Friday, January 26, 2007

Friday!

I couldn't have lasted another day without lapsing into hysterical laughter and running out of the building in a fair impression of Daffy Duck.

Upshot of the promotion and other changes that have taken place that I can't talk about for obvious Dooceish reasons, but I have to share this with the Loyal Few: Remember the Cupcakes? One of them is leaving the company (for reasons unrelated to the changes happening) and the other one will be reporting to me. She doesn't know this yet. This should be interesting.

Today the Departing Cupcake sent an email cc-ing the boss, "reminding" me to do something that was "very important" that I was supposed to do "months ago," and I read the email and shrugged it off and thought, "Yep, Princess, I'll jump right on that for you." When hell freezes. People with actual serious issues involving real money need me, I'm not giving any time to a task you should be capable of doing your ownself.

Later in the day, the boss called me and asked me if I'd seen the email, I said yeah, and he said, "I wanted to make sure you're not doing it." "Oh, hell no." "Oh, good!" He was really pissed off and ranted at length, marveling that she'd taken that tone in the email and cc'd him, like she was pointing out my shortcomings, and it's a task that, if she knew how the hell to do it, she could do herself, and should do herself because it directly related to her job. Not mine.

I just laughed and explained to him that it has ever been thus, she labored under some misconception that I somehow answered to her or that she could give me assignments of icky things she didn't know how to do, and I've been ignoring them for a year and a half, and called her out on one in a staff meeting when she was asked a question she couldn't answer and whined, "But Catherine..." and I jumped all over her ass in return, and yet, she persists in trying. Even a squirrel quits going to an empty feeder, but apparently she's not quite as swift as a squirrel. Whatever. Boss is still a newbie to the organization, he hasn't gotten to the "Laugh it off, or it'll make you crazy!" stage.

We have a new org chart, and some people have new titles, the kind of titles normally reserved for people with 200 people reporting to each department, not to an organization of our size. It's like the boys made a clubhouse and gave themselves superhero powers. So I'm going to propose to the boss that in our new org chart, he is Supreme Ruler of All. Next in command is my friend the Dark Prince of Everything That Matters, and I am their consigliere, the Bitchy Avenging Angel of Wrath. I think they'll like that. We may need personal business cards.

4 comments:

geogrrl said...

Oh, hey... I had a professor who referred to himself in our syllabi as "Grand High Poobah".

For myself, I chose the name "She Who Never Sleeps". I like it because it sounds ambiguous and somewhat ominous. In reality, I just work long hours.

dragon knitter said...

yes! the cupcakes finally went stale!

Gigi said...

Glad the cupcakes are getting their come uppances.
I love weird titles.
Congrats on the promotion, and hopefully it will pay enought to make it worth the hassles.

Bess said...

When we got our new circulation system, we gave ourselves all titles. One employee, though, insisted on being called Serf!

all those salutations got put in the no overdue fine collum. :D