Ib gives a lesson on how to unstick a stuck truck (this film shows the depth more clearly than the pics). I'm sitting with Carol on the dune above, and we're laughing as they try to rescue the car from the sand pit.
Because the audio isn't completely clear...the trip leader says "yanni (which is like saying um) this is one of the famous stucks (something in arabic)," trying to make me feel like it was the worst stuck that's ever happened on the trip (of course, other stucks later in the night were much worse) and you can hear the other drivers sitting with me on the sand dune clapping. Carol says "oh you did such a good job" and then I say "yeeeah" like an idiot. Someone else says "you must be proud" and I say "I am". Then Ib says "give you a lesson. I always made this (basically saying he told me to drive like that because other people were making fun of him for being my "coach" and causing me to wreck the car) to give you a lesson on this kind of stucks and how to get out of them. Thank you so much Franki". There was a momentary pause in the rescue because not enough tires were on the sand because the pit I had landed in was so steep.
Friday, July 16, 2010
blonde bashing (part 1)
You have to admire a company that wants me to come work for them so badly one of their executives let me almost wreck his car last night. Go ahead and say it - "women drivers".
But, in my defense, it wasn't my fault. After happy hours and dinners, the company decided to take me on an adventure in the hopes I might want to stay here. I met up with Ib, a guy I met through work whom I've become friends with, at 6 PM last night. He's an explorer in an off roading club in dhabi. There were 12 other people on the trip.
Off roading is very dangerous here, so the club has "ranks" of drivers. New drivers have no rank. Someone who's been driving for 6 months on "newbie" trips gets one star. The star system goes up to 4 stars (the stars dictate which trips you can go on). Experts can become explorers, meaning they find new trails. The trails are sort of marked on a gps system, but since the dunes change on a daily basis, the route isn't always clear.
Ib is an explorer. He's been driving for 6 years and he goes at least twice a week. He told me the trip would be done at 10. I figured I would be back to the hotel by 11 pm.
We started out by getting the car ready for offroading. Ib said "don't expect to be treated like a princess". I got out of the car in the 133 degree heat and helped uninflate tires at the edge of a road leading into the desert. Then we were supposed to put up a flag so drivers could see us when we were down in a dune so they wouldn't fly over the dune and hit us. But, Ib didn't have a flag. "How dangerous could this be though?" I thought to myself. Ib's 8 year old daughter's stuffed pink cat was in the car because she sometimes goes with him.
I was about to find out the answer to my question.
We started out on some mellow terrain. It took a bit of getting used to at first. You drive sideways across a dune, like a surfer surfing a wave. The car is constantly sliding down the dune and feels like it is about to turn over. People roll, but usually the sand is so soft that it's hard to roll the car unless you do something really stupid.
Night started falling and we were deep in the desert. We stopped at the top of a wide dune as the moon, which was barely a crescent, came out. We got out of the car and set up some chairs, and the group sat around and had tea and smoked either cigars or cigarettes. "What are we waiting for?" I asked Ib. "Complete darkness," he replied.
Once it was totally dark, Ib handed me the keys to his car. "We're going for a drive," he said. The rest of the group looked as surprised as I did. "But I don't know how to drive in the sand," I said. There was another female in the group, Carol, who's french and looks like a model. She's been driving for four years and is an explorer too. She had been telling me how long it took her to get the confidence to drive on easy stuff. And here I was, in the middle of some serious terrain.
Oh well, f*k it, I thought. I took the keys. My first maneuver involved getting the car out of the way of the other 8 cars parked on the dune. Ib's car was facing downhill on a steep sand slope. There was a car parked sideways in front of me. I had to roll 2 feet to get past the car next to me, and then execute a sharp turn to get around the car in front of me, without sliding into it. I managed to do that but was less than 6 inches from the car in front of me by the time I made my turn. Scary.
Then I made my first foray onto the side of a dune. You have to fight every driving instinct to do this. The car is sliding sideways as you are driving forward and you have to fine tune your pressure on the gas pedal to make sure you are gunning it on the more solid sand and easing off on the softer sand so you don't dig a hole. If the car decides to slide down you have to let it go and then figure out how to get out of the sand ditch. I got about 5 feet onto the dune and the car started to slide. Instead of turning the wheel down I tried to drive up more on the dune and then I hit some soft sand. We were getting stuck. I gunned the engine and all this sand flew off the front tire and into Ib's window. His face was covered with sand because he was sweating. I laughed and got stuck.
Ib tried to get us out, but couldn't. The jeep with the winch came and pulled us out. I thought that would be it for my driving, but Ib wanted me to keep going. He also said "just call me the sandman" because he was so covered in sand (the sand flying through the windows happened constantly the rest of the night because we drove with the windows wide open so we didn't have to have the air con on - what's the point of being in the desert if you aren't experiencing the desert fully?).
My second attempt went really well. I decided to treat the car like a boat and steering became easier, except that Ib said I was taking too tight turns, which can cause the tire, which is deflated, to come off its rim (called a pop out). He also said I should slow down coming over the top of a sand dune since you have to see what's on the down side.
But I was so afraid of getting stuck that it was hard to break coming over the top of a sand dune (that's one of the worst places to be stuck because it's hard to move the car with one set of wheels on one side of the dune, and the other set on the other side). The dunes rise up sharply like a shark fin. The last 2 or 3 feet are normally soft, baby powder textured sand. If you get stuck in that mess you can't drive out of it. So I kept flying over the dunes. Anyway, it was so dark, with no moon, I normally couldn't see where I was going anyway.
Then disaster struck. I went flying over a dune with the gas pedal to the floor because I had been zig zagging up a very soft dune. Ib was encouraging me, psyched I was able to drive up the dune. We came over the top, and for a moment it felt like the car had stopped. Then I realized we weren't stopped, we were falling.
The side we had come down on was super steep. There was a soft sand powder hole at the bottom of the dune and we landed smack in the middle of it. We hit so hard I ended up with a bruise from my seat belt (note in the picture there are NO tire marks behind the car).
I heard the rest of the club, who had been watching me drive from another dune cheering. One egyptian guy yelled out "Franki went flying!" The car had made a horrible noise when it landed. I thought Ib was going to kill me.
Instead he laughed and said "Your first stuck!" It took 15 minutes of winching to get the truck out of the sand pit. Ib laid under the front tire to show how high up it was off the ground. Then the club told me to sit under the tire so they could take a picture for their web site. These pictures so just how soft the sand is here. The back of the truck buried on impact. The front left tire was buried (I also damaged the bumper) but the right tire was really high off the ground.
After we got the car unstuck Ib decided that was enough of me driving. We took off further and further into the desert. Soon other people were getting stuck, so I didn't feel so bad.
Some of the group decided to go home at 10, but I wanted to keep going. The terrain was getting more and more treacherous. At times Ib just let the car slide where ever it wanted to go. Other times we would fly over a dune and hit hard on the other side after flying through the air.
We stopped in a spot between the dunes around 11 pm. Everyone got out and we had dates and tea. Ib and I talked about work, life in general, camels, and then farting. He was telling me about how he had stopped hanging out with some of his friends because they were always having farting contests. He also said they sell this thing in his home country of Jordan that's like a stink bomb, and he used to throw them in his classroom because they would have to cancel class for at least two days because none of the lady teachers could stand the smell. I told him to bring some into the office (he and his family were heading to Jordan today for two weeks holiday) so we could get out of work. He laughed and said he didn't want his sons to know that these things existed because they might throw them in the house (they are 7 and 8 and apparently very badly behaved).
Around 1230 am we started to head home. That's when the trip turned into an epic. First we got a little lost and ended up on a soft dune. Everyone kept getting stuck. The only way out was to drive down this narrow corridor. As we headed towards the corridor Carol, who was in front of us, slammed on her brakes. In front of her was a newly constructed fence. She almost hit it, and then we almost hit her. Our cars were so close they couldn't winch Carol out because we were in the way. The guys in the group managed to push her out of the hole she had dug spinning her tires trying to not hit the fence. We then tried to back up the dune but the car slid forward into the fence.
About 20 guys came riding up on ATVs and started yelling in Arabic. Apparently a camel preserve had just put up the fence and they were yelling at us for being to close to the preserve. They yelled at Ib as he tried in vain to unstick the truck. His clutch was burning so bad that it smelled for the rest of the drive, but he couldn't move his car.
Finally the camel guys agreed to lower the fence so we could drive over it. We gunned up a dune while the camel guys screamed at us to not hit the camels. Then we got out and over the dune.
But a few minutes later the leader of our trip hit the fence in a new place. It took 15 minutes to get him unstuck and instead of being nice like Ib, he just cut the fence. Then another driver got stuck in the same place and had a pop out. While we tried to jack up his truck and fix the problem (which was not easy because the pop out tire was on the downside of the dune slope) the camel guys came over and started screaming that we would be arrested for ruining their fence. I was like great. It's 130 in the morning. I was tired, really dirty, and hot. I hadn't eaten anything since 11 in the morning so I was hungry but afraid to eat because I knew I would puke from all the spinning moves we were doing in the truck. And now we're going to jail, I thought.
But, Ib talked to the guys and in the end they let us go. We got the pop out fixed and Ib assured me we were only 10 km from the road and that we would be heading home shortly.
Then two more people got stuck. And Ib flew over a dune and landed in a sand pit. He had to be winched twice to get out of it and we thought for a few minutes we were going to have to leave the car because the position it was in made it so hard to pull out. The leader was the final stuck, ending up in a sand pit so deep that when the winch pulled him out we all had to move in case the cable broke and went flying.
Finally, at 4 am, we arrived at a gas station to reinflate the tires. Ib's car was first, but it took so long for the guy to fill the tires that it seemed he could do it faster by manually blowing into the valve. Ib was making fun of me because I was covered head to toe in sand and sweat. As Carol and I walked across the parking lot of the filling station to look at the damage she had done to her jeep from a stuck I left a trail of sand.
Ib dropped me off at the hotel at 530 in the morning. The intercon staff looked at me curiously as I made another sand trail through the lobby. I had blood on my feet from scratching them while I was trying to help unstick the truck barefoot. My shirt and pants were covered in dust. My hair was flying in a million different directions from driving in the heat with the windows open.
After showering I finally was able to lay down and shut my eyes. But right before I fell asleep I remembered the words of the trip leader: "so, next ride you will have your own jeep?"
Ha ha, I wish. No, I'd rather wreck someone else's.
But, in my defense, it wasn't my fault. After happy hours and dinners, the company decided to take me on an adventure in the hopes I might want to stay here. I met up with Ib, a guy I met through work whom I've become friends with, at 6 PM last night. He's an explorer in an off roading club in dhabi. There were 12 other people on the trip.
Off roading is very dangerous here, so the club has "ranks" of drivers. New drivers have no rank. Someone who's been driving for 6 months on "newbie" trips gets one star. The star system goes up to 4 stars (the stars dictate which trips you can go on). Experts can become explorers, meaning they find new trails. The trails are sort of marked on a gps system, but since the dunes change on a daily basis, the route isn't always clear.
Ib is an explorer. He's been driving for 6 years and he goes at least twice a week. He told me the trip would be done at 10. I figured I would be back to the hotel by 11 pm.
We started out by getting the car ready for offroading. Ib said "don't expect to be treated like a princess". I got out of the car in the 133 degree heat and helped uninflate tires at the edge of a road leading into the desert. Then we were supposed to put up a flag so drivers could see us when we were down in a dune so they wouldn't fly over the dune and hit us. But, Ib didn't have a flag. "How dangerous could this be though?" I thought to myself. Ib's 8 year old daughter's stuffed pink cat was in the car because she sometimes goes with him.
I was about to find out the answer to my question.
We started out on some mellow terrain. It took a bit of getting used to at first. You drive sideways across a dune, like a surfer surfing a wave. The car is constantly sliding down the dune and feels like it is about to turn over. People roll, but usually the sand is so soft that it's hard to roll the car unless you do something really stupid.
Night started falling and we were deep in the desert. We stopped at the top of a wide dune as the moon, which was barely a crescent, came out. We got out of the car and set up some chairs, and the group sat around and had tea and smoked either cigars or cigarettes. "What are we waiting for?" I asked Ib. "Complete darkness," he replied.
Once it was totally dark, Ib handed me the keys to his car. "We're going for a drive," he said. The rest of the group looked as surprised as I did. "But I don't know how to drive in the sand," I said. There was another female in the group, Carol, who's french and looks like a model. She's been driving for four years and is an explorer too. She had been telling me how long it took her to get the confidence to drive on easy stuff. And here I was, in the middle of some serious terrain.
Oh well, f*k it, I thought. I took the keys. My first maneuver involved getting the car out of the way of the other 8 cars parked on the dune. Ib's car was facing downhill on a steep sand slope. There was a car parked sideways in front of me. I had to roll 2 feet to get past the car next to me, and then execute a sharp turn to get around the car in front of me, without sliding into it. I managed to do that but was less than 6 inches from the car in front of me by the time I made my turn. Scary.
Then I made my first foray onto the side of a dune. You have to fight every driving instinct to do this. The car is sliding sideways as you are driving forward and you have to fine tune your pressure on the gas pedal to make sure you are gunning it on the more solid sand and easing off on the softer sand so you don't dig a hole. If the car decides to slide down you have to let it go and then figure out how to get out of the sand ditch. I got about 5 feet onto the dune and the car started to slide. Instead of turning the wheel down I tried to drive up more on the dune and then I hit some soft sand. We were getting stuck. I gunned the engine and all this sand flew off the front tire and into Ib's window. His face was covered with sand because he was sweating. I laughed and got stuck.
Ib tried to get us out, but couldn't. The jeep with the winch came and pulled us out. I thought that would be it for my driving, but Ib wanted me to keep going. He also said "just call me the sandman" because he was so covered in sand (the sand flying through the windows happened constantly the rest of the night because we drove with the windows wide open so we didn't have to have the air con on - what's the point of being in the desert if you aren't experiencing the desert fully?).
My second attempt went really well. I decided to treat the car like a boat and steering became easier, except that Ib said I was taking too tight turns, which can cause the tire, which is deflated, to come off its rim (called a pop out). He also said I should slow down coming over the top of a sand dune since you have to see what's on the down side.
But I was so afraid of getting stuck that it was hard to break coming over the top of a sand dune (that's one of the worst places to be stuck because it's hard to move the car with one set of wheels on one side of the dune, and the other set on the other side). The dunes rise up sharply like a shark fin. The last 2 or 3 feet are normally soft, baby powder textured sand. If you get stuck in that mess you can't drive out of it. So I kept flying over the dunes. Anyway, it was so dark, with no moon, I normally couldn't see where I was going anyway.
Then disaster struck. I went flying over a dune with the gas pedal to the floor because I had been zig zagging up a very soft dune. Ib was encouraging me, psyched I was able to drive up the dune. We came over the top, and for a moment it felt like the car had stopped. Then I realized we weren't stopped, we were falling.
The side we had come down on was super steep. There was a soft sand powder hole at the bottom of the dune and we landed smack in the middle of it. We hit so hard I ended up with a bruise from my seat belt (note in the picture there are NO tire marks behind the car).I heard the rest of the club, who had been watching me drive from another dune cheering. One egyptian guy yelled out "Franki went flying!" The car had made a horrible noise when it landed. I thought Ib was going to kill me.
Instead he laughed and said "Your first stuck!" It took 15 minutes of winching to get the truck out of the sand pit. Ib laid under the front tire to show how high up it was off the ground. Then the club told me to sit under the tire so they could take a picture for their web site. These pictures so just how soft the sand is here. The back of the truck buried on impact. The front left tire was buried (I also damaged the bumper) but the right tire was really high off the ground.
Some of the group decided to go home at 10, but I wanted to keep going. The terrain was getting more and more treacherous. At times Ib just let the car slide where ever it wanted to go. Other times we would fly over a dune and hit hard on the other side after flying through the air.
We stopped in a spot between the dunes around 11 pm. Everyone got out and we had dates and tea. Ib and I talked about work, life in general, camels, and then farting. He was telling me about how he had stopped hanging out with some of his friends because they were always having farting contests. He also said they sell this thing in his home country of Jordan that's like a stink bomb, and he used to throw them in his classroom because they would have to cancel class for at least two days because none of the lady teachers could stand the smell. I told him to bring some into the office (he and his family were heading to Jordan today for two weeks holiday) so we could get out of work. He laughed and said he didn't want his sons to know that these things existed because they might throw them in the house (they are 7 and 8 and apparently very badly behaved).
Around 1230 am we started to head home. That's when the trip turned into an epic. First we got a little lost and ended up on a soft dune. Everyone kept getting stuck. The only way out was to drive down this narrow corridor. As we headed towards the corridor Carol, who was in front of us, slammed on her brakes. In front of her was a newly constructed fence. She almost hit it, and then we almost hit her. Our cars were so close they couldn't winch Carol out because we were in the way. The guys in the group managed to push her out of the hole she had dug spinning her tires trying to not hit the fence. We then tried to back up the dune but the car slid forward into the fence.
About 20 guys came riding up on ATVs and started yelling in Arabic. Apparently a camel preserve had just put up the fence and they were yelling at us for being to close to the preserve. They yelled at Ib as he tried in vain to unstick the truck. His clutch was burning so bad that it smelled for the rest of the drive, but he couldn't move his car.
Finally the camel guys agreed to lower the fence so we could drive over it. We gunned up a dune while the camel guys screamed at us to not hit the camels. Then we got out and over the dune.
But a few minutes later the leader of our trip hit the fence in a new place. It took 15 minutes to get him unstuck and instead of being nice like Ib, he just cut the fence. Then another driver got stuck in the same place and had a pop out. While we tried to jack up his truck and fix the problem (which was not easy because the pop out tire was on the downside of the dune slope) the camel guys came over and started screaming that we would be arrested for ruining their fence. I was like great. It's 130 in the morning. I was tired, really dirty, and hot. I hadn't eaten anything since 11 in the morning so I was hungry but afraid to eat because I knew I would puke from all the spinning moves we were doing in the truck. And now we're going to jail, I thought.
But, Ib talked to the guys and in the end they let us go. We got the pop out fixed and Ib assured me we were only 10 km from the road and that we would be heading home shortly.
Then two more people got stuck. And Ib flew over a dune and landed in a sand pit. He had to be winched twice to get out of it and we thought for a few minutes we were going to have to leave the car because the position it was in made it so hard to pull out. The leader was the final stuck, ending up in a sand pit so deep that when the winch pulled him out we all had to move in case the cable broke and went flying.
Finally, at 4 am, we arrived at a gas station to reinflate the tires. Ib's car was first, but it took so long for the guy to fill the tires that it seemed he could do it faster by manually blowing into the valve. Ib was making fun of me because I was covered head to toe in sand and sweat. As Carol and I walked across the parking lot of the filling station to look at the damage she had done to her jeep from a stuck I left a trail of sand.
Ib dropped me off at the hotel at 530 in the morning. The intercon staff looked at me curiously as I made another sand trail through the lobby. I had blood on my feet from scratching them while I was trying to help unstick the truck barefoot. My shirt and pants were covered in dust. My hair was flying in a million different directions from driving in the heat with the windows open.
After showering I finally was able to lay down and shut my eyes. But right before I fell asleep I remembered the words of the trip leader: "so, next ride you will have your own jeep?"
Ha ha, I wish. No, I'd rather wreck someone else's.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
the problem child and I become friends
Poor problem child. He has such a short memory. He skulked around me for a few days, but then was behaving badly in meetings all day today. I've dealt with it as well as possible. Today when he kept interrupting my data modeling session, I let him pick where we would start modeling. When he had technical difficulties with his laptop I got the IT kid to come fix it immediately.
In a way, I guess I'm just resigned to his personality. There's one problem child on every project, at various levels of being bad. And normally I get along with difficult personalities.
But things took a turn for the worst today when I was trying to draw a strategy map. Problem child said my map was wrong (it wasn't) and proceeded to lecture me for thirty minutes on what a strategy is. Nothing he said was making any sense. So, a local who briefly owned my project before foisting it onto someone else who was in the meeting started to pick on the problem child. First he played a trick to get the problem child, who sometimes gets confused with the english language when he's in an argument, to say he was totally incompetent at defining strategies. The problem child finally realized what was going on after he had said "I am totally incompetent at defining strategies" 14, yes, 14 times. I felt bad for him because he didn't look pissed, like I would be, he looked hurt. Then the local said that the problem child was a bad communicator. And then he said that if people at the company were confused by the strategy map it was because the problem child didn't know what he was doing.
In all honesty, I think the local was doing this because we have a good work friendship and he knows the problem child picks on me. But, I fight my own fights. And when I say stuff to the problem child he doesn't care - I'm just a woman. When a man does it, the sole reason is humiliation.
As the local escalated his barrage, and the problem child looked more and more pathetic, standing in the front of the room, pants belted and pulled up past his belly button, socks showing a full inch because his pants are too short, his weirdly spindly shoulders curving more and more inward, and his giant gut protruding like a target that screamed "hit me!", I couldn't take it anymore. I turned to the local, who was sitting next to me, and said "stop it". I didn't say it loud, or in a mean way, but it shut down all of the noise in the room (there were about 7 people arguing at the same time in the meeting).
I suggested that I meet with the problem child alone to combine both of our thoughts on strategies. I suggested we meet again next week. Everyone was glad the meeting was finally over so no one argued and they ran out of the room like school kids finally released for the summer holidays.
Except the problem child. He came over to me and said, after he had gotten the email I sent him yesterday thanking him for acknowledging my team's good work on the project, that he was sorry he hadn't said more often how pleased he was with the job we have been doing. And then he said " I expect so much from you because of the work you do that sometimes I forget to say thank you." But, I really think he was thanking me for defending him in the meeting.
I take that as a truce. Somehow maybe I have some wasta here, not with powerful people, but with the ground troops. And regardless of what pains in the ass they can be, I guess I'll survive my last 4 weeks here. Even the local, whom I thought would be pissed at me, came up to me as I was leaving work this evening and said "you have to be the most diplomatic person I've ever met".
Okay, I know you're laughing now. But I swear he said it.
In a way, I guess I'm just resigned to his personality. There's one problem child on every project, at various levels of being bad. And normally I get along with difficult personalities.
But things took a turn for the worst today when I was trying to draw a strategy map. Problem child said my map was wrong (it wasn't) and proceeded to lecture me for thirty minutes on what a strategy is. Nothing he said was making any sense. So, a local who briefly owned my project before foisting it onto someone else who was in the meeting started to pick on the problem child. First he played a trick to get the problem child, who sometimes gets confused with the english language when he's in an argument, to say he was totally incompetent at defining strategies. The problem child finally realized what was going on after he had said "I am totally incompetent at defining strategies" 14, yes, 14 times. I felt bad for him because he didn't look pissed, like I would be, he looked hurt. Then the local said that the problem child was a bad communicator. And then he said that if people at the company were confused by the strategy map it was because the problem child didn't know what he was doing.
In all honesty, I think the local was doing this because we have a good work friendship and he knows the problem child picks on me. But, I fight my own fights. And when I say stuff to the problem child he doesn't care - I'm just a woman. When a man does it, the sole reason is humiliation.
As the local escalated his barrage, and the problem child looked more and more pathetic, standing in the front of the room, pants belted and pulled up past his belly button, socks showing a full inch because his pants are too short, his weirdly spindly shoulders curving more and more inward, and his giant gut protruding like a target that screamed "hit me!", I couldn't take it anymore. I turned to the local, who was sitting next to me, and said "stop it". I didn't say it loud, or in a mean way, but it shut down all of the noise in the room (there were about 7 people arguing at the same time in the meeting).
I suggested that I meet with the problem child alone to combine both of our thoughts on strategies. I suggested we meet again next week. Everyone was glad the meeting was finally over so no one argued and they ran out of the room like school kids finally released for the summer holidays.
Except the problem child. He came over to me and said, after he had gotten the email I sent him yesterday thanking him for acknowledging my team's good work on the project, that he was sorry he hadn't said more often how pleased he was with the job we have been doing. And then he said " I expect so much from you because of the work you do that sometimes I forget to say thank you." But, I really think he was thanking me for defending him in the meeting.
I take that as a truce. Somehow maybe I have some wasta here, not with powerful people, but with the ground troops. And regardless of what pains in the ass they can be, I guess I'll survive my last 4 weeks here. Even the local, whom I thought would be pissed at me, came up to me as I was leaving work this evening and said "you have to be the most diplomatic person I've ever met".
Okay, I know you're laughing now. But I swear he said it.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
bad interviews and polar bears
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/interviewees
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/polar_bear
Good for a few laughs. I would be the underdressed one...thanks for sending this Jason!
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/polar_bear
Good for a few laughs. I would be the underdressed one...thanks for sending this Jason!
a little dirty, but we've risen from the ashes
I went into work on Sunday with a plan in place to try to fix my project problems. I found out that, over the weekend, a decision had been made to put the problem child in charge of my project. I was absolutely furious, so much so that I temporarily couldn't finish reading the email because my sight went blank. As if I was going to work with that asshole. I decided to pull out all of the stops.
First, I went to the COO and gave him the status of the project. I casually mentioned we will finish all of the deliverables by the end of July, so there was no reason really for me to stick around until the 14th as is currently planned. I also said I was not happy with the problem child H delaying things, and that, since I have projects back in the US, and since he finds it so hard to work with me, it might be better for me to leave at the end of July.
I have to admit I was hoping he would say fine, get the hell out of here. But instead he asked who I wanted to run the project from the customer side. I suggested a guy, R, whom I get along with (even though he's canadian and all canadians are strange).
Within an hour, the change was made (much to the panic of R). Then the problem child decided to retaliate by blocking all forward progress on a web site that needs to be published by the end of the week. The problem child was told by the COO to have it done, and problem child said that I did not provide him with the data he needed and that he couldn't proceed any further.
To this point I have managed my temper and let things slide because working here is such a political mine field. But to suggest I did not do my job was about the worst thing problem child could do. I fired off an email that was so strongly worded one of my colleagues later said he could imagine me screaming every word in problem child's face.
I guess the thing is, the real work is done. I don't care if they throw me out of here because I stepped on someone's toes.
Within 10 minutes of sending the email I could hear a commotion on the floor below me as problem child was slapped down by the COO loudly and publicly. The COO accused him of lying which is funny because everyone lies here and no one says anything because it's just the way the culture works. I wondered what would happen next.
What happened is that the problem child has been avoiding me. Why? Because he's afraid of me now. Before he would waste my time having pointless arguments. Not any more. When he speaks to me, he does it calmly and actually seems a little timid. He carefully phrases everything so I don't take it the wrong way and fly off the handle again. And finally, our web site will be published.
To make sure there were no further issues that would get him in trouble, problem child sent me an email today saying I had done an excellent job. Which is so ironic since he was always my biggest critic. I responded back to him that it really meant a lot to me that he would say such nice things about my work. Hopefully things will continue in this "we all love each other so much" mode until I can get the hell out of here.
As for the web site, we publish tomorrow. I have a plan to make it more exciting than the launch of a NASA space shuttle. I'm even going to play the rocky theme song once it gets moved to sharepoint and the test user is able to access it. Even the IT guys, who, well, are IT guys, are getting excited about it (they have to publish it and they were complaining about the extra work, so I've been dealing with them as well as the problem child which has been making me insane because I've set up the web site so that all they have to do is push a button to get it to publish).
All ends well. At least for today.
First, I went to the COO and gave him the status of the project. I casually mentioned we will finish all of the deliverables by the end of July, so there was no reason really for me to stick around until the 14th as is currently planned. I also said I was not happy with the problem child H delaying things, and that, since I have projects back in the US, and since he finds it so hard to work with me, it might be better for me to leave at the end of July.
I have to admit I was hoping he would say fine, get the hell out of here. But instead he asked who I wanted to run the project from the customer side. I suggested a guy, R, whom I get along with (even though he's canadian and all canadians are strange).
Within an hour, the change was made (much to the panic of R). Then the problem child decided to retaliate by blocking all forward progress on a web site that needs to be published by the end of the week. The problem child was told by the COO to have it done, and problem child said that I did not provide him with the data he needed and that he couldn't proceed any further.
To this point I have managed my temper and let things slide because working here is such a political mine field. But to suggest I did not do my job was about the worst thing problem child could do. I fired off an email that was so strongly worded one of my colleagues later said he could imagine me screaming every word in problem child's face.
I guess the thing is, the real work is done. I don't care if they throw me out of here because I stepped on someone's toes.
Within 10 minutes of sending the email I could hear a commotion on the floor below me as problem child was slapped down by the COO loudly and publicly. The COO accused him of lying which is funny because everyone lies here and no one says anything because it's just the way the culture works. I wondered what would happen next.
What happened is that the problem child has been avoiding me. Why? Because he's afraid of me now. Before he would waste my time having pointless arguments. Not any more. When he speaks to me, he does it calmly and actually seems a little timid. He carefully phrases everything so I don't take it the wrong way and fly off the handle again. And finally, our web site will be published.
To make sure there were no further issues that would get him in trouble, problem child sent me an email today saying I had done an excellent job. Which is so ironic since he was always my biggest critic. I responded back to him that it really meant a lot to me that he would say such nice things about my work. Hopefully things will continue in this "we all love each other so much" mode until I can get the hell out of here.
As for the web site, we publish tomorrow. I have a plan to make it more exciting than the launch of a NASA space shuttle. I'm even going to play the rocky theme song once it gets moved to sharepoint and the test user is able to access it. Even the IT guys, who, well, are IT guys, are getting excited about it (they have to publish it and they were complaining about the extra work, so I've been dealing with them as well as the problem child which has been making me insane because I've set up the web site so that all they have to do is push a button to get it to publish).
All ends well. At least for today.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Mr. Salt and Ms. Pepper discover a crashed UFO
This is my brain after 8 hours of software testing...
why we'll never win a war here
I've been thinking this week that my project is a microcosm example of why Westerners will never succeed here.
I didn't want to come back to do this project. But the customer begged me. They even put in the statement of work that I had to be the consultant. I made demands for the project to ensure it would be a success, such as getting to pick the team that would work for me, having a proper work area (conference room, projector, white board), and having customer commitment. Oh sure, they said, you'll get everything you want.
Then I get here and it's like an out of control circus. Our working environment is horrible and we never have enough room to even set up our laptops. Forget working groups, the conference room is hardly ever available, and even when we have it booked we can be thrown out at the customer's whim. My company assigned a project manager who has something personal against me, and she is constantly reassigning my resources so, on a daily basis, I have no idea which team members will be showing up. That wouldn't be bad if at least they were doing other work but they aren't. They are sitting at home, or in the office, doing nothing while I have to struggle to do their work on top of mine because I don't want to blow my schedule.
The customer has tons of political issues going on in the company and they keep trying to involve my team in them. Keeping some of the junior members out of this game has been hard because they think they are gaining some power from this mess when in fact it's more like a set up. Keeping my company's resources working even 4 hours a day when I'm here is hard, and when I'm gone it's a disaster. Only the sub contractor working on the project is reliable. If I didn't have him I don't know what I would do. Meanwhile, there's a lot of pressure from my company to make this a referenceable project even though they are doing everything they can to sabotage it.
The customer has unreasonable deadlines for things, and try to force me to drop current tasks to work on unrelated, non-critical tasks. Then they ask me "why isn't this critical task done?" Even though I have a chain of emails showing I've been redirected and they've accepted that by forcing me to work on a non-critical task they are introducing risk of something critical not getting completed they refuse to take any responsibility.
And then they fire the people who are supposed to help us figure out who in the company we need to work with, and have assigned a new guy who's been with the company for one month and who doesn't even have a desk to sit at to be the head of the project.
And that's the way business is done here. Finger pointing back to the people who are trying to help. No matter how hard you work, someone is always unhappy and critical. People play political games and back stab each other and then try to force us poor consultants to take sides. And in the end, when we leave, I'm sure they'll claim that the project is a failure because it's easier to do nothing than to actually learn how to be self sufficient and successful.
People work here for years. I don't know how. Oh wait, I do. Last night at a happy hour with some people from a sister company it was recommended I get a prescription for xanax.
I didn't want to come back to do this project. But the customer begged me. They even put in the statement of work that I had to be the consultant. I made demands for the project to ensure it would be a success, such as getting to pick the team that would work for me, having a proper work area (conference room, projector, white board), and having customer commitment. Oh sure, they said, you'll get everything you want.
Then I get here and it's like an out of control circus. Our working environment is horrible and we never have enough room to even set up our laptops. Forget working groups, the conference room is hardly ever available, and even when we have it booked we can be thrown out at the customer's whim. My company assigned a project manager who has something personal against me, and she is constantly reassigning my resources so, on a daily basis, I have no idea which team members will be showing up. That wouldn't be bad if at least they were doing other work but they aren't. They are sitting at home, or in the office, doing nothing while I have to struggle to do their work on top of mine because I don't want to blow my schedule.
The customer has tons of political issues going on in the company and they keep trying to involve my team in them. Keeping some of the junior members out of this game has been hard because they think they are gaining some power from this mess when in fact it's more like a set up. Keeping my company's resources working even 4 hours a day when I'm here is hard, and when I'm gone it's a disaster. Only the sub contractor working on the project is reliable. If I didn't have him I don't know what I would do. Meanwhile, there's a lot of pressure from my company to make this a referenceable project even though they are doing everything they can to sabotage it.
The customer has unreasonable deadlines for things, and try to force me to drop current tasks to work on unrelated, non-critical tasks. Then they ask me "why isn't this critical task done?" Even though I have a chain of emails showing I've been redirected and they've accepted that by forcing me to work on a non-critical task they are introducing risk of something critical not getting completed they refuse to take any responsibility.
And then they fire the people who are supposed to help us figure out who in the company we need to work with, and have assigned a new guy who's been with the company for one month and who doesn't even have a desk to sit at to be the head of the project.
And that's the way business is done here. Finger pointing back to the people who are trying to help. No matter how hard you work, someone is always unhappy and critical. People play political games and back stab each other and then try to force us poor consultants to take sides. And in the end, when we leave, I'm sure they'll claim that the project is a failure because it's easier to do nothing than to actually learn how to be self sufficient and successful.
People work here for years. I don't know how. Oh wait, I do. Last night at a happy hour with some people from a sister company it was recommended I get a prescription for xanax.
FUBAR
I'm wondering how much worse things will get here before they get better.
My project sponsor was fired on Sunday. His back up was fired the Thursday before. There was no explanation of why this happened, and I found out from other people in the company, not because I was informed before hand.
Wednesday I was back in the office after being gone for two weeks. The problem child H now has the project moved under his department. He is so gleeful about this that it almost makes me sick when I talk to him. Luckily I managed to maintain a good relationship with him so the splatter hasn't hit me directly. But still. Everyone in the company who liked my project sponsor keeps asking me what happened. As if I know. I'm avoiding politics here as much as possible but people keep trying to engage me in a speculation game of what happened. At this point, I trust no one and refuse to say anything. That's in turn creating a sense of paranoia that I know something and so people have been asking me if they are going to lose their jobs. They don't believe me when I say I don't know. That's causing them to do things like stand behind my chair while I'm trying to work, speaking in Arabic, saying my name and the name of my project sponsor. If you're going to talk about me, and not in English, do it in your office.
To make matters more interesting, I'm getting criticized for things that are just insane. I was yelled at yesterday for not putting the names of my customer on the to: list of an email in the order of their importance (COO first, etc.). I was like are you god damn kidding me? A sales guy claimed to H that I was having secret meetings with other sales people behind his back (which, while also not true, is completely improbable as I haven't been in the office to have any meetings). H suggested I sit with the sales guy and talk to him to make him feel better.
So, even though I have a ton of work to do, I sat in the sales guy's office for an hour yesterday and tried to discuss his concerns with the project. It turns out, he has none. He made up his concerns to force me to talk to him. I sat there while he tried to grill me about my love life (short conversation, that one) and then he tried to force me to agree to go to dinner with him. I hate this kind of stuff. I don't want to hang out or talk to anyone here anymore. I just want to get done and go home.
H is also throwing all these road blocks in my way to continue moving the project forward. Meanwhile, since Wednesday, I've had to waste hours of my life I'll never get back briefing the new project sponsors on what we have done and what we have left to do. That's right, sponsors. Since Wednesday 3 people have taken over and then resigned as the project sponsor. I'm hoping the guy I talked to on Thursday will stick at least for a week so I can get some work done. The latest project sponsor is younger than me and has no experience in this stuff. He claimed the project was behind schedule even though we are two weeks ahead of schedule and have delivered more stuff than was required. I've been driving my team to make sure that everything is high quality so the customer can't nit pick up to death about spelling errors or whatever. The team is taking it pretty well considering everyone at the customer site is saying "why work so hard, the project is just going to be shut down".
And then yesterday, after working an hour of overtime to deliver some bullshit report to H, he smiled and said to me "Thanks, but this report doesn't matter, because as soon as you leave we're replacing your software tool with another tool. What do you think about that?" I know he was baiting me because there were some important decision makers in the room. So I said "Assuming you've done a trade off analysis that shows that tool will work for you, you need to make decisions based on the best engineering approach to your current problem. I also assume you've analyzed the cost of changing tools along with the required training. By the way, that tool isn't even on the Gartner quadrant. I assume you've checked with the vendor to make sure you'll be able to get tech support if something goes wrong, since it's not a well established company and may be lacking resources." Asshole. I smiled back at him. One of the decision makers asked if H had checked into any of the issues I had just brought up as I walked out of the room.
Only 5 weeks left. If I survive this project and get it delivered on time, with customer approval, I can do anything.
My project sponsor was fired on Sunday. His back up was fired the Thursday before. There was no explanation of why this happened, and I found out from other people in the company, not because I was informed before hand.
Wednesday I was back in the office after being gone for two weeks. The problem child H now has the project moved under his department. He is so gleeful about this that it almost makes me sick when I talk to him. Luckily I managed to maintain a good relationship with him so the splatter hasn't hit me directly. But still. Everyone in the company who liked my project sponsor keeps asking me what happened. As if I know. I'm avoiding politics here as much as possible but people keep trying to engage me in a speculation game of what happened. At this point, I trust no one and refuse to say anything. That's in turn creating a sense of paranoia that I know something and so people have been asking me if they are going to lose their jobs. They don't believe me when I say I don't know. That's causing them to do things like stand behind my chair while I'm trying to work, speaking in Arabic, saying my name and the name of my project sponsor. If you're going to talk about me, and not in English, do it in your office.
To make matters more interesting, I'm getting criticized for things that are just insane. I was yelled at yesterday for not putting the names of my customer on the to: list of an email in the order of their importance (COO first, etc.). I was like are you god damn kidding me? A sales guy claimed to H that I was having secret meetings with other sales people behind his back (which, while also not true, is completely improbable as I haven't been in the office to have any meetings). H suggested I sit with the sales guy and talk to him to make him feel better.
So, even though I have a ton of work to do, I sat in the sales guy's office for an hour yesterday and tried to discuss his concerns with the project. It turns out, he has none. He made up his concerns to force me to talk to him. I sat there while he tried to grill me about my love life (short conversation, that one) and then he tried to force me to agree to go to dinner with him. I hate this kind of stuff. I don't want to hang out or talk to anyone here anymore. I just want to get done and go home.
H is also throwing all these road blocks in my way to continue moving the project forward. Meanwhile, since Wednesday, I've had to waste hours of my life I'll never get back briefing the new project sponsors on what we have done and what we have left to do. That's right, sponsors. Since Wednesday 3 people have taken over and then resigned as the project sponsor. I'm hoping the guy I talked to on Thursday will stick at least for a week so I can get some work done. The latest project sponsor is younger than me and has no experience in this stuff. He claimed the project was behind schedule even though we are two weeks ahead of schedule and have delivered more stuff than was required. I've been driving my team to make sure that everything is high quality so the customer can't nit pick up to death about spelling errors or whatever. The team is taking it pretty well considering everyone at the customer site is saying "why work so hard, the project is just going to be shut down".
And then yesterday, after working an hour of overtime to deliver some bullshit report to H, he smiled and said to me "Thanks, but this report doesn't matter, because as soon as you leave we're replacing your software tool with another tool. What do you think about that?" I know he was baiting me because there were some important decision makers in the room. So I said "Assuming you've done a trade off analysis that shows that tool will work for you, you need to make decisions based on the best engineering approach to your current problem. I also assume you've analyzed the cost of changing tools along with the required training. By the way, that tool isn't even on the Gartner quadrant. I assume you've checked with the vendor to make sure you'll be able to get tech support if something goes wrong, since it's not a well established company and may be lacking resources." Asshole. I smiled back at him. One of the decision makers asked if H had checked into any of the issues I had just brought up as I walked out of the room.
Only 5 weeks left. If I survive this project and get it delivered on time, with customer approval, I can do anything.
helicopter
Last night I dreamed that I was in a war zone and I had a team of 6 people with me, men and women. A helicopter came in to rescue us because we had just finished our mission. I climbed up a rope and by taking up my end of the rope I was able to pull the rest of my team off the ground into the helicopter. But, for some reason, every time one of my team members would get on the helicopter, they would cut the rope a little shorter (there is no way to imagine the rope configuration I dreamed about as it was completely illogical).
By the time I pulled up the last person, which required me to pull myself up on my rope and then drop my weight down (kind of like belaying someone) my arms were really tired. I wanted to get onto the helicopter. By then we were way above the ground because there were still bombs going off. I went to hand a guy on the helicopter my end of the rope so he could pull me in, but I realized the rope was too short for it to reach him. I lowered myself on one end of the rope to make the other end shorter, and realized that I still couldn't reach the helicopter.
People on the helicopter started shouting at me to not let go of either end of the rope, otherwise I would fall. Some were telling me to make one end longer, others were saying to do the opposite. I realized no matter what I did I would never be able to get on the helicopter. I asked the people I had just pulled up to get another rope to pull me in and they said they were too tired and they walked away. My arms were getting shaky by then and I realized I was about to lose my grip on the rope. The guy who was supposed to be pulling me into the helicopter looked at me and said "that's going to be a very bad way to die".
Then I woke up.
By the time I pulled up the last person, which required me to pull myself up on my rope and then drop my weight down (kind of like belaying someone) my arms were really tired. I wanted to get onto the helicopter. By then we were way above the ground because there were still bombs going off. I went to hand a guy on the helicopter my end of the rope so he could pull me in, but I realized the rope was too short for it to reach him. I lowered myself on one end of the rope to make the other end shorter, and realized that I still couldn't reach the helicopter.
People on the helicopter started shouting at me to not let go of either end of the rope, otherwise I would fall. Some were telling me to make one end longer, others were saying to do the opposite. I realized no matter what I did I would never be able to get on the helicopter. I asked the people I had just pulled up to get another rope to pull me in and they said they were too tired and they walked away. My arms were getting shaky by then and I realized I was about to lose my grip on the rope. The guy who was supposed to be pulling me into the helicopter looked at me and said "that's going to be a very bad way to die".
Then I woke up.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
total disaster
Friday morning I thought that all of the problems on my project were contained. The "project manager" is on vacation for three weeks, so I don't have to read her annoying emails demanding I drop everything to go have some pointless meeting with her to discuss the "schedule" when she isn't even managing the schedule, I am. Even though one of our key players left, in an hour my customer and I figured out a solution. I also worked out this weekend how to finish the project on time, with all of the deliverables, in spite of my company's attempts to derail things by reassigning me unexpectedly to teach for a military customer, taking me away from the project for yet another week. The problem child H has been contained. I figured after I finish the training there is another week of really hard work, and then two weeks of wind down time where we wouldn't have to work so hard before I could be on a plane home.
Ah, why do I delude myself that anything in this country will work?
In the middle of class today, right as I was walking students through an exercise, my phone blew up. I paused to let the students catch up to me, and read the first email. The customer I work for, Dr. M, quit. In fact, was on his way out the door. I responded and his email bounced back - they had already disabled his email.
I was like are you god damn KIDDING ME? It was almost impossible to concentrate as my brain ran around in hamster circles going "NOW WHAT DO I DO?????????????" My stomach turned into a little rock fearing H would be put in charge.
About 10 minutes later all of my students were talking about how they had received an email that Dr. M had quit. I was accused of withholding information. A little political dust up occurred. I finally got everyone calmed down enough to finish the class for the day. I also ensured that the person taking over the project would be a guy I like to work with, and not H.
But now here I am, feeling totally demoralized, wondering, after all these months, if the project is going to crash and burn. To prevent that means keeping up the pace, and increasing it to make up for having two missing customer bodies (I am going to have to do their work because the replacement person can't, for example, prepare the briefing for the steering committee because he has a full time job). Every day I'm on the firing line from 7 am until I go home at 5 pm. I never have 15 minutes to sit at a desk, staring into space wondering why the hell I came here because I constantly have at least two people yelling at me or yelling for me. That's why when I go home at night I talk to no one, go no where, and submerge myself in drawing diagrams. It's been a while since I've been under this much pressure, in a foreign country, without having even my own company's resources to rely on. They are as bad as my customer.
Contact with the outside world? No thanks.
If I manage to get out of here in one piece I will be shocked. I'm pretty sure my face is twitching. Is that the sign of a psychotic breakdown?
Ah, why do I delude myself that anything in this country will work?
In the middle of class today, right as I was walking students through an exercise, my phone blew up. I paused to let the students catch up to me, and read the first email. The customer I work for, Dr. M, quit. In fact, was on his way out the door. I responded and his email bounced back - they had already disabled his email.
I was like are you god damn KIDDING ME? It was almost impossible to concentrate as my brain ran around in hamster circles going "NOW WHAT DO I DO?????????????" My stomach turned into a little rock fearing H would be put in charge.
About 10 minutes later all of my students were talking about how they had received an email that Dr. M had quit. I was accused of withholding information. A little political dust up occurred. I finally got everyone calmed down enough to finish the class for the day. I also ensured that the person taking over the project would be a guy I like to work with, and not H.
But now here I am, feeling totally demoralized, wondering, after all these months, if the project is going to crash and burn. To prevent that means keeping up the pace, and increasing it to make up for having two missing customer bodies (I am going to have to do their work because the replacement person can't, for example, prepare the briefing for the steering committee because he has a full time job). Every day I'm on the firing line from 7 am until I go home at 5 pm. I never have 15 minutes to sit at a desk, staring into space wondering why the hell I came here because I constantly have at least two people yelling at me or yelling for me. That's why when I go home at night I talk to no one, go no where, and submerge myself in drawing diagrams. It's been a while since I've been under this much pressure, in a foreign country, without having even my own company's resources to rely on. They are as bad as my customer.
Contact with the outside world? No thanks.
If I manage to get out of here in one piece I will be shocked. I'm pretty sure my face is twitching. Is that the sign of a psychotic breakdown?
welcome to your box, bitch
Last Thursday completed my plan to throw my problem child on the project in a box, and keep him there.
He's an obnoxious egyptian, we'll just call him H (he's the guy my customer tried to get fired as depicted in the blog colloquial). Since my project has started he's try to throw one road block after another at me to keep the project from progressing. He's supposed to be in charge of document management. The dude is so disorganized that he can't even find current versions of documents. He's supposed to learn how to use my software to get out of the mode of creating processes in word documents (how stone age) and into modeling them so they can be simulated.
Besides breaking things constantly so I have to fix them for him, he throws me under the bus in front of upper management, saying absurd stuff like "she never helps me" and even when I point out that I spend half my day with him he says "I never see her".
So, I started documenting in a spreadsheet how often we were meeting and what I was teaching him at each meeting, assigning a percentage to each skill (e.g. 75% comfortable drawing a business process diagram without help). I also made the meetings formal invites. In our last steering committee meeting when he started saying he hasn't gotten any training I pulled out the spreadsheet. Then he claimed I made up the percentages and that we had never discussed them, which was a total lie. So I produced all of the emails about the training I had given him. When I called him on his lie, in this sort of subtle but not really way, he changed his argument and said he would have to teach other people what I'm teaching him, and he couldn't do it.
Fine. Last Tuesday through Thursday he was in a formal training class I taught. He spent the first two days sitting there saying nothing was working. Time and again I had to go over and say "H, you can't display your diagram because you haven't opened it". Etc. Then he started carrying on long, loud conversations while I was trying to teach. I would give him a verbal warning and then send a follow up email.
The last day I said "I'm going to do something no person should ever do - I'm going to let an egyptian drive". I made him come up to the front of the room and teach class for two hours. He looked like he was going to cry. The other 15 students in the class liked me and so they harassed him mercilessly. He kept saying "I'm done teaching, you come up here" and I would say "no, keep going, you'll have to do this on your own when I'm gone". After the two hours were up I made the class clap for him.
Which all leads to my grand plan. In the next steering committee meeting, when he tries to report that, after formal training, he still can't do his job, I will point out that he in fact taught the class for a few hours, and everyone applauded for him at the end. Then I will also bring up the emails and say "maybe if there are things you still don't know it's because you were talking when you were supposed to be doing your exercises."
Welcome to your box, bitch.
He's an obnoxious egyptian, we'll just call him H (he's the guy my customer tried to get fired as depicted in the blog colloquial). Since my project has started he's try to throw one road block after another at me to keep the project from progressing. He's supposed to be in charge of document management. The dude is so disorganized that he can't even find current versions of documents. He's supposed to learn how to use my software to get out of the mode of creating processes in word documents (how stone age) and into modeling them so they can be simulated.
Besides breaking things constantly so I have to fix them for him, he throws me under the bus in front of upper management, saying absurd stuff like "she never helps me" and even when I point out that I spend half my day with him he says "I never see her".
So, I started documenting in a spreadsheet how often we were meeting and what I was teaching him at each meeting, assigning a percentage to each skill (e.g. 75% comfortable drawing a business process diagram without help). I also made the meetings formal invites. In our last steering committee meeting when he started saying he hasn't gotten any training I pulled out the spreadsheet. Then he claimed I made up the percentages and that we had never discussed them, which was a total lie. So I produced all of the emails about the training I had given him. When I called him on his lie, in this sort of subtle but not really way, he changed his argument and said he would have to teach other people what I'm teaching him, and he couldn't do it.
Fine. Last Tuesday through Thursday he was in a formal training class I taught. He spent the first two days sitting there saying nothing was working. Time and again I had to go over and say "H, you can't display your diagram because you haven't opened it". Etc. Then he started carrying on long, loud conversations while I was trying to teach. I would give him a verbal warning and then send a follow up email.
The last day I said "I'm going to do something no person should ever do - I'm going to let an egyptian drive". I made him come up to the front of the room and teach class for two hours. He looked like he was going to cry. The other 15 students in the class liked me and so they harassed him mercilessly. He kept saying "I'm done teaching, you come up here" and I would say "no, keep going, you'll have to do this on your own when I'm gone". After the two hours were up I made the class clap for him.
Which all leads to my grand plan. In the next steering committee meeting, when he tries to report that, after formal training, he still can't do his job, I will point out that he in fact taught the class for a few hours, and everyone applauded for him at the end. Then I will also bring up the emails and say "maybe if there are things you still don't know it's because you were talking when you were supposed to be doing your exercises."
Welcome to your box, bitch.
Friday, July 2, 2010
can't take me anywhere
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!
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!
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.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
I told you it would take your eye out
Since a few of you have expressed interest in seeing my room service tray art...tonight's theme is "I told you it would take your eye out".
ITIL and dinosaurs
I scheduled to take my ITIL exam at an exam center here. I scheduled if for today even though I had a ton of other stuff to do this week and had only Thursday night and Friday to study (I logged 103 work hours this week).
Because I was afraid of being late, and wasn't sure where exactly the test center was (no street addresses here), and couldn't read the crap map on the web site, I called the test center and asked for the name of a close cross street (the testing center is on Zayed the 1st street, which is a long street). The moron I talked to gave me two names, but it was actually two different names for Zayed the 1st street, rather than the cross street. I had my driver talk to the idiot after I called him for the third time, and he found it for me. I told the driver I was nervous because I was taking an exam, and he shook his head and said "why would you take an exam with those guys who don't know where their building is?"
Point taken. And, for the record, the testing center is at a T, and rather than giving the driver the name of the street that Ts into their building, or the name of the huge BMW office across the street from the testing center, the moron at the test center told my driver the center was near a street 2 blocks away.
I got there right on time and went to sign in for the test. I waited for 10 minutes while a bunch of scurrying was going on behind the counter. Then a guy came up to me and said "Oh, your test was canceled. We are doing maintenance on the system today. I called your mobile to tell you but you did not answer." I was like "What do you mean you're doing maintenance when you've already charged me for the exam?" and they said "There were only 6 people doing exams today so we canceled them all, except for you who did not answer the phone."
I've been a little stressed out lately. And I was furious that after wasting my entire Friday studying I would not be able to take my exam. Because the rest of next week is so busy for me, it would be a full week before I could take the exam if I didn't take it today. And having that hanging over my head was not going to work.
I'll spare the gory details of what happened next. Suffice it to say, I got them to load up a computer so I could take the exam (after having to wait almost 45 minutes). Because the normal testing area was not available, I got stuck in this weird little room. It looked like a place where they give English exams or something. I was seated at a computer with a poster covered with dinosaurs on the wall behind. I had to sneak take this picture because I wasn't supposed to have my blackberry in the test area. The whole time I was taking my test I kept looking up at that t rex thinking "If I fail this thing because of that dinosaur poster I am going to be even more pissed than I already am".
The exam is supposed to take 1 hour. I did it in 10 minutes. The guy who was in the room watching to make sure I didn't cheat off of, I don't know, since I was the only one in there, the dinosaurs I guess, insisted that I couldn't possibly be done with the exam. He made me sit for another 10 minutes. I stared at the dinosaurs. Then, idiot me, I decided to review my answers. I changed two questions from the right answer to the wrong answer.
How do I know that? Because after the 10 minutes were up I submitted my answers. A half hour went by while the guy tried to figure out how to print my test results. When he was finally able to do that, drama building because it had now been 1/2 hour and I didn't know my score, he walked in and said "You got a 95%!" meaning I passed the exam. He then showed me how I had changed two answers and he said "why did you do that?" I felt like saying "because you made me sit here for 10 minutes with nothing to do but look at that scary dinosaur", but I didn't.
The guy at the front counter that I had yelled at until he set up the test for me shook his hand and said "I did not know a woman could get such a grade on a test". It was not the first time in the hour that had passed that I wanted to punch him. But I didn't.
if you want them to care about zombies, throw in George Clooney
On Thursday, the last day of the class I was teaching, my customer wanted to work through a "real world" scenario to make sure they understood everything they learned in the class, since they'll have to do it in real life.Normally I use a missile example when I do a workshop. A missile has been fired at a friendly ship, and the missile on the friendly ship has to intercept and destroy it before it hits. However, given the current climate here, where the locals aren't feeling too friendly towards the US because of all of the stuff going on, especially with Israel (full disclosure - I'm on their side), I decided it was best to make up a scenario.
Also, the scenario had to be entertaining. These guys lose focus quicker than a 4 year old with ADD. So I came up with this: we were from a country called Kanukistan, going to an island called Arlandia that, because of a scientist's experiment gone wrong, had recently been taken over by zombies. Worse, a few of the zombies stole a navy boat that had a missile. We had to destroy the zombies to get to the island and save the scientist.
While a few of the officers seemed vaguely interested in my scenario, one of them said "who cares about the scientist? why should we rescue him?" Everyone in the class agreed. Granted, this was after 4 days of intense 10 hour training days. The last day is always the worst because everyone is tired.
"Well," I said. "I forgot to mention something. George Clooney is on the island. He went there on vacation." The officers were now paying attention again. "If we don't finish this exercise by 2:30, he's going to be turned into a zombie." I drew this picture, prompting one of my students to comment "it's a good thing you decided to be an engineer and not an artist".
That, for some reason, was a good reason to work on the project. For the rest of the day, until 430 actually, we worked on the exercise. Which was kind of funny because people were saying things like "would the zombies have a missile with more capabilities than ours?" At one point the photog who took our pictures came in to thank us again (and to buy us lunch again). He asked what exactly we were doing since we were talking about missiles and zombies and had the above picture taped in a prominent place on the wall over some marketing poster.
One of the officers explained we had to save George Clooney by 2:30 otherwise he would turn into a zombie and that some zombies had commandeered a ship with a missile that they were going to fire at us. The photog looked at me and said "Um, what class is this that you're teaching?"
Here's what the picture looked like after we modeled it. Notice the blood coming out of the zombies' mouths. That was added by one of the officers. I am saddened to report that we didn't say George Clooney by 230, but the exercise finally finished up by 430 and I was able to meet my customer for happy hour.
And I'm going to bet that none of those officers will forget taking a class with me.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
say cheese
Well, I just finished recording this presentation I had to do for DoDAF 2.0, and now all I have to do by saturday is study for and take my ITIL exam (Saturday morning is D day) and finish up some software testing. Hopefully I won't be working until 10 o'clock at night every night in July.
So a weird thing happened to me today. I'm teaching a class at my company's site (while still trying to do 8 hours of work on my other project and manage it). The class is all emirates. The class is going surprisingly well considering all the cultural issues. They are even laughing at my jokes and trying to use some slang. Today one of my students told me that if I cheered him up he would eat one more slice of pizza (we had pizza delivered for lunch because if I let them go on breaks they don't always come back). I realized after a few minutes he meant for me to cheer him on. I had initially thought he was depressed and couldn't eat.
Anyway, I was in the middle of a heated discussion about meta models when this weird looking white guy came into my room with a camera and asked if he could take my picture. I thought it was a joke, but decided to play along, so I said "sure you can take my picture". Then he asked the emiratis if it was okay (they don't like to be photographed). They agreed but said he had to shoot the picture from the back so no one could see their faces. And then they all turned around to look at me and started making faces at me.
The photog said "do something dramatic" so I pretended that the white board easel was falling on me. He said "no, do something dramatic as you're teaching". It turns out he was hired to take pictures of the training facility for some brochure and picked me over the other instructor, who looks like a troll, to be the "action" picture.
I stood there, not sure what to do, and trying to to look at my students who were still making faces at me. The photog said "just start teaching again and I'll take some shots when you don't expect it". Great. There will probably be a picture of me doing something retarded on a brochure that's being distributed throughout the middle east.
So I started teaching again and, as he looked at my profile, the photog suddenly said "hey, do you want to comb your hair before I take this?" Everyone started laughing because we had 90% humidity today, and it was insanely hot, so my hair looks like I've been living in the forest for the past 5 years. It was curling and sticking straight out from my head. I was really embarrassed but also kind of pissed so I said "I'm not going to comb my hair for your picture. Why don't you pretend to be the instructor and I'll take the picture?"
I started trying to teach again but my students decided that this would be a perfect time to ask me a bunch of embarrassing questions. One asked "if you meet a nice guy, do you talk about meta models, because that's not sexy?" Another said "didn't you wear that shirt yesterday?" (in fact I had, I've been so busy I've had no time to drop off or pick up laundry). Then another said "how come your hair is so fat?" which made me laugh, and the stupid photog took the picture. It will be hideous.
Because we cooperated the photog offered to buy us lunch tomorrow. He asked what we wanted. My favorite student, M, said "lobsters", but he said it like he was requesting a sandwich. The photog said "hm, um, I was thinking more like pizza". A round of boos from the class. So the photog said "well what did you have for lunch today?" and M said "lobsters". Everyone started saying ridiculous things like they wanted food from this expensive 5 star restaurant.
God only knows what we'll end up with.
As the photog was exiting my class I said "wait, don't leave! they're picking on you now instead of me!" and he said "I'm sure you can handle yourself around these guys". Which might have appeared to be the truth from the back of the room, but seemed less apparent from the front of the room.
So a weird thing happened to me today. I'm teaching a class at my company's site (while still trying to do 8 hours of work on my other project and manage it). The class is all emirates. The class is going surprisingly well considering all the cultural issues. They are even laughing at my jokes and trying to use some slang. Today one of my students told me that if I cheered him up he would eat one more slice of pizza (we had pizza delivered for lunch because if I let them go on breaks they don't always come back). I realized after a few minutes he meant for me to cheer him on. I had initially thought he was depressed and couldn't eat.
Anyway, I was in the middle of a heated discussion about meta models when this weird looking white guy came into my room with a camera and asked if he could take my picture. I thought it was a joke, but decided to play along, so I said "sure you can take my picture". Then he asked the emiratis if it was okay (they don't like to be photographed). They agreed but said he had to shoot the picture from the back so no one could see their faces. And then they all turned around to look at me and started making faces at me.
The photog said "do something dramatic" so I pretended that the white board easel was falling on me. He said "no, do something dramatic as you're teaching". It turns out he was hired to take pictures of the training facility for some brochure and picked me over the other instructor, who looks like a troll, to be the "action" picture.
I stood there, not sure what to do, and trying to to look at my students who were still making faces at me. The photog said "just start teaching again and I'll take some shots when you don't expect it". Great. There will probably be a picture of me doing something retarded on a brochure that's being distributed throughout the middle east.
So I started teaching again and, as he looked at my profile, the photog suddenly said "hey, do you want to comb your hair before I take this?" Everyone started laughing because we had 90% humidity today, and it was insanely hot, so my hair looks like I've been living in the forest for the past 5 years. It was curling and sticking straight out from my head. I was really embarrassed but also kind of pissed so I said "I'm not going to comb my hair for your picture. Why don't you pretend to be the instructor and I'll take the picture?"
I started trying to teach again but my students decided that this would be a perfect time to ask me a bunch of embarrassing questions. One asked "if you meet a nice guy, do you talk about meta models, because that's not sexy?" Another said "didn't you wear that shirt yesterday?" (in fact I had, I've been so busy I've had no time to drop off or pick up laundry). Then another said "how come your hair is so fat?" which made me laugh, and the stupid photog took the picture. It will be hideous.
Because we cooperated the photog offered to buy us lunch tomorrow. He asked what we wanted. My favorite student, M, said "lobsters", but he said it like he was requesting a sandwich. The photog said "hm, um, I was thinking more like pizza". A round of boos from the class. So the photog said "well what did you have for lunch today?" and M said "lobsters". Everyone started saying ridiculous things like they wanted food from this expensive 5 star restaurant.
God only knows what we'll end up with.
As the photog was exiting my class I said "wait, don't leave! they're picking on you now instead of me!" and he said "I'm sure you can handle yourself around these guys". Which might have appeared to be the truth from the back of the room, but seemed less apparent from the front of the room.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
