Today was my first day back to work since last Wednesday when I flew to Boston to attend Linux World Expo. It started out just like any other day: woke up early, drove daughter to daycare, crawled through traffic on the FDR Drive, parked across the street and coughed up the $11 daily rate, signed in at 8:25am, walked into my cubicle, said hello to my co-worker… Only there was no reply… there was nobody sitting there… in fact, the space previously taken by my Russian friend was empty! “He quit?!?!?!?” I thought. Immediately, as if sensing my disorientation someone from the cubicle “next door” approached me and told me that “they” had moved my friend so as to make room for the new consultant that is starting today. I haven’t been given the facts yet and what I know right now is mostly based on rumors circulating the office. There’s a great possiblity that the new consultant (a woman from India) was hired to be my direct manager, adding yet one more layer to the current hierarchy.
The truth is I don’t really know much since communication doesn’t seem to be the norm around here and I expect to learn more as the days go on. The only thing I do know is that starting today I am no longer in charge of supporting the ASP.NET application I was hired to do as far as maintaining and implementing it, and am now solely responsible for supporting the Crystal Reports part of it. Two major blows in the same day and the week is only 2 days into it. I’d be lying if I said I’m not disappointed with this specially considering that I was originally hired as a VB.NET programmer. I also hate the fact that they moved my friend. He doesn’t know this but he’s responsible for cheering me up on many occasions when the going got rough around here. We just planly had a lot of fun together and I feel that some people even envyed our relationship for I don’t recall seeing anyone around here who get along so well.
He is now 2 cubicles (is this the unit of measurement for office environment?) down the aisle and as a “parting gift” he gave me a 6x8 picture of Kournikova wearing a really tiny red skirt that shows her white panties… I guess I’ll survive…