Tomorrow is her last day.

Thanks to the good folks at Domain-by-Proxy and my paranoid attempts to keep even my location a secret (only the webmaster and my wife know about the site), Hit Coffee provides excellent cover for even the most paranoid blogger.

More than once people have commented that they wish that they could take advantage of anonymity. Well here’s your chance. If I know who you are (ie you comment or you have emailed me) I will provide you space to vent about your job. I’ll even help you set up a secret identity in my little fictional map if you like.

If you are at all interested, email me and let me know.

I now know that I have been in Deseret for too long.

Back in Colosse, whenever I saw a mother under the age of 25 - married or not - I wondered how exactly that happened. I mean I know how that happens, but I figure that there was some miscalculation along the way.

I found myself thinking about a colleague at Falstaff in Accout Services. I thought to myself “I wonder why she doesn’t have children?”

Because… you know… all normal married 25 year olds should have kids.

I am even at the point that I consider marriage at 25 to be normal and am curious when I meet someone over 25 that is not married.

Heaven help me, by pure osmosis I am absorbing their view of the family…

My boss Willard is the King of Maybe. The guy cannot say “no” to anything.

“Will you give me a million dollars?”

“Not right now. But should I win the lottery or inherit a million dollars from some relative I do not yet know of, it is something I might definitely consider.”

During the layoffs there was a guy I said not-very-nice things about named Adam who was laid off to make room for Angela Carrey coming back from a different department. I was not sorry to see Adam go. A week or two before the layoffs, Adam was upset that one of his reports was failed for reasons pertaining to an understandable exercism of judgment in the face of inspecific instructions. This happens all the time, though not nearly as much as it used to. You take your lumps and move on.

Not Adam. Not that day. For five hours he argued and debated a change that took five minutes to make. When considering manhours of various people trying to calm him down, debate him in to the ground, and converse with other parties about the ridiculousness of it all, it cost the company hundreds of dollars. For a five minute correction that he was psychologically incapable of simply let go. It only happened once, but it was the culmination of his self-important, self-rightious nature.

When told that he had been let go, that he would get a two-week severence package (despite the fact he owed the company money in vacation time), and a letter of recommendation, he replied, “Thank you for ruining my life!”

I was informed Monday morning that Adam had found a job at a warehouse that paid well over twice what he got paid at Falstaff. I more-or-less immediately suspected that there was something that Adam wasn’t telling anybody. He was a braggart with an overconfident assessment of himself, his skill, and his importance in this world.

He dropped by the office later in the day. I figured he was there to brag about his new job. Turns out that he since discovered that the job was only a fill-in and that he would not be drawing a regular paycheck.

He made an offer: When he’s not working at this other place, he would come and work for Falstaff. He wasn’t sure when he would be able to come in, but he would when he could.

“So let me get this straight,” Willard wanted to reply. You used to work here. You were involved in a targetted layoff that should have demonstrated the company you are considered to keep in aptitude and attitude. You had a full-time job, but you missed so many days last year that you ran out of vacation time. Yet now you want to work a part-time schedule, when it’s convenient for you and only then?”

Instead he replied, “Well, if we have a special project in the future that we figure you would be a good fit for, and you’re available during that time, then of course we would consider it. But I can’t say for certain what the future is going to look like.”

Immediately upon Adam’s departure he asked “Why can’t I ever just say ‘No way in Hell?’”

Since moving in to the OSI team, Angela Carrey has sat in the cubicle beside me. She’s my go-to person when it comes to quick testing of quick modifications that I do. She is the first person I ask to stay late for lunch, stay after 5, and so on. We got along when were both in QA (albeit for two different teams) and get along even better now. She has probably replaced Willard as the person I see and talk to the most on a daily basis.

So I notice things.

For instance, I noticed mid-week last week that her engagement ring had disappeared. As mentioned before, my wedding ring has gone missing (though it turned up last week), so I recognize that doesn’t mean anything in itself. But I did remember that she had commenting that he was having “a tough time lately.”

Willard informed me Monday that she was going to be moving back to Shoshona, I put the pieces together. She was asked to write a formal “notice” of her intention to leave. She confirmed my suspicions in her email:

From: Angela Carrey {carrange@falstaff.corp}
Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 9:17 AM
To: Will Truman {trumwill@falstaff.corp}; Willard Perry {perrwill@falstaff.corp}
Cc: Bill Darden {dardwill@falstaff.corp}
Subject: Official notice

On or before June 1, I will be leaving Falstaff.

PS: Men are pigs.

Angela Carrey
OSI Quality Assurance Technician
Reports & Legal Contracts Group
Falstaff Corporation

An interesting irony is considering one Charlie Belcher. Charlie has more than just a little crush on Angela. Though married, fidelity did not seem particularly high on his agenda. He lobbied endlessly to get Angela to be able to switch over, but never made a move at least in part because of her relationship.

We finally got Angela on our team but he missed it because he was canned. Now, to make matters more interesting, she is single.

We really missed a good chance to see Charlie make an ass out of himself.

Over the past couple months, the turnover rate at the front desk has been extremely high. The woman who had it at the beginning of the year was moved to the other building. Her predessor was laid off. Since then 2 have gone elsewhere within the company and 3 left the company.

We’ve got a new young lady up there now who has been there for only a couple of weeks. I ran out of staples today and asked her for as many as she could give me. She gave me a ton and said, “If you ever need more, you just let me know!”

I came within an inch of telling her, “Oh, you probably won’t be here by that point, anyway.”

Luckily I stopped myself. Of course I didn’t mean that I thought that she would get fired… but considering the fate that befell most of her predecessors, I know I would be freaking out if someone said that to me.

A few weeks ago my computer died and I needed a temporary replacement. At that point it was less than a week after mass layoffs, I asked the IT guy the dumbest question of my tenure at Falstaff:

“Do we have any spare computers?”

The problem with the computer was a dispondent fan. Without the fan, the computer was overheating. The fan has since been replaced and it no longer overheats.

The problem is that every time it boots up, I get a message that says something to the effect of “FAN HAS PREVIOUSLY BEEN DISFUNCTIONAL. PRESS F1 TO CONTINUE OR F2 TO GO TO SETUP” (curiously, “setup” does not actually include an option to turn off the warning message)

I understand that it is probably there to let me know that the fan may be iffy and I should check it out before a loss of data occurs. I appreciate the concern, but it doesn’t give me any way to address the issue. It doesn’t say “PRESS F1 TO CONTINUE, F2 TO FIX THE PROBLEM*, F3 TO IGNORE THE PROBLEM” (* - I suppose that this option would be difficult since replacing a defective fan at the software level would be kind of difficult). The F1 option made me nearly acknowledge the issue but it would remind me again at my earliest inconvenience. The “setup” in option two did not, actually, include any way to inform the system that the fan issue has been acknowledged and addressed.

So the mission of the message has moved from informing me that the fan may be spotty to informing me that the fan has at one time not worked. It is sort of a monument to the fallen fan:

The new fan may be in place, but the old fan has not been forgotten.

It also serves as a warning to future fans and those that rely on them:

If you believe the fan has always worked, you are sorely mistaken. Appreciate the working fan, for it may not always be that way.

Okay, so some of my posts have gotten out of order somehow. Broken Promises was for some reason sent back in time. I tried to bring it to the top, but brought Talkin’ Trash to the top instead. So if you are so inclined, you may want to check the three preceeding posts to make sure that you caught them all.

Oh, and if any of you are for some reason using HitCoffee.org to access this site, I am letting it expire.

Dylan Hoffer always struck me as an Australian, though I don’t know why. Maybe a Brit. He’s a nice guy, but as a salesman he is supposed to be. As with the rest of the sales staff, he was also quite visibly LDS (missionary work is an outstanding training ground for future salesmen and customer service reps - it’s no coincidence that there are about 50 million call centers out here) and pious enough for me to be unrelaxed around him. He was a unique combination of charmer and stone-cold killer. It was the elegance of the first that made me think Brit, it was the gruffness of the latter that made me think the Australian.

Hoffer the Brit, as it turns out, made the Eremus sale. Eremus is our biggest client by far and they will be bringing in about $200,000 a month alone. Hoffer the Australian had worked it in to his contract (salesmen, unlike the rest of us, actually get an employment contract) that he indefinitely gets 3% of gross income from his sales so long as he is with the company.

Our first month came and went and we got $175k in sales. They approached Hoffer with a new contract. For sales over a certain amount, he would only get 1%. Hoffer the Loyal Subject of the Queen consented.

Three weeks later he was one of only two salespeople to be laid off. In an amazing stroke of luck with the company, he now gets 0%.

Normal couples argue about money. Clancy and I argue about… trash.

Though neither of us are particularly clean people, Clancy is the more cleanliness-minded of the two of us. But there are some things that get to me that simply don’t get to her. We’ve joked that I am guardian of the kitchen and she is guardian of the bathroom. However, due in no small part to her being on one of the more grueling rotations at work, I have had to take action on her sphere of influence.

I cleaned up the bathroom sink and straightened out the plethora of magazines we have in there. Then the controversy began when I took aim at the trashcan.

I can’t remember when it was that I made this discovery, but the best impromptu trashcans anyone has ever invented are computer case boxes. They are sized to fit in nooks and crannies, hold a standard trashbag perfectly, and hold quite a bit of trash. Ever since then I’ve been collecting the boxes and stationing huge trash reciprocals in every room. That way I only took out the trash once every couple of weeks (either when they eventually filled or it started to smell).

Clancy, on the other hand, is partial to these dainty little trashcanlets that can hold little more than a couple envelopes and a cheese wedge. That’s all fine and dandy, but it’s almost as if there are a couple laws of physics lined up against it: smaller spaces hold less stuff and when there is more stuff than space to hold it, it overflows.

I decided that it was time to resurrect the boxes. They are wonderfully utilitarian, but more than a bit conspicuous. So it was no surprise that Clancy noticed them almost as soon as she got up today. It was a bit of a surprise, however, at her vehement opposition to their use. How can my lovely utilitarian wife object to something so wonderfully… utilitarian? Yes, they are hideous, but they are the perfect trashcans!!

We ultimately reached a compromise. She will not let her dainty little trashcanlets overflow in the mainroom. The boxcan will go in the porch so that we have a convenient place for the trashcanletbags to go in to (right now we have to walk around the house, a definite disincentive). In return, the one in the bathroom stays until it’s demonstrated that the porchcan is all it takes for her to not let the trashcans overflow.

Clancy and I went to a wedding a couple weeks back in Colosse. An old acquaintance named Mary was also at the wedding. Curiously, Mary introduced herself to Clancy as my ex-girlfriend or was it “practically [my] first girlfriend” or somesuch.

Clancy was kind of confused because she had heard me talk of various people, but not a Mary. She knew who my various “firsts” were, and Mary was nowhere on the list.

That would be because Mary and I never dated. At least I have no recollection of it. I don’t mean this in the sense that we may have fooled around but it was never official or something. We have never fooled around. We have never kissed. To my knowledge, we have never actually been alone together. We were more in a circle of friends.

So either she is crazy or I am. Maybe she wanted something to happen so badly that she imagined that the feeling was mutual and that we “almost” had something (turned to “practically” had something to “really” had something over the years). Maybe something did happen and I was too drunk, stoned, or wired to register it. Or maybe we did have something and it was so totally dreadful that my mind has blocked it out as some sort of post-shock thing.

In any case, the whole thing is pretty harmless. She is the doting mother of two with a guy that I helped fix her up with. She’s a truly delightful person and I have no problem with people believing that she and I used to be an us… except for the fact that it’s not true even in the loosest concept of the words.

When I was working at Orion as a night operator, on numerous occasions they told me that I would be getting a raise. It never really materialized. My raise at Wildcat eventually came through, though it was a good six months after it was supposed to kick in. On the whole, it’s a good policy to disbelieve any promise of future anything. This is especially true when it comes to small to mid-size organizations. The two corporations I’ve worked for (a haircare chain and a fast food joint) were the only two to actually follow through on what was promised. Other than that I’ve worked for small companies, and with small companies you never bank on anything.

Even so, it’s a little frustrating to be promised a raise and not get it. A year ago when I was moved from programming to QA I was supposed to get a slight increase in pay. It was a very small chip I kept on my shoulder. They always said I could go back to my old job if the arrangement wasn’t to my liking. But it wasn’t the money but instead the company’s failure to deliver on what they said they would. It’s one thing to reneg on something promised a long time ago under different circumstances. It’s another to do so over the course of a month.

Then, finally, in January I got my raise and then a little extra. All was right with the world! The chip on my shoulder was finally gone! I was getting my due! In early January I was promoted to the team lead position.

I was promised a raise.

It never materialized.

Welcome back, Chip. You weren’t missed.

It wasn’t long after I started that a fellow at work caught my attention. He was immediately out of place because of his attire. He wore a black turtleneck, emo glasses, and had a bit of a goatee. Even if he wasn’t well in to his forties (and he was), that kind of look sticks out in semi-rural Deseret. He looked like he really wanted to be in a northwestern metropolis, sipping coffee. To be blunt, he struck me as a poseur. Someone that didn’t realize that he was in the exerb of a suburb of the nation’s most conservative urban area. Or wanted to pretent that he was above it. I somewhat derisively referred to him as The Coffee Shop Dude.

Not long after I got there he ditched the black and picked up a belt-buckle. The pacific northwest was out and the rugged west was in. The goatee was replaced by stubble that didn’t quite match his meticulous hair. A carefully constrewed cowboy. So in a merger of the two, I took to calling him The Coffee Shop Cowboy.

Despite the fact that legal contracts are one of our primary sources of income, three of our five lawyers were let go. This decision may not be quite as bad as it sounds as only two were intended to be laid off. It was not a calculated decision to layoff a majority of our legal staff.

Harry Graves was somewhat recently hired, so it was not surprising that he got the axe.

Edmund Collier, our chief council, was initially told that they would start paying him hourly. Then they told him to go ahead and move his base of operations to his private office (he did side work). After he did that, he was told that his services would no longer be required.

Before Edmund went, he was the co-hatchetman in the letting go of one Eric Forrester, the Coffee Shop Cowboy.

Eric, as it had turned out, had undergone a pretty busy year apart from his change in fashion genre. He had apparently gotten an amicable divorce and had taken with a gay lover. I had noticed that the wedding ring had disappeared, but that was about it. All things considered, I wasn’t terribly surprised about the whole gay thing, the only throw-off being the wife and kids, of whom he maintained a picture of in his office. It was apparently not a well-kept secret, if it was intended to be one. True to stereotype, the women were much more aware of it all and were much closer to him than the men were.

Apparently Don Fallon found out and Eric was fired for being gay.

Here’s the part where you ask, “What reason did they give for firing him?”

“They fired him because he was gay.”

“I know that, but what did they tell him?”

They told him, not necessarily yelling but loud enough that people outside could hear (Fallon has that kind of voice), “We will not be represented by an abomination of the lord.”

It doesn’t get much more clear than that. We questioned the wisdom of such blatant discrimination against a lawyer, but I think our ideals got the better of us. We figured something so wrong had to be illegal. If I’d been thinking about it I would have realized that this subject is actually being debated across the country now, but right now it’s not illegal (save ten states and two cities, Deseret definitely not among them). Besides that, this all happened in the midst of mass layoffs. Unless he had a recorder, there would be no way to prove that he was let go for anything but what Harry Graves was.

Ever since jumping on board, Eremus has been nothing but trouble. They have had an ongoing spat with their new parent company, Summit Industries, regarding the company’s name. Just when we thought everything had been settled, they wanted the Summit logo to appear on every document. This may not have ordinarily been a big deal, but we had just printed out a contract worth millions of dollars for them to build an entire community for FEMA in Mississippi. Summit tried to get Eremus to go with a different company, but Eremus was so insistent that they put off the sale for two days for us to get our contracts reprinted.

So George Welton, myself, and an Larry the account services guy all stayed late to get it done. I went home at 11. Larry went home some time after I did. George did not go home.

Our efforts netted the company $175,000. Not to mention the money we are going to get for continuing to be their sales contract document supplier. We make money on every mobile home they sell.

Our efforts were not unrewarded. Larry was named employee of the month for his previous efforts with Eremus. George was named employee of the month for that night.

And me?

I got movie tickets.

To the dollar theater.

That expired six months ago.

This post was written a couple weeks ago, before my brief hiatus. The ensuing chaos threw everything, including this site, in to flux.

It came out of nowhere. One minute we were angling for expansion, the next there was blood on the streets. They rounded up the herd and culled their number. Despite having a substantial backlog, our group got hit the hardest. The company as a whole lost 15%, we lost 33%. We never got to say goodbye.

That all being said, my OSI team was extremely lucky. We lost Charlie and Edgar. The former needed to go, the latter will not be missed. In return, we get Angela from Legal Standards & Compliance. Angela was a programmer than a QA tester for the ANG team. She took the demotion back to Reports & Legal Contracts under the condition that she work under me and not Carol. The current debate within our group was whether or not Charlie and Edgar for Angela was a “fair trade” or a “damn good deal” with opinions leaning towards the latter.

ANG, on the other hand, was decimated. They lost 2/3 of their people, including Adam. One of the three people she has left has been there less than three weeks. She lost three of her top programmers. I think she is on the verge of a mental breakdown.

Bill Darden has assured us that they are going to tackle this on the request level, meaning that there will be less of us, but that they will slash our workload. The problem is that they don’t have a clear plan of where they’re going to cut. They’re just sure there’s fat in there somewhere. I don’t disagree, but it’s somewhat like accumulating consumer debt in college under the premise that it’s foolish to deny yourself in college when you’ll be making so much money when you get out. You may be right, but if you’re wrong it’s quite devestating.

The most surprising thing to me is how many Mormon male heads-of-households were axed. And how many sob stories. One guy from Software Quality Control has two kids with cystic fibrosis and he’s gone. A woman in Project Applications has a daughter with cancer. A guy from software development has eight kids. Charlie isn’t Mormon, but he has a sick wife, three kids, and a new mortgage. Edgar’s wife just gave birth to their third kid. Todd Cummings (married, two kids) lost his job, but his sister Sally (non-practicing, to say the least) did not. Stan Axley (married, three kids) was tossed, by (single adrenaline-junkie) Eric Carper wasn’t. The only two people in OSI to lose their jobs were the ones with kids to support.

The social promotions, Golden Boy and Andre, were kept around. All but one of the worthless callgirls was kept around. The only one tossed was the only one that actually did anything. Mostly because she was also a part-time receptionist and when the phone rang she did have to answer it.

I don’t pretend to know for sure whether the layoffs were the right business decision. One of the downsides of working for a company owned by a single person or family is that they can’t afford big hits for the sake of the longer picture. The money comes right out of their pocket. It’s easy for me to say that they should have weathered the storm. But it seems to me they might ought to have weathered the storm. At the very least, they should have waited more than a week after collecting the previous month’s data before moving so extensively on it.