Inexplicable
Jul. 11th, 2019 08:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shivverNot ineffable. There must be an understandable reason - it just escapes me.
Two things.
Yesterday we left work early because the leads of my project (which includes my husband) was subjected to a humiliating rant by the lead on the client side. Basically, for this particular feature of the project, last week, they all met, planned it out, and agreed that with the amount of work to do, it won't be ready to release until the beginning of August. Today, the guy screamed at them that they promised the feature on this coming Tuesday so why wasn't it ready, and he's sure that Tim can finish the feature by Monday, and so it can go out on Tuesday, right? (Note: Tim only does half the work, and once he's done, Joey has to do the other half. Also, the guy is basically saying, screw testing the feature - just make it and ship it.)
Thing is, this is the second time in a month this guy has done this. Last time, because my husband and I were going on vacation, we rescheduled a release for a week later, when we'd be back. For the two weeks before we left on vacation, my husband did everything he could to let the client company know we'd be gone and that the release date had changed: sent out emails, set up calendar appointments, mentioned in every single meeting that "remember, we're going to be gone and the release has been moved to (date)", etc. He and the other leads even had conversations with the guy on Slack explaining multiple times that the release had been moved. Then, once we had left, the guy complained that he was never told and insisted on moving the release back to the original date, which required me and my husband to work over our vacation. When presented with the evidence (the calendar appointments, the Slack transcripts), he just basically said, "Oh, I never look at those. You need to tell me in person." Which we did, but we didn't have records of the video meetings so guess whose version was believed?
It seems to be a trend with this guy. It occurred to me that he's very much like Trump: he decides what he wants to be true and simply yells as loud as he can until everyone accepts his version of the history and the facts, because he knows people will do so just so that he'll stop yelling. I just don't see why it works for him. Trump has the position and the money to force his reality, but this guy's just a guy - he's totally replaceable. I especially don't see why my company's CEO believes him - he will take this guy's side and urge us to "work with him" until we place the evidence in front of his nose. (At which point, he still tells us to "work with him" because he has no idea what to do to get the guy to be reasonable. To be honest, I have no idea either.)
Once or twice a month, one of my earliest fics gets a kudo on AO3 or a favorite on ffnet, and I have no idea why. It's a terrible fic, one of my worst, and every time I get the email notification, my heart shrinks just a little bit more. It's embarrassing to think that people are reading this thing and I keep wondering if I should delete it, but in general I hold the belief that I should leave everything out there to see, no matter how I feel about it. (Except retconned stories. I removed my one retcon from AO3 but it's still on ffnet.)
Still, this thing is a mess of tell-don't-show, maudlin crap. I've thought about rewriting it (there are a couple of ideas in it that are worth it) but I can't see myself spending the time to salvage it. But, for some reason, people like it. Nobody kudos any of my other early fics. I figure it has to be because it's about an obscure but popular character and people like it because there are few other stories out there about him, so goddammit I'm going to put a kudo on this thing so that maybe someone else will write more! I don't know.
Two things.
Yesterday we left work early because the leads of my project (which includes my husband) was subjected to a humiliating rant by the lead on the client side. Basically, for this particular feature of the project, last week, they all met, planned it out, and agreed that with the amount of work to do, it won't be ready to release until the beginning of August. Today, the guy screamed at them that they promised the feature on this coming Tuesday so why wasn't it ready, and he's sure that Tim can finish the feature by Monday, and so it can go out on Tuesday, right? (Note: Tim only does half the work, and once he's done, Joey has to do the other half. Also, the guy is basically saying, screw testing the feature - just make it and ship it.)
Thing is, this is the second time in a month this guy has done this. Last time, because my husband and I were going on vacation, we rescheduled a release for a week later, when we'd be back. For the two weeks before we left on vacation, my husband did everything he could to let the client company know we'd be gone and that the release date had changed: sent out emails, set up calendar appointments, mentioned in every single meeting that "remember, we're going to be gone and the release has been moved to (date)", etc. He and the other leads even had conversations with the guy on Slack explaining multiple times that the release had been moved. Then, once we had left, the guy complained that he was never told and insisted on moving the release back to the original date, which required me and my husband to work over our vacation. When presented with the evidence (the calendar appointments, the Slack transcripts), he just basically said, "Oh, I never look at those. You need to tell me in person." Which we did, but we didn't have records of the video meetings so guess whose version was believed?
It seems to be a trend with this guy. It occurred to me that he's very much like Trump: he decides what he wants to be true and simply yells as loud as he can until everyone accepts his version of the history and the facts, because he knows people will do so just so that he'll stop yelling. I just don't see why it works for him. Trump has the position and the money to force his reality, but this guy's just a guy - he's totally replaceable. I especially don't see why my company's CEO believes him - he will take this guy's side and urge us to "work with him" until we place the evidence in front of his nose. (At which point, he still tells us to "work with him" because he has no idea what to do to get the guy to be reasonable. To be honest, I have no idea either.)
Once or twice a month, one of my earliest fics gets a kudo on AO3 or a favorite on ffnet, and I have no idea why. It's a terrible fic, one of my worst, and every time I get the email notification, my heart shrinks just a little bit more. It's embarrassing to think that people are reading this thing and I keep wondering if I should delete it, but in general I hold the belief that I should leave everything out there to see, no matter how I feel about it. (Except retconned stories. I removed my one retcon from AO3 but it's still on ffnet.)
Still, this thing is a mess of tell-don't-show, maudlin crap. I've thought about rewriting it (there are a couple of ideas in it that are worth it) but I can't see myself spending the time to salvage it. But, for some reason, people like it. Nobody kudos any of my other early fics. I figure it has to be because it's about an obscure but popular character and people like it because there are few other stories out there about him, so goddammit I'm going to put a kudo on this thing so that maybe someone else will write more! I don't know.
