CafeChatNoir

Well, last night I turned down the contract/consulting offer – found out today that the company is going public again. Not a real shock, given that the owners sold out to a private equity firm just over 2 years ago and everyone has just been waiting for them to flip it back to a public offering, but I feel like I dodged a bullet getting out of there and not going back. Even though the work could have been as few hours as I wanted, I know the way I am, and I know the way I work and before I knew it, I’d be doing 40+ hours again a week and it would be October and I’d have lost the summer. But, the upside is that it gives me another benchmark to work with for the trading I’m doing, which is good.

My realtor hasn’t had a chance to see the house yet, but I am praying that he’ll agree that it’s really ready to go. But, if he gives me another project, I’ll certainly do it. I’m hoping that whoever buys this place realizes what a turnkey operation it is – I can’t think of anything anyone would have to do to make it more liveable. I am insanely curious to find out what my realtor wants to price it at – right now there are two places in the neighborhood, 6 houses apart, with a 60K difference in asking price. The lower priced one is basically advertised as a fixer-upper, so I’m not too worried about that throwing things off – hell, if I could hit the middle of those two on price, that would be fine with me.

OK, so my old company is desperately in need of some help and is offering some obscene cash for me to come back on a contract basis – I decide my hours and work location.  However, I don’t think they realize how little I remember of the software at this point…  I said I’d at least think about it, but I need to know if we’re talking truly short term, like a couple weeks, or if it would suck up the entire summer (in which case, no way in hell.)

I doubt I’ll do it, because I am sure it wouldn’t be a short enough term for me, but it’s nice that they think I’m still smart. :)

Currently watching a special on Warren Buffett.

I honestly think if all CEO’s were like him, Corporate America wouldn’t be such a suckass place to have to be.

OK, back when I was dealing with well degreed idiots for a living, there was a situation I ran into constantly. The software database had two tables that caused a fair amount of stupid. One table was the “cost and revenue” table which then fed into the “project status report” table. The project status report table was designed for one function and one function only – the system used it to print the project status report. Who knew? It’s not a friendly table to try to use for any other purpose, end of story. On countless occasions, I had people calling and asking how they could use the project status report table to build an external report. Given that’s not it’s design or function, we have no obligation to try and help you figure this out. In fact, if you actually want to build a report and *know* what you’re hitting on in the tables, you use the cost & revenue table. It has all the same data, but in an actual comprehendably organized fashion, which the report table doesn’t. Over and over again I told people, “Don’t even waste your time trying to use the report table, just go to the other table and use that. Trust me, you’ll be less frustrated in the long run.” And invariably there would be a bit of snarking over the fact that they should be able to use whatever table they wanted, and I would tell them they were more than welcome to, but we weren’t going to help them with it anyway, so they should be happy we were at least pointing them in the direction of the more user-friendly table.

I’m still on the Yahoo newsgroup for my software, I don’t know why I stayed subscribed to it, but I’ve been a member of it for years now and I still find it interesting the things that pop up there from time to time.

Today a message popped up… “I’m trying to use the project status report table to build and external report and it just isn’t working…” No shit, sherlock. I recognize the user name, and I’m pretty sure we had this conversation before.

They did decide to send me an exit interview after all. I’m filling it out now…this may take hours. (They also seem to want to “talk” about it. Um, no, it’s pretty clear and self explanatory…)

OK, so I’m spending most of my day surfing the internet, and answering a few last minute questions from folks. I’m being repeatedly told how relaxed I look. :) Someone on the elevator said to me, “Oh, today is your last day, isn’t it? What a total loss.” Which is nice and all, but I have no earthly idea who she was. It’s a tad disturbing to have people know you and you don’t know them.

I loved my coworkers comment on it: It’s OK one as great as you can not know ALL who adore you LOL!

– You’ve inspired me, I think I’ll do a employement post mortem eval here soon.

I think I have managed to escape the exit interview – no one has contacted me about it, and HR has known I was leaving. I told my boss that if they still want it, she can give them my email address and get in touch with me next week. One of those things, I’m definitely known for my candor and well, no one really wants to hear it right now. Fair enough!

LAST DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, our front line now totally officially sucks. The one good person on front line got promoted to second line! She totally deserved it, she’s done very well since she got here.

and do feel bad for abandoning her…

Apparently upper management got their heads out of their asses for a few minutes and recognized the situation and tossed the stats out the window for 1st quarter and bonuses will be distributed as though every goal was met. Smart move on their part, as they’re already facing near anarchy in the department. (We have goals that simply could not be met for first quarter. Not as in “gosh, if you really tried harder” as in, “fucking impossible”)

This was announced during our senior line conference call yesterday – and several of my coworkers asked “But, what about Cindy?” – I responded that there was probably a snowball’s chance in hell I’d see it, but hey, that’s life in the big city and all that. (Really, I am leaving and despite the fact that I was here for the evaluation period in question, the way things are working these days, I certainly would not expect it.)

Well, I was talking w/my boss today and she’s taken it up two levels of management to be sure that I get the bonus. Basically, she’s ready to claw people’s eyes out if I don’t see that money.

She’s a great manager, stuck with people she never would have hired in a million years, two more openings and an HR department that keeps taking our openings OFF THE DAMN WEBSITE. No wonder we’re having troubles getting resumes in… (This is the third time our department’s openings have disappeared off the site.)

So, one of my coworkers asks today if I got a survey about the department – no, and I am quite sure I was intentionally left off the list given my imminent departure – most folks don’t want to hear from the disgruntled burnt out employee on her way out the door. So, she sends me the link to it. Bwaaahahahahahaha. It was one of those agree/disagree type things or leave a full comment. Yes, there were near paragraph long comments on every single question. I IM’d her all my answers, and she said they all sounded very good – I can be incredibly eloquent when I’m pissed off. Given the tone and questions of the survey, seems the next direction for the department is “Stellar Support” and going to be all about “exceeding customer expectations”. I pointed out that customer expectations were already beyond the scope of the support contracts we have in place, and exceeding them is pretty much out of the question as we don’t have the level of expertise or any incentive to actually care.

Like I told my coworker, someone will recognize my writing style and delete it, I’m sure. But, she loves the way I write and has made me promise her an advance copy of the great American spy novel when I write it. :)

It will likely get tossed regardless, considering I used the words “oblivious” and “upper management” in the same sentence. Ah well.

8 hours left.