Ch-ch-changes

Joyous news, dear ones.

Well. Let's see. Lately, just as a temporary thing, I was doing some work for Boy Wonder and Girl Wonder, QAing stuff and closing trouble tickets. Piece o' cake.

Have I been trying to track down Yentl? Have I been in hot pursuit of requirements for Version 2.0 of the Yentl Project? Meh. Not so much. I tried intermittently. End of last week, beginning of this, realized it wasn't going to happen.

So naturally, having blown through the BW/GW stuff and not being able to pin down Yentl on anything, I started just dicking around on the Internet most of the day.

Bad sign. Really, really bad sign.

Imagine my surprise when Fireman Fred waved at me to come into his office today and said, "We're making some changes in how your time is distributed. What do you think about this? For the BW/GW project, you work 25% of your time. Another project is one that fell not just on the back burner but off the stove about a year ago. That will be 50% of your time." Ohhkayyy....

"Well, the Yentl Project - honestly, we're trying to keep this thing from bleeding out. We're trying to reduce costs and I was talking to FTB today. We both realize that it's pointless for you to keep trying to pin her down when she won't be pinned down."

No kidding. She attended a meeting on Monday morning and I have no idea where the hell she was for the rest of the week. Tending to her sick kid? Playing golf? Going to Hadassah? Beats me.

Occasionally, a weird message would pop in from her via email, doing all kinds of crazy reports and stuff with The Yentl System. I went over to Trevor to give him the WTF? gesture.

"Don't say a word," he declared in his best Trevory tones. "I can't work with her. I can't. Impossible."

So. Fireman Fred said, "Look, just keep doing a high level project plan and keep conducting the status meetings. At this point, that's about the best you're going to manage to accomplish."

I know, too, what this is. This if Former True Boss's way of keeping an eye on Yentl. He's not deep enough in the project (nor should he be) to know what's expected when and to whom it will be distributed.

But I no longer felt like I was dragging around concrete blocks on a wooden yoke across my shoulders.

Of course, this does mean I have to deal with Boy Wonder again, who was all too glad to get rid of me when Girl Wonder was hired. I am too slow for him, too plodding and ... bovine. And I think he's willfully and deliberately mean to people. And he is.

Today he told GW and me about the whiteboard he has at his house. "I leave nasty notes on it for the maid," he giggled.

Yes. He's 30 years old. Drives a paid for high end Merc. Has a pied a terre in NYC and is rumored not to need a job. He has a cleaning lady who comes in once a week. And he spends three minutes a week, jerking around this woman he's probably paying maybe $10 / hr. Nice.

Well, at least the Off The Stove project sounds interesting and fun and promises to have lots of things to learn.

And Yentl is OFF MY BACK!!!!!!!

What Goes Up...

I looked at my online banking. Oh well. It was nice while it lasted. Still, in the last couple of days, I had myself some pretty swell dinners, with the leftovers for lunch.

Also, Yentl is in town and spent the afternoon in meetings about The Yentl Project...without the project manager.

I have run out of my anti-Yentl drugs and the pharmacy is awaiting the okay from my dr to do the refill thing. I have one left in reserve and I'm saving that for after my annual review with Fireman Fred because I suspect it ain't gonna be pretty.

I was awake at 3 this morning, too warm, needed to go to the bathroom and knew there was no point in trying to go back to bed.

There was a little publishing industry dance in NYC today. I woke up and heard the rain, felt the throbbing in my left ankle and doubted I could make it up to the platform at my local station. As for even making it to the street from the platform in Penn Station, fuhgedaboudit. And finding a taxi on a rainy, chilly day in New York? Ha!

I taped up my ankle, eased my foot into a sneaker, and went to work in jeans. No dancing today.

Maybe I'll go to bed now. Yeah. Bed. That sounds like a good idea.

No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Yentl should be winging her way here soon. This has been a tough week / month / year / life for her, but there is only so much sympathy I can lend to the situation. Her problems are getting in the way of my job, so I suppose the heartlessness starts here.

Yes, her son is very ill at the moment. Yes, I know much more about her home life than I care to. But I also know that the Yentl Project is in utter chaos because Yentl cannot focus.

The reason she's coming to the home office is because Former True Boss, Fireman Fred and I are going to get her in a room and find some way to reach agreement about the project plan and the requirements.

Trust me, I realize the errors I've made in this project and they won't happen again. But the truth remains that Yentl is a serious roadblock.

When I think of getting Yentl in a smallish, claustrophobia-inducing room with the three of us, I can't help but think, hm, three Christians and one Jew. Why, it sounds like the inquisition!

But honestly, the only thing I want to convert her to is some spirit of co-operation. Instead of holding everything so tightly herself that no one can see what needs to be done and has to be done, I'd like to see her let go of my job and do her own.

Instead of endlessly being put on non-silent hold and hearing her distressed and inarticulate son wailing out whatever pains him, I would like to see Yentl deal with her home situation so I don't feel like I'm smack in the middle of it.

I have done more than my share of time with those requiring such intense care and as snotty and as self-centered as this sounds, I don't want to be reminded of it. Get someone in to take care of the child while you're working, Yentl, I want to say. She always comes back with something like, but yeah, that's why I work until two in the morning. And I think, but that does me no good if I have a question and can't get hold of you until noon.

Well, obviously my weary frustration is showing. I hold up my hand and testify about what I've done wrong and promise to follow the straight and narrow.

I also realize that I'm hoping Former True Boss will have a heart to heart with her and make her see that she needs to keep regular hours, she needs to work out childcare arrangements for her son, she needs to let loose the death grip she has on the project.

All of this without branding, iron maidens, or wracks.

Come, let us reason together. And let Yentl shut up.

Please Release Me

I went into Fireman Fred's office this afternoon. I'd spent literally the entire morning on the phone with Yentl. I wanted to take a hammer to my head. I wanted to hurt myself. I wanted to gnaw my arm off to get unshackled from her.

I closed the door. Fred said, "Uh oh."

I took a deep breath. "I don't want to freak you out. But please, I'm begging you, when The Yentl Project is in production, please let me go on to another project."

He sighed.

"I swear I won't leave the project half-done. And it isn't the vendors or Vendor Girl or Trevor or Former True Boss." Silence for a second. "We both know who it is. And I feel like I've gone as far as I can on the road with her."

Fred said, "We all know. Everybody knows. Former True Boss knows. But if you leave now, just to get put on a different project, everyone will freak out."

And this is my problem how?

He went on to give me a rah-rah speech and I accepted the fact that I was just being talked down from the ledge.

I have only known one other person who was slowly able to cut every strand in the considerable cord of my patience. She's dead now and I am not particularly aggrieved by it.

"She is making me crazy," I said when I walked out of Fred's office, my voice dead and flat.

And no one said anything to me when I went out to my car for half an hour and just sat.

Actually, I was writing. But to the rest of the world, I looked like I was just sitting there.

This woman is on my last, last nerve. One more thing before I can start to knit them together and I promise you, it will get ugly.

Steamed

Oh, that Yentl.

I remember back in March when I was begging, pleading, cajoling, crying for dates and deliverables (I am project wallah and she 'owns' the product, but I do not report to her). I had been pleading for at least three months.

At one point, I was standing in the board room with only Yentl and Vendor Girl present, pounding my finger into the table saying, "I have to have dates. You don't give me dates, I can't give you a project delivery date" and was met with stony silence.

This is the last "summer day" Unnamed Co has. I had plans for my half summer day. In the past, I've only taken an hour off early here or there, but today was The Day.

Suddenly Yentl shows up on the phone and in email, demanding to know about situation A. WTF, Situation A? We dealt with that on Tuesday. The Mighty Hungarian took care of it.

This is how I think of The Mighty Hungarian, er, obviously with me on his back:


Anyway, Yentl rags on me for four solid f***ing hours, hours that were precious because Boy Wonder and Former True Boss are in the Land of the White Witch and Fireman Fred is on vay-cay. I had plans for this precious four hours.

And then....and then....when I've finally told her all I can tell her, when I have managed to not go medieval on her, she says.... she says....

Be sure to check your email this weekend.

WTF? I mean really, wtf?

If it were someone I liked...someone who had done me favors...someone who had come to my aid when I needed it instead of leaving me twisting in the wind, I would gladly do it.

But for Yentl?

Naddafingah!

Oh - and what was so pressing for me to do at home? Why, I had to paint the ceiling of my new office/study, right after I did my finances.

Latest mystery, usurping that of why Yentl is allowed to live:

How de cah insurnce goan be paid? I sits and thinks. And nuthin hoppen.

Becs Is Sick

What was it? The imminent arrival of Yentl? The sudden introduction of fiber into my diet? (Blueberries - who knew?) Cream for my coffee that's going sour?

Whatever it was had me fleeing Unnamed Co before noon today. If I was a cat, my ears would have been laying flat back on my head.

I stopped to pick up cat food and while the check-out girl was fumbling with my "I am a member" card, I had a sudden impulse to jump up and down like Gene Wilder in "The Producers" and hysterically scream, "I need my blue blanky! Gimme my blanky! My blanky!"

And then at Push'n'Pay, where I stopped for some tummy-soothing Kozy Shack, I was met with tubs and tubs of chocolate pudding and tapioca pudding and P&P's own brand, which is most definitely not Kozy Shack - or buying the "Party Pack" of Kozy Shack Rice Pudding in the convenient four pound package.

I came home, soothed myself with an outrageous amount of rice pudding (yes, there is some left....for now), found my blue blanky, put a tape of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" in the old cassette player, fell down on the couch and fell asleep.

I think I need to do it again. Now.

There's a Dance in the Old Dame Yet

Well, how's about this?

Yesterday on my way home, I bought myself a new sweater. It's the color of a new leaf. It is what some have called "Paris green".

I woke up this morning, determined to take on the world. I put on my pearl earrings and my Paris green sweater and a neat pair of black pants and off I went.

It was a fine day today. The wind was scudding the thin flat clouds to the east and as I was rounding a corner, saw the first robin of the year. In fact, central Jersey is positively infested with robins at the moment. I must have seen a hundred of them.

At work, I kept my chin up. I was tired of panicking about work, so I sat down and put everything I had to do on an Excel spreadsheet. I filled in details. I put in dates. I've used this system before and it works.

And when I was finished, children, what do you suppose I saw?

I saw the truth. I saw that in one day, I was supposed to accomplish what three people would be hard-pressed to complete.

Boy Wonder sent me an email. "Have you done XYZ yet?" I walked into his office with a printout of the spreadsheet in hand. I put it on his desk.

"That," I said, "is one day of my life. Where exactly do you see XYZ fitting in?"

"Holy crap," he said. "Have you shown this to True Boss? Does he realize you're spread so thin?"

I showed it to True Boss. He said, "Nice system."

Yentl sent me email. "Have you done ABC yet?"

I sent her a copy of the spreadsheet. "ABC is here. It's number 15 on the list. I suggest you talk to True Boss if you see a need to change that priority."

I spent today working. Really, really working as I haven't in months. As I crossed off one thing after another, more sprang up in their places.

I worked late this evening, but when I was done, knew I'd done a full day's work. And that I wasn't crazy for thinking myself overworked.

Today, I was complimented more times than I have been in years. "You look... perky," one of the programmers said. "We like you perky. You haven't been well for awhile."

No, I haven't. But I'm starting to feel better. There's a dance in the old dame yet, boss. Toujours gai, toujours gai.