The major place I've sent a resume to is where Alexandra, our laid-off backstabber, is now working... They have a slew of new contracts (something which my company seems unable to get) and have over a dozen positions open! Lots of new teams being formed.
I sometimes look for sanity checks to make sure that my perceptions aren't totally skewed. So when Robin encountered someone in one of his classes at the local university who was now working with Alexandra, we were BOTH highly interested in the fellow's opinion...
Of course, Robin didn't flat out and ask if she was a know-it-all, treacherous backstabber, he pretty much allowed Alexandra's co-worker to unfold his story.
It started to come out when they were discussing the practical side of developing instructional software. They all came to the conclusion that no one person could possibly be an expert in all aspects, that it came down to teamwork. Then the guy working with Alexandra said, "...Well, except for ONE woman..." :) (The unspoken words were, "At least, in her own mind." :)
On another note...
Another example of Ellen's subtle persecution--not ME, for a change. :) Robin has been preparing to represent my company at an upcoming tradeshow. He's basically been chosen to head up the team going. Since the show is next week, he and Tito have been building the booth while other team people have been stuffing folders with literature. These activities are charged to overhead, rather than a specific contract. Charging to overhead is usually forbidden, a dirty word. It's a running joke at the office, the dreaded charge code you use when you aren't covered by a contract. Well, because of the last minute flurry of activity, Robin has 30+ hours charged against overhead. He was asked to justify his charges by Ellen, but then she said, "Don't take this personally, I'm doing this with everyone." Robin was aggrieved, since SHE was the one who put him in charge of the show team.
Anyway, on his way back from Ellen's office, he happened to see Tito, who designed the booth and did most of the booth construction. Tito had charged an equally frightening number of overhead hours, if not more. "So, did Ellen ask YOU about your overhead charges?" No...not a word. But Tito is NOT a former Matrix team member...
Another example: I'm the company's webmistress. We presented the proposal to create the website last year and outlined it as a 3-step process. A basic website, no bells and whistles at first, gradually developing the content, and then taking it to the final step, a full multi-media flash-intensive site. We got to phase one and were working on phase two, grabbing a spare hour here and there. I managed to get the lead artist on the site and myself a few hours every other week authorized against overhead.
In June, we experienced a work stoppage. Our contract had expired and there was this whole horrible paper maze that my company had to navigate to get funding (which was guaranteed) renewed. The upshot was that we had no charge numbers. We--almost the entire company--were charging against overhead for almost two and a half months!
Management tried to give us busy work, little projects. So the lead artist and I decided that since we were charging against the dreaded "O" word anyway, that this was a good time to make that big leap and make the website we always wanted.
The artists have to write notations as to what they are doing with their overhead time, so the lead artist went ahead and wrote "company website" besides his hours.
OMIGAWD. Management and Ellen got hot under the collar. "WHO AUTHORIZED THIS?" The stupid thing was--he could sit there and surf and charge against overhead and no one would have said a thing, but how dare he spend his idle time working on the company website!
So we had a big pow-wow and the lead artist showed what he had done, which was really industrial and cutting edge. I could see that it was probably a bit too avante garde for their tastes (though I think it's striking and original--what a concept! A multimedia courseware house with a cutting edge multimedia site!), but they grudgingly agreed that it was miles above our current website and said (in front of witnesses) that we could devote one day a week to working on the redesign.
Sounds good, so far, right?
So a few weeks later, Ellen started complaining about the lead artist's charging 8 hours a week against overhead and told him to stop. Later on came the big meeting, "Who authorized this?" The lead artist's boss told Ellen, "You did, in front of management, and management agreed."
"Well, you need to stop."
So then, after this hassle about charging to overhead to work on the website, a few days later Ellen had the nerve to ask, "Are you finished with the website?"
"No, you told us to stop charging against overhead to work on the website."
"When can you finish by?"
"Well," I said in e-mail, "I think to take it to completion, the lead artist and I are going to need to have authorized two or three full and consecutive days were we can just concentrate on it, because we're actually pioneering things we haven't done at this company before."
In the meantime, we got renewal on our contract and we were scrambling to get moving on courseware that had been in limbo all summer. We were all slammed, the artists in particular. So the answer was, "Of course, courseware has priority. For now, just work on the website during your spare time."
Let me explain: Spare time is defined as when you run out of authorized charge numbers. Since we are all carrying 6 or 7 courses...there is no shortage of charge numbers and no such thing as "spare time."
Later that week, Ellen asked, "Are you finished? Let's arrange a meeting to show __ " (the big boss). "We need to have this done in time for the tradeshow."
What I wanted to say was, "And we were supposed to finish this how? We were supposed to finish this when? And we were supposed to charge to what?"
So the lead artist and I were totally at a loss. They wanted the website done yesterday but didn't want to authorize the hours for what it would take, nor did they want us to stop what we were currently doing. We both wanted to complete the project because we knew it would look incredible and we would have stretched a great deal creatively. It's a point of pride. But we DIDN'T intend to give our work away or cheat on our timecards by charging the time to a customer--that's a DEFINITE trap.
I think the big boss must have had some inkling that there was some gamemanship going on because he asked if he could see what we had. He took the pressure of finishing it RIGHT NOW off and said to just work on it when we could, that we didn't have to finish it before the tradeshow as Ellen had expected.
Thank GAWD.
Otherwise the lead artist and I would be working all night Friday night and all weekend...uncompensated...to finish the damn thing.
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Today is quiet at work. I am, for the most part, trying to stay under the radar, but I must confess, I'm dressed to express "sartorial sarcasm." It's funny, Tito and Robin--other malcontents at work--understood *exactly* that my eccentric attire was a statement! :) Today I have my hair slicked back, I'm wearing a white button-down shirt tucked into black pants, and a black tie with my American flag pin. It's a subtle way of expressing my displeasure by sending up the traditional business dress.
