Meet the Hamsters...

Had a bad day at work last Thursday. Made a big mistake by (a) showing up at the project staff, and (b) forgetting to check my values and mouth at the door.

Started off with the big project manager talking about the project we're re-using a large portion of our design from dropping the ball and not designing their stuff to work in our environment. Wouldn't be an issue, other than our project is dead if their stuff don't work. So I asked the question on when they're going to stop calling saying their designing to meet our needs. Guess that's one reason I'm in engineering and not management - that's one of those questions you're not supposed to ask.

Second thing was when Mr. Central Ops was talking about how things are going front end environment, and things are back to normal. Big manager says that's good, as making the decision to go with backup plan is very painful. So I step in and say "You remember that normal wasn't very good. We could work, but not predictably." Mr. Central Ops whips out the spreadsheet with this factoid, and then his get well plan. All of which don't explain why I hadn't been able to turn-in my changes for over half a week. This degenerated, so I stood up to storm out of the room. Decided against storming out (big mistake - always storm out if you're half way there), so sat back down, realized that (a) nothing had changed by speaking up, (b) if I stayed in the room, I was only going to get angrier because of that, so I then left quietly at the end of that conversation.

Very frustrating being one of the few people left who still speaks up and tries to make a difference to have it beaten out of you.

StinkyJ had the same thing happen to him today. Same basic thing - despite your years of experience, and working directly in that area now, this person in the central group knows better.

So if you come by my office and work and hear some squeaking, it's not me complaining. It's just the ball bearings in my exercise wheel needing oil. Oh - and check my water and food on the way by. Don't want the hamsters to die in their offices. That'd be against policy - you should die on your own time.