Yuck

27 January, 2004. 574 words.

So yesterday it snows. Most of us struggle into work somewhere in the vicinity of the correct time. Julio and his charming wife Gina, decide to sleep in. Gina arrives around 1pm. Julio arrives sometime around 4:30pm.

So Julio sits down in my cubicle with a stack of papers at about 5:25pm and asks where we are with the urgent project. I bite back a reply of “well I’m about to go home seeing as how I’ve been here working on it all day while you’ve been loafing around on your snow day.” I tell him I’m waiting for Gina’s new instructions to be recorded. Well the guy who does the recording has been on the phone literally all afternoon handling tech support calls, so no recording could take place. Julio proceeds to go ballistic, ranting and raving about how he had promised to deliver this project by 10pm. He rants at the aforementioned guy that he shouldn’t have been dealing with paying customers or potential customers when he should have been recording Gina. Whatever. Then he wants to see the program, get this, FOR THE FIRST TIME. (Mind you, I have been working on this program for at least two weeks.) I went home somewhat irritated.

So today it does not snow, but the roads are definitely not in peak condition. All of us struggle into work somewhere in the vicinity of the correct time. Gina arrives late in the morning with her teenage daughter in tow. (Cerebral Locomotion also serves as Gina’s personal day care center, so this completely unspoiled daughter has to be found some work to do.) Julio decides to grace us with his presense around 1:30pm. Then he proceeds to fuck around with things that are completely unrelated to the urgent project that needs to go out immediately if not sooner. He seemed particularly obsessed with finding 9 volt batteries for a decibel meter, and finding something for his utterly unspoiled daughter to do. So then he sits down in my cubicle around 4:30pm and starts taking an interest in the urgent project. Naturally, after seeing the program for the SECOND time, he notices a problem in the testing logic. This is the same code that has been in production, readily available for him or anyone to look at anytime, at work or at home, for at least one entire month. Julio declares, after consulting with Gina, that changes must be made. I bite back bitter retorts and make the changes, seeing my chances of getting home by 6 go up in smoke. Then Julio declares that his 100% un-spoiled-rotten daughter has to take the c. 25min test. Thankfully she made only one ridiculous observation that the instructions should say “the number 3” instead of the “the number <3>.” This was an easy thing to fix since I took the time earlier in the project life cycle to externalize most of the instructions for just such emergencies. Then Julio decides that 6:30pm is the appropriate time to start launching into speeches about future variations of testing programs and the things I should work on tomorrow (as if I don’t already have a long list of things to do).

Sigh. Anyway, Julio has been in rare form the last couple days, displaying his complete lack of management ability, respect for other people’s time, and inability to use his own time wisely.

Time to brush off the resume again I guess.

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