Friday craziness and my appreciation that the weekend is here

Friday was quite the day. I am glad that it's the weekend.

Friday was the contractor's last day. She left because she cannot stand our manager. Specifically, she does not like his way of managing the team and felt that it was time to leave the company.

It is a shame because we got along nicely. She stayed longer because she wanted to finish her tasks and not burden me with them, which was thoughtful and considerate. Yes, I am going back to doing the writing tasks that I did four months ago on top of my other responsibilities.

My manager asked me whether I was okay with taking on her tasks. I didn't like the way that various phrases came through on Friday from him, either through instant messages or e-mail. I told him that I wasn't thrilled with being thrown back into filling other people's shoes. I said that I would do it for now, but I need relief.

I am simply tired of being taken for granted and being afforded more work because my manager cannot spread the wealth.

We had a pizza lunch that was paid for by the company. My team consists of two students and the departed contractor. The pizza lunch was to recognize our contributions to the food bank. All four of us felt odd about participating in a free pizza lunch when we all did not contribute to the food bank. The students went out for lunch at Subway. For the contractor's last day with the company, we had lunch at a European place close by and had a wonderful chat over great food. She did not want a farewell lunch, so we made it a casual, extra long one!

The students and I also had a software release to get out the door. We got that done thanks to proper planning.

I also seem to be a surrogate team lead for a couple of folks in Brazil. Their team lead seems absent and is often unresponsive. They had a fairly simple update to make, but they spent over an hour. Luckily, I was away for most of it. I cringe working with them.

Back to my manager... he stopped me in the afternoon in a corridor about whether I knew that the contractor was handing her laptop to me. I had no idea and his line of questioning was odd. Why not talk to her instead of me?

I then got a fury of e-mails from him. I deliberately didn't respond to an e-mail that he had sent on Wednesday because I was logging off for the day. I have been busy this week, which included making sure that the contractor's unfinished tasks were passed over to me. His concern isn't mine. He resent the same e-mail twice. Excessive? Yes, under the circumstances.

Off to bed. I love weekends. I can sleep in and call it a week.