Things at work continue to be miserable.
At the moment, I have an uneasy (at best) relationship with Work C. I went into Work C in the April 22 post (I'm too lazy to link it today). This whole mess we're in is a direct result of his fucking mouth and attitude.
I've decided it's best for me to stay clear of him. To let him self destruct. Most importantly to be clear of the blast zone when he does. I've been avoiding doing things outside of work with him as well. My fear is that I'll be guilty by association.
But having said this I'm really questioning my motivation. Why am I to the point of essentially turning my back on a friend? Actually, I can't put it to words. If someone were to ask me why, I'm so frustrated with him I can't say. Or rather, there is so much I can't seem to get my mind around it. Or maybe I'm off my fucking rocker and it's really me that's lost it.
Really our interaction the last couple of weeks is what has set me off. This system go-live that has caused all of the problems at work was HIS project. In the past it was one I would've done. He took it over as part of his "get his hands into everything" phase. I sat back and took a sink or swim attitude with it. Either he'll succeed, or not. He put the system into production on a Saturday night. Monday morning all hell broke loose. I happened to be the on-call person. Our rotation works such that a new person goes on-call Monday morning at 8:00am. At 8:00am my pager starting going off non-stop. At one point, my boss was standing behind me talking to me, I had someone on the cell phone, my pager started going off, another team manager walked in to tell me about a new problem, and my office phone started ringing all while I was typing commands to try to figure out a problem unrelated to anything else. Work C didn't meander in until 11:00 am. Not only did he not show up until 11am, he proceeded to sit down and shoot the shit with someone, play a game, go to lunch (about 30 minutes after getting in) leaving me to clean up his mess.
Our problems continued into the next day. He didn't bother to show up until noon THAT day. Then he started installing some cool software we got on a trial basis. Finally, Wed afternoon he started to "help" me. This is when I decided to switch gears, throw out what he installed and install something different. This worked... mostly.
The final blows that week was two fold, first, and I'm pissed at my boss for participating, my entire team left for a golf trip... out of town... no one here... except me. My boss' boss, and HIS boss showed up in my cube to find out why some asshole Dr. was screaming at upper management about the fiasco. As far as I knew (at that point), my reinstall fixed the problem. Apparently, it fixed most and created a few minor ones. Unfortunately, all of the minor ones affected the screaming asshole Dr. and no one else. So here I was, still dealing with daily on-call stuff, the bosses, the screaming asshole Dr., and still Work C was not around to help out.
Secondly, I found out he was trying to blame ME for the trouble! During the go-live, he ran into some problems. Before the go-live, I asked him over and over, "Do you need me here to help?". To which he always shrugged his shoulders and gave me a non-commital answer. I ended up having to come in on unrelated business anyway. I asked when he had problems, "Do you need my help? What do you want me to do?" His answer was "I got it". So I left. It ended up taking about 30 hours for him to figure out his problem. He told my boss it took so long because I didn't help him and the rest of the go-live was half-assed as result.
At this point, I threw my hands up. But things continued downhill after that. The rest is really just more nails in the coffin. But this is therapeutic so I'll go on.
Our problems continued into the next week. In the middle of all of this, BP decided he didn't like the way Work C was doing another project. It's a long story but I'm actually behind Work C on most of this one. BP came over looking for Work C. He wasn't around (it was before noon). When he did get in he went looking for BP to confront him. There's a ton of history here. The short and sweet of it is, Work C made his point in a less than tactful way. The end result was, right point, wrong delivery. The following day the e-mail wars began culminating in the cease and desist order I mentioned yesterday.
Lastly, knowing I was going on vacation, my boss asked me to sit down with Work C and show him everything I've been doing. There's not much. It's always the same thing. So I did. I even wrote some scripts to make it even easier for him. When I got back, the asshole Dr. from the June 29th post had reared his head again with a problem. I asked Work C if he did the things I showed him before I left. He said "I didn't know how". That motherfucker! It turns out the problem is actually deeper than that. It wouldn't have worked anyway. But doing the things I showed him exhausted MY knowledge at that point. He could've easily gone beyond and tried different things, tested, etc. and so on. Basically expanding his own knowledge. Instead, he blew off the problem as MINE and passive/aggressively pouted. I found out our cease and desist could end if we try something BP wants us to try instead of what we were doing. Work C was tasked to test it. To my knowledge he hasn't tested in 2 weeks. Lastly, we offered to take over another item BP was upset about. He said ok, then Work C "didn't have time" to do it. After we offered. In a nutshell, he has played this passive/aggressive pout game ever since this mess started and has left ALL of us, mostly me to deal with it.
I could go on and on. Like the fact that all of these problems revolve around a piece of equipment our users use but we have no experience with. My last boss asked me to order one so we could learn how to support it. It is a pretty cool thing. So I ordered it. Immediately Work C started planning for it to go in his cube. When it came in, I put it in mine. Which started this whole fight over who should get it. Then he started playing with it and changing things without telling me. So I locked it up. He REALLY went off the deep end. Finally I just said fuck it, you take the damn thing. Then we're finally having real problems with our users and I'm having to go to his cube to use it becuase "he doesn't DO this stuff".
Anyway, I'm REALLY done now. This has been good to write down. I feel better about my decision to excise him from as much of my life as possible.
Pool night is tonight. It'll be interesting to see what all will happen after the skinny dipping incident. I wasn't there last week so I don't know what happened in my absence. I've been seriously freaking about the thought that B will run her mouth. I shouldn't have put myself in the situation in the first place. And I damn sure don't need her blabbing about it. If push comes to shove I'll have to quit the team.