Manic Monday - For Real
Mar. 8th, 2004 02:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
klsiegel320So, when we last left our heroine, she was soldiering on in the face of overwhelming odds...well, which pretty much describes any day here in Wonderland.
It was very slow last week. Partly that has to do with being in the "refractory shadow" of a large deliverable; there's sort of a big expenditure of energy followed by a sense of mild to complete exhaustion, a need to regroup. It doesn't necessarily break one's heart that the following Monday is slow and quiet, and one can play Solitaire virtually undisturbed for a few hours.
But that regroup shouldn't take two weeks - which is the dictum from our foible-some leader (client-side). It shouldn't idle a large number of good people who are far from home, and who - given the choice - would much rather be twiddling our thumbs at home, thanks, than here where our access to the outside world is so limited. And that's what it's looking like doing. We're doing our level best to keep our heads in the game, to find useful and profitable things to do, to keep from going entirely insane. We are having mixed success, at best.
So Friday afternoon - after a solid work week of this all-too-quiet-ness - my current rideshare colleague and I took off for the airport. I dropped him off, ran an errand, and headed back to the apartment to vegetate for the weekend. Actually, I didn't entirely vegetate - there was a discussion group on Saturday morning as follow-up to the parish's screenings of The Passion, and I did an amazing amount of laundry, and I went to church and then out for another errand yesterday. All that, and I still found a fair amount of time to vegetate.
I decided to skip the get-together at the beach for those of us travelers who were in town this weekend; I was feeling really tired (which I now think may have been the beginnings of a cold, but I'm not just sure), and thought that one of the folk there was going to be a certain person new to the project, who is...a bit much, in large doses. And because I decided to skip the get-together at the beach, of course I didn't bother to open up the company mail to fetch the directions and address.
So imagine my astonishment when I arrived this morning and discovered that this certain new person on the project was apparently summarily fired and escorted from the building on Friday afternoon! It must have been after we'd left for the airport, as near as I can tell, because I believe said person was still here when we left. To be honest, I can't really remember. What I can say for certain is that if any fuss was made, it was small fuss - because if it happened before I left, I had no idea that it had happened.
The story is that this person had supposedly committed not one but two infractions of the company code of conduct on a previous engagement with the client, which engagement ended more than a year ago, and never should have been allowed back in, to begin with. And we brought him in.
The client-side doofus who's been a thorn in our collective side and a stumbling block in our path was apparently downright gleeful when he called my boss on his cell, on Friday afternoon.
Further investigation has turned up the following:
The guy worked here before (we knew this), on a project that - according to the director for whom he worked - ran out of money and was therefore suspended; and that director says that's why he left when he left before. The guy himself appears to know nothing whatsoever about a violation (let alone two violations). He was asked; the client was asked multiple times; all possible due diligence was followed in bringing him in, as near as we can tell. Of course, since this would be subject to privacy policy, outside inquiries wouldn't have revealed the information; it wouldn't have been disclosed to a consulting company, or at least not in detail. So - fast forward to last week sometime, when supposedly somebody saw him in an elevator, recognized him, and raised a complaint, saying that he thought they got rid of this guy and what was he doing back. Whereupon his file was opened, the previous violations were found, and he was summarily marched out the door.
He pleads innocence of all charges, of course. He says he knows nothing about any documented violations, that he was not marched out the last time, and so on. This is somewhat borne out by the fact that when he came aboard, our admin filed paperwork to get him a security badge, and security came back saying that he already had a badge in the system but it was inactive. He still possessed said badge, so they just reactivated it.
The client leadership is taking the hit on this, saying that it's obvious to them that it was a breakdown somewhere in their process. He never should have been reactivated; his file should have been flagged such that it would prevent security from reactivating the badge because of the violations. And when the name was given to the client to vet, they obviously should have done it better. So our agency and its people don't have egg on our faces.
I do feel it was unfortunate that I chose this particular morning to drag my fanny instead of getting in early. But I'm not feeling entirely well; I think perhaps I'm coming down with something, or else that I'm having particularly vicious allergies; and I didn't have anybody to pick up or to meet; and it's quiet as the very tomb around here. So...I get here to discover that the excrement has hit the air circulation device in a big way.
For one thing, it means we have to be extra vigilant, on the theory that because of this incident, we'll be under increased scrutiny. That means really taking seriously the injunction against any personal use whatsoever of the Internet, really guarding carefully whatever we might say to each other except when we're sure we're in secure quarters (i.e., not in cubes where there are ears everywhere), and so on.
So how am I posting this? you may ask. Well, it turns out that the phones are straight analog lines. Plug the phone wire into the computer, dial 9 before the number, and I can dial out to my AT&T dial-up account during the day. Of course, since it ties up my extension, I can't stay connected all day, lest someone be trying to call me (and lest I need to use the phone). But at least I can get mail, read LJ, and stay moderately connected to the world, at least during breaks.
And for now, that's about all - although God knows there's really nothing to do right now!
It was very slow last week. Partly that has to do with being in the "refractory shadow" of a large deliverable; there's sort of a big expenditure of energy followed by a sense of mild to complete exhaustion, a need to regroup. It doesn't necessarily break one's heart that the following Monday is slow and quiet, and one can play Solitaire virtually undisturbed for a few hours.
But that regroup shouldn't take two weeks - which is the dictum from our foible-some leader (client-side). It shouldn't idle a large number of good people who are far from home, and who - given the choice - would much rather be twiddling our thumbs at home, thanks, than here where our access to the outside world is so limited. And that's what it's looking like doing. We're doing our level best to keep our heads in the game, to find useful and profitable things to do, to keep from going entirely insane. We are having mixed success, at best.
So Friday afternoon - after a solid work week of this all-too-quiet-ness - my current rideshare colleague and I took off for the airport. I dropped him off, ran an errand, and headed back to the apartment to vegetate for the weekend. Actually, I didn't entirely vegetate - there was a discussion group on Saturday morning as follow-up to the parish's screenings of The Passion, and I did an amazing amount of laundry, and I went to church and then out for another errand yesterday. All that, and I still found a fair amount of time to vegetate.
I decided to skip the get-together at the beach for those of us travelers who were in town this weekend; I was feeling really tired (which I now think may have been the beginnings of a cold, but I'm not just sure), and thought that one of the folk there was going to be a certain person new to the project, who is...a bit much, in large doses. And because I decided to skip the get-together at the beach, of course I didn't bother to open up the company mail to fetch the directions and address.
So imagine my astonishment when I arrived this morning and discovered that this certain new person on the project was apparently summarily fired and escorted from the building on Friday afternoon! It must have been after we'd left for the airport, as near as I can tell, because I believe said person was still here when we left. To be honest, I can't really remember. What I can say for certain is that if any fuss was made, it was small fuss - because if it happened before I left, I had no idea that it had happened.
The story is that this person had supposedly committed not one but two infractions of the company code of conduct on a previous engagement with the client, which engagement ended more than a year ago, and never should have been allowed back in, to begin with. And we brought him in.
The client-side doofus who's been a thorn in our collective side and a stumbling block in our path was apparently downright gleeful when he called my boss on his cell, on Friday afternoon.
Further investigation has turned up the following:
The guy worked here before (we knew this), on a project that - according to the director for whom he worked - ran out of money and was therefore suspended; and that director says that's why he left when he left before. The guy himself appears to know nothing whatsoever about a violation (let alone two violations). He was asked; the client was asked multiple times; all possible due diligence was followed in bringing him in, as near as we can tell. Of course, since this would be subject to privacy policy, outside inquiries wouldn't have revealed the information; it wouldn't have been disclosed to a consulting company, or at least not in detail. So - fast forward to last week sometime, when supposedly somebody saw him in an elevator, recognized him, and raised a complaint, saying that he thought they got rid of this guy and what was he doing back. Whereupon his file was opened, the previous violations were found, and he was summarily marched out the door.
He pleads innocence of all charges, of course. He says he knows nothing about any documented violations, that he was not marched out the last time, and so on. This is somewhat borne out by the fact that when he came aboard, our admin filed paperwork to get him a security badge, and security came back saying that he already had a badge in the system but it was inactive. He still possessed said badge, so they just reactivated it.
The client leadership is taking the hit on this, saying that it's obvious to them that it was a breakdown somewhere in their process. He never should have been reactivated; his file should have been flagged such that it would prevent security from reactivating the badge because of the violations. And when the name was given to the client to vet, they obviously should have done it better. So our agency and its people don't have egg on our faces.
I do feel it was unfortunate that I chose this particular morning to drag my fanny instead of getting in early. But I'm not feeling entirely well; I think perhaps I'm coming down with something, or else that I'm having particularly vicious allergies; and I didn't have anybody to pick up or to meet; and it's quiet as the very tomb around here. So...I get here to discover that the excrement has hit the air circulation device in a big way.
For one thing, it means we have to be extra vigilant, on the theory that because of this incident, we'll be under increased scrutiny. That means really taking seriously the injunction against any personal use whatsoever of the Internet, really guarding carefully whatever we might say to each other except when we're sure we're in secure quarters (i.e., not in cubes where there are ears everywhere), and so on.
So how am I posting this? you may ask. Well, it turns out that the phones are straight analog lines. Plug the phone wire into the computer, dial 9 before the number, and I can dial out to my AT&T dial-up account during the day. Of course, since it ties up my extension, I can't stay connected all day, lest someone be trying to call me (and lest I need to use the phone). But at least I can get mail, read LJ, and stay moderately connected to the world, at least during breaks.
And for now, that's about all - although God knows there's really nothing to do right now!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Holy canoli, Batman!
Let me congratulate you on your creative thinking re: getting online via your dial-up account to better fly under the radar. It may be slow, but it's yours.
Hope you get over your cold quickly, if that's what it turns out to be. My spouse is home sick with one today. He rarely takes time off from the piano teaching job, but he called and had them arrange a substitute for him today. Poor guy -- he had Stomach Bug Round One the weekend after Valentine's Day (as did I), Round Two the following weekend, and now a nasty cold. It's like his immune system hasn't had a chance to build back up again and these opportunistic viruses are finding him an easy target.
Re: Holy canoli, Batman!
Date: 2004-03-09 01:27 pm (UTC)I'm thinking that they talk tougher than they actually act - i.e., I'm thinking that perhaps they make it sound as though looking sideways at somebody will get you fired, when really you'd have to look sideways at them and stick out your tongue in an unattractive manner (to use an almost pointless analogy...oh, dear sweet merciful God! I've been infected by the Bad Analogy Virus!).
Earlier I was thinking it was a cold; now I'm starting to think it's allergy, considering that I'm not feeling any worse than I was earlier, and I'd expect it to be progressively worse if it were a cold. Sigh...we'll see. Hope your spouse starts feeling better, too - doesn't sound like he's having a whole lot of fun.
And meanwhile, it's still quieter than quiet. I should quit b*tching and enjoy it. Someday way too soon now, I'm going to be b*tching about how there aren't enough hours in the day...