Christ, just had a terrible night's sleep over this shit.
So, there has been constant friction between me and the other two network guys who I used to work with (I recently got promoted to a programmer, in part to kill the friction in the department. Now I make more than either of them. Fuck them). It has been this way since about a year before I ever worked in the network department when I was doing desktop support. These guys live my the
mushroom philosophy, and they drag ass whenever it comes to helping out the desktop support people, because (no fucking surprise) they have friction with the manager of the desktop support people. So yea, the logical thing when you have a problem with a department head is to take it out on his grunt employees who are just busting their ass to get their shit done. Fuck them. At one point they were dragging ass with helping both me and the other desktop support tech so we took matters into our own hands and logged into a server we weren't supposed to to resolve the problem. I got my ass chewed out for that. Not by my boss, their boss, or the boss of any of
our bosses, but by them. And in particular by this guy James. He harassed me in particular in a room that contained his boss, my boss, and the head of IT. Damn near made the lady who I worked with cry, and asked me 'who the fuck I thought I was' and shit. So yea, he hasn't liked me since then. That was 2007. Learned my lesson, took it in stride, never touched his server again, left him alone, and was never less than courteous to him.
In 2008 he quit to go work at Honeywell. Well, not quit, but he went down to part time status at nights and on the weekend. His position opened, and I was strongly urged by management (both mine and his) to move over to his department and break up the bullheadedness that the network team had with the desktop team. In some regards it worked out really well, because there was a lot more communication between teams. I learned a lot, but mostly on my own and by skirting the boundaries of what I should probably be doing. The guy who I worked with, Matt (one of the two that chewed me out), was OK, but he's the type that likes to be the only person who knows how to do things. Job security and all that. Did I mention that he also works as a paramedic, and either leaves work early or doesn't show up at all 3 days a week? And no one at HR knows? And that none of the IT management can do anything about it because he's the only one that knows how to do certain things? Oh, I didn't. Well, that's who I was working with. Learning how to actually do much of anything network related was a real pain in the ass, because I was constantly getting either brick walls or my hands slapped. I have been described as 'eager to learn and help people' by management and above, and that this doesn't jive with the attitude the people in the networking department have. This also caused some friction because I wanted to learn more to be able to help people more, and the other support techs wanted me to learn less so that I would be unable to perform basic duties to help people. At one point last fall, we had a major wireless issue on campus in one of our wireless-only dorms. Matt was on vacation, and I worked very heavily with James to try to resolve the issue. Network traffic wasn't making it past the gateway. All appeared to be going well, and I avoided calling Matt for help because, you know, he was with his fucking family, and I was working out the issue with James. Then when I actually figured out what was going on, James was more interested in working on a laptop for an outside computer client than he was in actually listening to me repeat myself a few times about the issue. So I got approval from my boss, made a temporary change to our wireless, sent out an email to everyone in the department, and people on campus were happy with the temporary result. Got a giant nasty email from Matt who was on vacation, who went so far as to say that I had no idea what the issue was, called me a braggart, called my boss an idiot (in an email that went to my boss), and just went on and on. This prompted a giant staff meeting in the network department, which ended up with management actually doing NOTHING. Left me fucking hanging. And James, who I had been working with during the problem? Threw me under the fucking bus and said I hadn't worked with him much at all. In the end Matt and James were told to show me how to do more, I got chewed out by Matt and James again, and life was fuck all. HR did not find out about the berating email.
In February, I got promoted to a programmer position. Again, this is mostly to get me the fuck out of that environment, if I had to wager. They didn't actually have office space for me until the beginning of August. So, I recently began moving my stuff to the new office. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to arrange my new office, so I haven't moved some of the clutter and whatnot upstairs yet. It's much easier to arrange an empty office than it is to arrange a full one, after all. I was given no indication by management, by co-workers, or by anyone else, for that matter, that there was a timeline to get my stuff out downstairs. In fact, my position hasn't been filled, so I thought I had a little bit of time to play around with designs.
I came in yesterday, and found all of my stuff from downstairs thrown into a box. Stuff that was in my desk, one or two things I had remaining on my desk, and my fucking Rambo poster. All thrown upstairs into my new office. Someone had rifled through my personal things, and threw them into a goddamn box like i had been shitbinned. And the put a fucking hole in my Rambo poster. That's like a personal goddamn attack to me. You DO NOT go through another man's things like that. You just fucking don't. Lo and behold, I found out yesterday that Matt had no idea it was going to happen, and that James just did it on his own. What a total lack of any fucking respect for me at all as a co-worker. So I sent the following email:
Subject: To whoever emptied out my things on the third floor
From: O'Meara, James
This message was sent with High importance.
Sent: Monday, August 16, 2010 10:16 AM
To: James; Matt
Cc: Bil; Paul
I am in the process of re-arranging things upstairs, and have not yet decided on a final layout for my new office. As such, I hadn’t finished moving things out of the old office downstairs. I have been pulling things out a little bit at a time and bringing them up as I needed them.
If anyone had expressed to me that the desk needed to be emptied in a quicker timeframe, I would have happily done it. I was not aware that the desk needed to be cleaned out so a new computer could be set up.
I do not rifle through your desks. Please show me the same respect.
James O'Meara
MIS Programmer / Analyst
IITS MIS ServicesHe didn't even have the fucking balls to reply.
Fuck him. Fuck those guys. Fuck that fucking place.
Goddamn.
