeded to tell me that her sister saw him with another woman at the same restaurant he proposed to her at while he was supposed to be back in Mumbai. (Ouch!!)

While she was giving me the back story, I couldn’t help but think what an asshole my former [work spouse] was. Even knowing what I already knew, I didn’t say a word. She proceeded to tell me the other woman was really his wife! OMFG! The entire time we were on the phone I worked just as fast as TMZ and called the “in-crew” over to my office so they can hear the drama unfold on speaker phone. Before anyone starts with the whole “that’s fucked up” thing, the “in-crew” is made up of the few cool kids in the office: ‘Taline,’ ‘Armond,’ ‘Karina,’ ‘Rico,’ and ‘Sean.’ We tell each other EVERYTHING! Turns out Taline and Karina received the same calls from this voice but never picked up. Sharona was on a mission to find her fiancé. We ended the conversation and she left me her phone number.

Now that the cat was out of the bag the “in-crew” sat in my office to take all of this in. It broke up the day, that’s for sure! We all went to lunch with a new topic of discussion.

On Tuesday, I received another call being transferred from the company operator. I couldn’t answer. An hour later, same phone call. By this time, I was more than annoyed and thought “sorry he fucked you over. Sell the ring. Move on. Stop fucking calling me.”

Later that same afternoon, my phone rang again. I was so prepared to go off on her and tell her this is harassment and don’t have time for your Bollywood soap opera. I picked up the phone in haste but this time, it was another unfamiliar female voice. It was his wife! HOLY SHIT. She, like Sharona, wanted to know what I knew about Sharona, which is nothing. Hell, I didn’t even know [work spouse] was married!

I had enough of this childish bullshit. To settle this once and for all, and to leave me out of it, I thought, why not get the two on a conference call together? What’s one more conference call on my calendar? At least this would be more interesting. So I did. I sent the bridge info to the “in-crew” so they can listen in.

Like any other conference call I announced myself and introduced the wife and the fiancé. There was an awkward silence for the first thirty seconds and I finally got them talking. Meanwhile, I was texting [work spouse] to tell him what was going on. He was shocked and knew he had to handle it.

Listening to two scorned women argue over a douche was just so draining; going through timelines and comparing date nights and who fucked who when, where, and how. This had just as much drama as Melrose Place!

Anyway, glad to get that out of my system. Message to my former work spouse, if you happen to read this:

You’re a fucking asshole, but I’m still your friend. The End.