Ten-year work anniversary on a Sunday

Yesterday marked my ten-year work anniversary. It was quite the unexpected milestone.

I used to be the person who held a job for two to three years. At this company, there have been many ups and downs that I have experienced and that I continue to endure. I am still kicking around.

I feel that I have stayed on for this long because my role seems to change every year or two. I also have established myself as a competent, reliable employee that I'm comfortable and my manager feels the same way about me. I also continue to pick up new skills and my job is still interesting to me.

Reaching this mark makes me look forward to a week more of vacation.

Last day for the incompetent employee

Wednesday was the day. The incompetent employee, who has been with us for over four months, was let go.

She was kind to send me an e-mail that it was her last day. She wants us to stay in touch. That's cool. She also let me know what she was working on. I wish she had done that more often while she was with us. Better late than never, as they say.

She's a sweet person. She just has learning issues and is not suitable for this position. My employer is going through cuts. Naturally, those who are not pulling their weight get let go first.

My manager says that I am safe. I have been on both sides of this fine coin. I tend to bounce back because my skill set is decent. I continue to learn to strengthen my skills.

I hope that she finds a job soon.

Job cuts and absence

Things look fairly bleak at work. There are job cuts. Everyone job seems to be at stake.

My manager and I had a good chat. He feels that I have nothing to worry about. I am not worried, but we got to this conversation after discussing the incompetent woman's departure in the near future.

Interestingly, her departure saves losing more folks in my department. She has not taken the news well, which is understandable. I have not seen her since Monday. She has taken the last couple of days off as she is under the weather. She has an appointment later today and decided to work from home.

I can't tell if she is truly sick or needs a mental break. I can only hope that she is okay.

Change at work

It has been a week of change at work. To make an extremely long story short, a major project is coming to an end. It means that there are a ton of folks who are looking for projects to do.

On a good note, there is a new project. However, the company has far too many folks for it that layoffs are likely going to happen, which is sad.

I am fortunate to not be directly involved in this project that is going away. I am unaffected personally, but my team is impacted.

My boss had a talk with me on Thursday. He wants to let the newish incompetent woman go. There is now a colleague who is free to step in and replace her. We'll see if this change works out.

It's always sad to see a colleague go, but it's the best for everyone's mental health and sanity, including my own.

Introducing me to a new employee

Thursday was a busy day at work. I could write about tons of small, but significant details. I will need to spread it out.

Our team has a new software developer. Sharky, who is the manager of this team, made us all huddle around the new employee and introduced him to us, one team member at a time.

When it came down to me, I got this introduction:

"This is Cutiebootie. She is our writer. She is demanding, but she's pretty good," he said.

I looked at him.

"Just joking," he said to me.
"That's the nicest thing that you have ever said to me!" I exclaimed.

Our entire team laugh. My job is done.

Issues with the new employee continue

I haven't talked about the new employee for a bit. She is definitely the most challenging person to understand. This post explores a lot of my thoughts that I have shared with various folks for the past month.

We have a new authoring tool that most of our team has been gearing up to move to. I have said to this person that she is not ready. She doesn't have the basics down with our current authoring tool. My team consisting of this woman and two students are staying on our current tool.

She is stubborn and adamant to learn the new tool. Her reasoning, according to what she told my two students, is that there isn't a relationship between the two authoring tools. Um, that's because you don't understand the existing tool well enough to see that your transition to the new one will be difficult if you don't have a decent foundation on how things work.

Before the Christmas holidays, I had instructions for my two students to look at the training materials on the new tool. I specifically told the new employee that she wasn't ready and to focus on learning our current tool. What does she do? She watched one of the videos on the new tool.

She has raised a number of red flags in my eyes. The first one occurred during her third interview (it was my second one with her) where she said that she was a "slow learner." I brought that up to my manager, but he dismissed it. He thought that the extra time she spends after work to learn would make her catch up.

I was right. Hiring a slow learning in an IT field is bad.

She has been with the company for over two months. She cannot grasp simple things like knowing that the entire team is away on an all-employee meeting, which means that the team will not respond to her e-mails. She couldn't attend because she had a medical appointment that day and worked from home. Yet, she constantly sent out e-mails and even texted one of my students over work when she got to this offsite meeting that was not urgent. She does not take into consideration whether folks are physically able to respond to her e-mails. She is only thinking about herself.

Most of our department has to do a test that grants you access to this new tool, but for the production (live) environment. I said to this new employee that her main focus is to get up to speed with work so that she takes over one of my documentation software release duties. Her deadline is later than everyone else's to do this test. My manager made the same comment in a departmental meeting last Thursday.

What does she do? The following day, she takes this test. She hasn't gone through all the training materials or videos. She just did the test over and over again (you select either one answer or some combination) until she passed it.

I was annoyed. I told her so on Monday. The fact that she just asked for access to the test environment and was absolutely afraid to even log on was a joke. Now, she has access to a production environment where she could mess up everything with her current "knowledge" that she allegedly proved to possess on this test.

I told her she put the cart before the horse.. How meaningful are the answers that she memorized to ultimately pass this test? Not all that meaningful at this stage.

She doesn't listen. She has difficulty comprehending simple concepts. Yet, she does whatever she feels like.

She pointed out that she's not a linear learner. Yep, it shows. She is all over the map to the point where none of us truly knows what she is thinking. She has no sound judgment about much.

I had a talk with my manager on Monday night. I told him that my students and I have been drilling her with exercises and explaining concepts in multiple different ways. It is the plan that he first devised. It doesn't appear to be helping. I levelled with him and said that she wasn't a fit for this job. He nodded.

The problem is that the company is under a hiring freeze. We let her go and I am back to doing everything. I personally don't want her becoming a permanent employee at this company. She is not pulling her weight. I don't always want to be saving the day because we can't get another employee to fill the void.

On Tuesday, my manager wrote an e-mail to her and copied me. It was a snowday. He basically reinforced that she needs to work on understanding concepts and her job. All of us have noticed that she is great at memorizing, but does not understand what she is spewing out. She doesn't have critical thinking skills. She can't think for herself.

I had this chat with my guy when we were in the States. He agrees that it's probably better to get rid of her than having her pull down everyone.

The current plan is to have my students work with her on simulating a documentation release. We are assessing how she will do within the next two weeks. I have a feeling that she will be at the level that she is currently at -- slow and incompetent.

She's a nice person. She's just not suitable for this job.

Drama with the new diva

The new writer, who is supposed to be seasoned, is causing quite a bit of drama. She's a diva.

On Monday, her desk didn't have a chair. Instead of looking for one, she decided to sit at another desk in a different area.

In our office, we have various neighbourhoods. You belong a specific neighbourhood. She went into a completely different one. The manager there had to ask my manager who she was.

She has since sat there all week. She didn't tell anyone why until my manager asked her. He figured out that she had moved due to her chair disappearing.

He told her that he got a chair. She didn't move back. She then cited that it was dark over in our area and she needs natural light.

Then, there is the review process. I have told her that her work goes through a peer review first (me) before it goes to a technical person. She doesn't seem to get it. I have gone through this procedure numerous times.

My manager has told me that he is seriously considering canning her. I told him last week that she's not the right fit for us. The burden will hit me yet again. Instead of doing what I need to do, I will probably continue to do development work.

This new writer is actually causing more grief than needed. She disappears for a couple of hours each day and has dragged a number of folks to join her.

Tomorrow is a new day. Let's see what happens.

Quiet, productive workday when it typically isn't

This week has been busy. I have been working with the new student, preparing for my presentation to the team, and dealing with training another new employee next week when little is in place. With the last item, there is a holdup in the system, which will make training this person without a laptop a challenge.

I have trained a writer without a laptop before. It wasn't fun. I ended up repeating items again. What can you do, right?

It was a pretty quiet Friday, which I liked. Our team generally goes out on Friday, but only two people had said yes. My manager asked if I wanted to still go, as I was one of the yes people. I asked that it be cancelled. Instead, I grabbed lunch locally.

My student was sick. My manager wasn't feeling well, either. He decided to go to his family doctor for an appointment.

I asked the administrative assistant whether I could change my locker at work. Ever since our office moved to this site four years ago, my locker has never budged as far as location goes. I have been on and off teams like there's no tomorrow. I decided to leave my locker where it is, which is the opposite end of the floor from where I currently sit.

For a while, my teams have not changed. There is a free locker right next to my desk. I decided to take the plunge. The administrative assistant was fine with the swap. She got the operations manager to give me the key. I will go into work on Saturday to move my stuff. I am hoping that no one is there. Again, I like doing quiet work without any distractions.

I didn't have a chance to do the change on Friday. I spent it fixing the training materials. My last student did a good job at putting them together. The main problem with her slides is that she points to videos and has to switch between two different file locations.

I decided to include the videos in the slide deck. It's simply a question of playing each video when it's in front of me.

It's nice to do quiet work. It's rare for me, but I do take advantage of it when the opportunity presents itself.

Meeting new employees over lunch and finding out that I am appreciated

While I was away on vacation, we had three new employees joining our team. I am typically the one who trains anyone new who joins our team. For the last couple of waves of new hires, one of my co-op students has been doing it.

It's nice to get some of this work off my plate. It's reduces my workload and stress. My co-op student realized the first time that she did training that it requires a lot of water and admitted that she doesn't know how I can talk so much!

Getting back to the three new employees, I hadn't officially welcomed them to the team. I did it through an e-mail before I left for my vacation. I didn't feel too bad, though. After all, I had interviewed all three of them.

On Friday, I got to sit down and have lunch with them, as well as a few other colleagues. Our team has a weekly lunch on Friday. No one is obligated to go, but I then to go because I like food and don't want to pack a lunch that day. It was great catching up with them over a leisurely meal.

While I was away, my manager took over working with my three students. It's funny, but one of them told me that my manager admitted to them that I do more work than he realized and that he was appreciative. Perhaps I should go on vacation for extended periods and make my manager even more appreciative of what I do!

Manager-employee scene thoughts on Skype

Chatting with my guy on Skype is great when he is away for long stretches. The longing to see each other can be heart-wrenching at times. I am glad that we'll be seeing each other soon.

Last week, we had phone sex. It started off as a regular, how-was-your-day chat.

I was telling my guy that the two other writers that I work with are not assertive. One of them asked me for permission to fill out a form to test-drive software. It was odd. I told my guy that I would have just done it, without asking my boss for permission.

My guy said that our boss would appreciate having someone like me make such decisions, as I am an independent worker. I told my guy that he should be my boss. We both liked that thought. Chatting about work led to the following scene.

My guy's office would have double-sided locks. All the office doors at work tend to lock from the outside, which is why we do not have quality time there.

We would lock my guy's office door. We would make out, kissing each other on the lips, face, neck, and gradually moving down our bodies.

He'd ask whether I had been a good girl. Of course, I hadn't been. He'd bend me over the wooden desk, lift my skirt up, and spank me with this bare hand. He would then remove my lacy panties and continue spanking me until I couldn't handle the pain anymore.

He would then finger me until I came. It would be followed by my guy inserting his hard member up my butt. Having his bare legs against mine while reaching orgasm was an arousing thought.

Afterwards, my guy said that folks would wonder what we were doing in his office for so long. Folks would notice that my clothes looked different on me after leaving his office to head back to my cubicle. Colleagues would step into my guy's office and see that a pair of panties were on the floor. My guy would end up having a collection of my panties in his desk drawer. When he gets horny, he would ejaculate on a pair.

It's quite the scene. I think the excitement lies in being intimate at work, which we can't do. If only offices and conference rooms had double-sided locks! We have never had anal sex, although we have been taking baby steps to make sure that I am comfortable with his fingers in me. We both agreed that we'd like to try that out sometime.

We also enjoyed the thought of having me in the office without any panties on. My guy feels that I give the impression that I am conservative, but I am really not. The duality is intriguing.

Two more days remain before we see each other again. The wait has been long. I am glad that it's nearly over.