Suffice it to say, it was a rough week. On top of the changes in scope for the project, and the reorgs going on with my customer, one of the main supporters of our project was fired on Thursday. He is supposed to take over the project while my customer is away on vacation for three weeks. On top of teaching class for 9 hours a day, and trying to run my project, I also had to deal with that.
My customer, Dr. M, and I were about to embark on a trip to a bar called Frankie's for a well deserved happy hour when my internal "project manager" (that's her title anyway, though the only thing she seems to manage is her vacation schedule) told me that I have to do some more training for the military. I was incensed. She asked me to do it earlier this week and I said no. I didn't want to be away from my project for a week because that would delay my return trip. Did she turn around and tell the customer no? Uh, no. She said I would do it.
I went off and said that since she had agreed with my other customer that I would deliver things on the project that weren't even in the statement of work and that doubled my workload that, if I had to miss a week to do the other training, things were going to start dropping on the floor. I have to put together an email about what we aren't going to finish, on top of everything else I have to do, because the "project manager" left for holidays for 2 weeks after dropping that little bomb on me.
Needless to say, I was ready for a drink. Dr. M and I showed up at Frankie's to await the rest of the Thursday afternoon crew, only to discover it doesn't open until 7 PM (it was 5 PM). I was like wah, will anything go right today? The bartender gave me a tour of Frankie's and we told him we would see him in 2 hours.
We went out to the beach bar and waited for people to show. A brit couple showed up and I ended up talking to them the whole night. It turns out the husband loves sharks as much as I do, and the wife is recovering from knee surgery. They are the type of couple that finish each other's sentences. I was laughing so hard at their description of the wife's first impression of the middle east. And they invited me over for an all made from hand dinner next Friday. The wife said I seemed to be in need of some mothering. I was like yeah, bring that on, and can you also make me some lemon cookies?
Then the big boss showed up with a guy in local dress, and we were introduced. The husband of the brit couple was telling me a story about tiger sharks so I didn't pay much attention to the local, which seemed to upset him. He stuck a piece of skewered chicken in my face and tried to feed me. I was like get that away from me because chickens are gross. Then he offered me a cigarette and I accidentally (because I had had two glasses of wine on an empty stomach) said he smoked girly cigarettes (he did - the really skinny ones) and said if he wanted a real cigarette he should smoke one of mine (gauloises blue - the french got something right). He did and had a coughing fit.
We were sitting in this area of the bar that's all sofas, except for where the local and I were sitting. I had a chair and he was sitting on the ottoman. At one point the husband, wife, and I were comparing knee scars (I won, surprise surprise) and the local almost fell over on me (guess he doesn't see many bare legs). Then he offered to fill up my wine glass, which was empty. At that point I accidentally, momentarily forgot where I was and I punched him in the arm and said "you're just trying to get me drunk". He almost fell off the ottoman. I noticed that the big boss was looking at me either trying not to laugh or because he was suddenly overcome by a migraine.
After the local left, the big boss, who was sitting across from me on a sofa, said "do you know who that was?" I hadn't even really heard the guy's name. It turns out he's the nephew of the sheik in charge of 'dhabi. I was like, um, oh, really? because I had been sort of rude to him. Then the big boss said "do you realize you punched the nephew of a sheik?" I mean, it's not like I punched him in the face. It was his arm.
Dr. M thought it was funny. And he gave me some advice about working here:
1. you have to have a high tolerance for stupidity
2. never get between two locals
Anyway, I'm looking forward to my home cooked dinner that will hopefully happen on Friday!
Friday, July 2, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
comparatively, I'm a good dancer
If you could have all of the fortunes of Steve Ballmer, but there was a vid of you dancing around like this, would you choose to be rich?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4860483760049380308#
Me neither. At least, when I'm feeling tired and frustrated, it makes me laugh.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4860483760049380308#
Me neither. At least, when I'm feeling tired and frustrated, it makes me laugh.
just another frantic sunday
Yesterday I got back into the customer office after being gone for a week. I had given everyone on the team explicit instructions on what to do while I was gone. I told them to contact me if they had any questions or ran out of work. Every evening when I checked in with them, things were going fine. I even came by here on Tuesday to drop off the latest version of the software we’re using, and they were supposed to do an upgrade, which takes about 30 minutes.
I was here a hour early to catch up before the rest of the team came. But I couldn’t get to my notebook or papers that I needed because security decided while I was gone that everyone needed to start storing their stuff in a locked cabinet. So my things were put in a cabinet for which no one could find the key. They didn’t get my things unlocked until noon.
Which in the end didn’t matter because I got pulled into a meeting right after I arrived to deal with a major issue that came up at the steering committee that no one in my company who attended the meeting bothered to warn me about. I had to put together a bunch of documents to show that a guy who is trying to throw my company under the bus saying we aren’t doing things was lying. It also turned out some things didn’t get done, even though my team had told me they were completed. It appears they spent the week I was gone screwing around, so now I am having to reshuffle tasks because the software upgrade isn’t done. Of course I’m responsible because I’m leading this project, but I am more than annoyed that my team lied to me about their progress.
So instead of doing my real work, I’ve been trying to get everything else done so we can close some action items. My team keeps disappearing when I try to delegate things to them. They’ve wasted two days now upgrading and adding access controls to our server. That task should literally take 2 hours at most. My customer is screaming at me because it isn’t done. The whole team is hanging out in the server room doing god knows what while I’m shuffling from fire to fire here and meeting to meeting.
Just when it seems things can’t get any worse, today in an organizational chart review meeting, which should have taken 5 minutes, the COO decided to reorganize all the departments and change their names. So now there is a bunch of unplanned rework for that. I’m gone the next three days to do training and if my team continues to screw around we are going to be behind schedule. And the training is supposed to be for only 10 people per session (I’m doing 3 sessions in the next three weeks) they’ve brought in people from a sister company that want to be trained as well. So it’s just me trying to train 15 people per session who have the attention span of 5 seconds and who speak English usually as a third language and who don’t have any real technical skills.
Which is not the only scope creep we’re having. The customer keeps asking for more and more stuff, and the “project manager” tells me she’ll say no to it, and then gets into meetings and agrees to everything. Then she doesn’t even bother to tell me what she’s agreed to so I get blindsided when the customer says “why isn’t this done? [the project manager] said you would have this finished today”. Fine, I adjust to change. But the project manager also keeps randomly pulling my resources so they can do things like have a day off because they’re exhausted from working a few hours of overtime. Which I might feel bad about if they were working even half the hours they said they were working.
And if one more person here says “relax and enjoy life” I will scream.
I was here a hour early to catch up before the rest of the team came. But I couldn’t get to my notebook or papers that I needed because security decided while I was gone that everyone needed to start storing their stuff in a locked cabinet. So my things were put in a cabinet for which no one could find the key. They didn’t get my things unlocked until noon.
Which in the end didn’t matter because I got pulled into a meeting right after I arrived to deal with a major issue that came up at the steering committee that no one in my company who attended the meeting bothered to warn me about. I had to put together a bunch of documents to show that a guy who is trying to throw my company under the bus saying we aren’t doing things was lying. It also turned out some things didn’t get done, even though my team had told me they were completed. It appears they spent the week I was gone screwing around, so now I am having to reshuffle tasks because the software upgrade isn’t done. Of course I’m responsible because I’m leading this project, but I am more than annoyed that my team lied to me about their progress.
So instead of doing my real work, I’ve been trying to get everything else done so we can close some action items. My team keeps disappearing when I try to delegate things to them. They’ve wasted two days now upgrading and adding access controls to our server. That task should literally take 2 hours at most. My customer is screaming at me because it isn’t done. The whole team is hanging out in the server room doing god knows what while I’m shuffling from fire to fire here and meeting to meeting.
Just when it seems things can’t get any worse, today in an organizational chart review meeting, which should have taken 5 minutes, the COO decided to reorganize all the departments and change their names. So now there is a bunch of unplanned rework for that. I’m gone the next three days to do training and if my team continues to screw around we are going to be behind schedule. And the training is supposed to be for only 10 people per session (I’m doing 3 sessions in the next three weeks) they’ve brought in people from a sister company that want to be trained as well. So it’s just me trying to train 15 people per session who have the attention span of 5 seconds and who speak English usually as a third language and who don’t have any real technical skills.
Which is not the only scope creep we’re having. The customer keeps asking for more and more stuff, and the “project manager” tells me she’ll say no to it, and then gets into meetings and agrees to everything. Then she doesn’t even bother to tell me what she’s agreed to so I get blindsided when the customer says “why isn’t this done? [the project manager] said you would have this finished today”. Fine, I adjust to change. But the project manager also keeps randomly pulling my resources so they can do things like have a day off because they’re exhausted from working a few hours of overtime. Which I might feel bad about if they were working even half the hours they said they were working.
And if one more person here says “relax and enjoy life” I will scream.
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