Waste of air

Things have been tense here lately and my department is feeling the heat. New hires and contractors haven't worked out as well as we wanted and now we're receiving alot of criticism from the engineering department. One engineer in particular regularly refers to one of our contractors as a "waste of air." Harsh!

$80 for a beer

Last night we had a ship party to celebrate the completion of a project that I worked on. Brenda, the vice president of the company, ordered a beer that cost $80 during dinner! Altogether the bill for the whole night was over $600. This project must have made the company alot of money and we must really be rolling in it now. I'll bet that we'll soon have raises and the bonuses this year will be awesome.

Long lunch?

Today my manager called me and a co-worker into one of our conference rooms and proceeded to yell at us for taking too long of a lunch the day before. According to him, we had been out of the office for "over 90 minutes" and that his manager had found the lab completely empty at 2:00 P.M. and had raised a stink with him. He made it clear that we weren't to take "long" lunches and that we were to be back in the lab every day at 2:00 P.M. There was no discussion of how many hours each of us put in every day during this busy period.

Company meeting sparsely attended

The owner skipped this morning's "required" company meeting but gave advance notice of his absence. I guess everybody thought that there would be nothing exciting announced because there was hardly anybody there this morning. Don't these people realize that this is an important tool for coordinating all of the projects?

Busted!

The owner of the company's favorite actress is Marry Anne from Gilligan's Island. Everybody is laughing today because she got busted for posession of pot. From what I hear, the owner will probably be even more attracted to her now.

Long vacation

One of my bosses got back from vacation today. He was gone for two weeks! Man, I can't wait until I have that kind of seniority and can take that much vacation no questions asked. As it is now, I have to request vacation time with my manager and it cannot interfere with any of my current projects. Otherwise, the vacation policy is very liberal and they don't officially track how much vacation you take and there isn't a limit. I do have to enter my vacation hours in our time tracking system but I'm sure that management only uses that for scheduling and such.

Farewell to a co-worker

Today is the last day for one of my co-workers. He says that he's got a better job but how can that be possible? Will he have foosball and XBox and PS3? Will he have his own office? Will he get paid more?

Stolen idea goes nowhere

So I gave up on automating some of our testing tasks because my co-worker said he had a better way to do it with Python. Well, here it is weeks later and he still hasn't produced anything that we can use. When I asked him how he was coming along with it he brushed me off and said he has better things to do.

Goodbye Nick

Nick, a programmer that has been here for much longer than I have, got fired today. It's weird to think that they kept someone so incompetent on for so long, but this company can be very charitable towards its employees. As I understand it, Nick received a very healthy severance package to honor his many years of service.

Raking it in

I was talking to one of the developers the other day about how his Christmas vacation went. Soon we were talking about various vacation destinations and he told me that the owner of the company had taken his entire family on a vacation to Jamaica a few years ago that cost $100 dollars per day for each person. He took about 10 people on that vacation and was gone for 10 days. That's over $10,000 for a vacation! That same summer the VP of our department went to China for two weeks. Sounds like it was a good year for the company and I'll bet everyone got great bonuses that Christmas!

Peggle

All of the developers have become obsessed with a game called Peggle and have been playing it non-stop for days now. It seems like its a huge drain on productivity but nobody seems to care. I suppose its just an indication that most of management is gone at trade shows this week.

He stole my idea

I had a great idea for streamlining some of the tasks that we have to do as part of our everyday testing. It involved using standardized automation tools to automate some of the more repetive tasks that we have to do often. Just when I was starting to get some traction in getting it all working right another co-worker (the one with his own office for naps) started putting it down in front of my manager and said that he could right a better tool using Python. Can you believe that?

Does he know my name?

I just noticed today that the owner of the company never addresses me by name. Is it possible that he hasn't even bothered to learn it? Or perhaps it's some sort of hierarchy thing. I don't know but it seems kind of strange for a management team that cares so much about it's employees.

Return of the bonus

My boss pulled me aside this morning and told me that they've been quite happy with my work this year. As a result they are issuing me a bonus check later this week for over one thousand dollars! Yahoo!

Disappointment

No sooner did I write that all the bosses were here then they all disappeared for the rest of the day. No bonus checks came. Christmas has been ruined and I am depressed.

Bonuses are coming soon

It's 3:30 on a Friday and ALL the bosses are in the office. I think that can only mean one thing - bonus checks will be in our hands soon!

Bonus!!!!!!

There is a rumor circulating around the company that we'll be getting bonus checks tomorrow just in time for Christmas and Christmas shopping. What a great perc and how considerate of them to get it to us before Christmas. I wonder how much it's going to be?

Company meeting short

Since all of the bosses are NITO, the required company meeting this morning was quite short. In fact, there was hardly time to sit down before it was adjourned. Many of the developers grumbled about coming in early for no reason. Shouldn't they be getting to work by 10 a.m. anyway?

Babysitter gone, uber-babysitter still here

So the head of our department is gone for three weeks so you would think there would less of a I'm-being-watched atmosphere here. But my bosses boss keeps sticking his head in the lab to check up on us. He even remarked once that it was strange how I was the only one in the lab whenever he checked. That's funny because I'm probably in here less than anyone else.

Hugo's

It is a tradition here that on the day before Thanksgiving the whole company meets at Hugo's, a local bar that serves turkey and exotic coffee drinks. Unfortunately, many of the employees didn't know what time that was happening because there was no anouncement until shortly before. Because of there was no anouncement, some of the employees had lunch right before it was time to go. Since the company policy is to only pay for the first hour or so, these employees saw no reason to go even though the company was also paying for drinks. Free drinks and they STILL didn't go. Seems really rude and ungrateful to me.