Thoughts, Rants, and Musings

He does have children. At least one with an ex-wife. With his current wife, he has a foster child and possibly another biological child. Funny that he's willing to take in a foster child but doesn't want to take responsibility for his own biological offspring.

Well, it's right in line with his cowardly nature. So many men are like this.

He can be identified if his 'legitimate' child takes a DNA test and discovers a half-sibling.

http://i63.tinypic.com/sbljed.jpg

 

A couple years ago, right around the time that my boyfriend moved in with me, our property manager cut down the shrubs in front of our apartment building. In doing this, they evicted a family of doves from one of the bushes. I noticed their plight as I drove away to pick up my boyfriend from somewhere. I caught movement in my periphery and saw a father dove frantically sheltering the two baby doves under his wings.

 

When I returned with my boyfriend about an hour later, the doves were in the same area. However, they were separated. That side of the building was now in full sun, and all three doves were huddled in the two tiny of scraps of shade that could be found. The father and the larger dove baby shared one shady spot. The smaller baby was left by himself in the other shady spot. It seemed the father dove had made his choice to abandon the smaller dove baby and protect the larger one.

 

I went into my apartment and grabbed a shallow Tupperware container, a small cardboard box, a couple of pencils, and a long length of toilet paper. I wound the toilet paper into a nest shape and placed it into the Tupperware container. Then I cut one side off of the box and brought everything outside to the doves. The father dove fussed mightily and tried to distract me with the ol' injured-wing bit. But I ignored him and worked quickly.

 

I turned the box upside down and placed it on the ground. I drove the pencils through the box flaps, into the ground, to keep the box from blowing away. I grabbed the dove babies and placed them in the Tupperware container on the toilet paper nest. Then I slid the Tupperware like a drawer into the box-shelter via the opening I'd created by cutting off one of the sides. It worked great, and later that night, I even saw the mother dove in the box, brooding on her babies.

 

The next day was cold and rainy. My boyfriend checked on the doves when he got home from work. He found the smallest baby dove lying on the ground right next to the Tupperware, near death. He called me at work to tell me about the dove. I could tell he was really stressed out. He said, somewhat defiantly, "I brought him inside the apartment and put him in a box. I don't know if he's going to live, but if he dies, I want him to feel warm and loved."

 

I laughed to myself. Obviously he didn't know that he was talking to a woman who had been adopting injured wildlife for her entire life. Of course the bird could stay.

 

When I got home, I went right to the dove. He was lying on his side in a big box, barely alive. I picked him up. He fit right into the palm of my hand. He was so young that his first pin feathers were just starting to poke through. He was freezing cold. I covered his little body with my other hand and took a seat on the couch. I really had no idea what I was doing. I just wanted him to be warmer.

 

After a few minutes passed, I noticed that he started to move and make faint little whistling sounds. Pretty soon, he went from lying on his side to sitting upright in the palm of my hand. We were elated. It looked like the little guy was going to make it. We went to the pet store and bought a birdcage and baby bird food. We googled how to feed a baby dove. For the next two weeks, Arnold raised the little guy. For a guy who doesn't want kids, he took his fatherhood duties extremely seriously!

 

The dove grew unbelievably fast. He looked like an adult dove by the end of the second week, and was able to fly. We knew it was almost time to set him free. But we did not feel comfortable releasing him outside of our apartment building. We live in a relatively urban area--too dangerous for a little dove that was raised indoors by humans. So, we brought him to a well respected bird sanctuary and dropped him off along with a donation.

 

The following Monday, Arnold called to check up on the dove. He was told that the dove was doing fine, but was a "a bit goofey" because it had been raised by humans (Arnold's fault--he totally over-mothered that thing lol).

 

A couple of days later, he emailed to follow up. He was told that the dove had a broken wing, that there was no hope of repair, and that they had to put him to sleep.

 

Arnold called me, quite upset by this news. I wondered how the dove could have a broken wing when he was able to fly up to the top of our kitchen cabinets. I said, "Do you think they might be confusing him with another bird?" Arnold replied to the sanctuary and asked them to double check.

 

Within minutes, he received an apologetic reply from the sanctuary. Arnold had given them the wrong admit ID! The number he gave them was for a blue jay. The dove was doing fine--eating on his own and gaining weight. Pretty soon, he would be moved to their outside dove cage.

 

That's where we left it.

 

The picture above was taken a couple of days after we took the dove in. Arnold is feeding him, using the typical bag-method. In just a few days, the dove went from being almost completely naked to having feathers all over his body and a tiny stub of a tail. He flapped his wings when he ate, so it was hard to get a picture that wasn't totally blurry.

 

The pictures below show the rapid growth of the dove over then next week and a half. I swear, you could practically see him growing. I'd come home from work and he was a completely different bird than he was when I left.

 

http://i68.tinypic.com/2im8goy.jpg

 

http://i64.tinypic.com/2j47k3a.png

Awwwww❤️ I love that story. ❤️

Back at our family home we had doves every year for 15 years. The successive babies of the original pair would always return . I’m not even sure of how many generations after the first pair reappeared. The neighbourhood was always filled with doves.

Frank's aversion towards responsibility is in direct conflict with his desire to look like he knows everything, and I am stuck in the middle of his stupid internal conflict.

On Friday, Frank told me that the client wanted us to print 4 full sets of their enormous drawing set. I asked him if the sets needed to be sealed, and he avoided the question. I asked if these would be copies of what we already sent out or revisions, and he avoided the question. Finally, he smiled and said, "It's your decision."

So, when I came in today, I reread the planning resolution and saw that the four full sets weren't required until all of the conditions and revisions set forth by the Zoning Board, the Engineering Department, and the Water/Sewer Utilities department were met.

So, I gave this information to Frank.

His argued with me. First he deflected. Then he mixed up planning submission with permit submission. Then he said, "It doesn't say it's the permit submission. It says to get permits." Then he abruptly stopped talking, probably because he realized that had stopped making sense. Then he tried to argue that 'this is unprecedented....'

At that point, only about 2-3 minutes in, I tried to circumvent the argument and pin him down for an answer: "Do you want me to print the sets or not?"

He deflected: "Just let me make sure...." and looked down at my copy of the resolution.

Then he went down a rabbit hole about the Civil set, and spent another two minutes narrating a whole saga about the site plan approval. I tried to bring the conversation back around to the task at hand, but this just upset him.

Then he got hung up on the fact that the Engineering Department reviewed building plans and code conformance.

At some point, I asserted that the four full sets was for construction permits. He said, "I'll bet you money that it's not." I said, "Ok." He then continued on, saying, "I'm confident--" but cut himself off. Then he said, more quietly, ".... welllll...." and then he dropped the subject of confidence altogether.

He was clearly not confident.

Then he tried to tell me what was said in the subcode meeting that I attended and which he did not attend. For some reason, he fixated on the plumbing subcode official and tried to charge forth with this stupid scrap of information that was probably the only thing he happened to glance at from the meeting minutes that I sent him. He waived this one stupid fact around like it somehow proved his whole case (it didn't).

The guy's got a lot of red herrings in his bag of tricks. It's exhausting.

After 15 minutes of this relentless, useless debate, he finally said, "Well, prove me wrong." So I said, "Well, if you want me to print them, I'll just print them. There's no use arguing about it." Then he was like, "Well, it's a lot of money, a lot of time." I agreed.

Five minutes later, he still wouldn't commit to whether I should print them or not.

An hour later, he came back and officiously told me to contact the "highest official" in the Zoning and the Engineering Departments to confirm what needed to be sent, and also to prove that the Engineering department handled building permits. I was like, "Well, the website say it right here..." But he said, "I want you to call someone," and he flounced off into a meeting.

The best part of this was the reaction of my coworkers. The girl next to me gave me a "What an assh*le" stare and the guy behind me said, "Jibralta, I want you to call the President." Then he asked for status updates on my phone call to the President throughout the day. I told him that we were playing phone tag.

The somewhat happy ending to this story is that I ended up finally convincing Frank that we should push back on printing these drawings. It only took four hours.

Fingers crossed that he does not revert to indecisiveness again tomorrow.

What a waste of time. We spent about 40 minutes today, debating the processes and definitions. Plus, I spent hours decoding procedures, contacting people, organizing my revisions in case I had to print.

Meanwhile all he had to do was give me clear instruction to print or not to print. But he would not do that. He wanted me to make the mistake of spending hundreds of dollars on printing some useless sets. Well, I will not do that.

The somewhat happy ending to this story is that I ended up finally convincing Frank that we should push back on printing these drawings. It only took four hours.

Today, he came to my desk and asked me if I printed the sets. I was like, "Did you call the client?" He looked blank. I said, "Do you remember yesterday, when you agreed that these sets would be an extra?" He said, "Oh, I wasn't paying attention to anything yesterday. I had too much on my mind."

So, I ended up printing the sets! No big deal, but what an absurd waste of time!

Hahaha! "Call the President".

Hahaha! "Call the President".

I thought that was pretty funny, too

About two weeks ago, Frank told me that I might be moving over to this guy Mitchell's team.

I was afraid to believe it. I really want to work for that guy. He's great. I don't know why he isn't doing Frank's job.

Well, maybe I know why. Mitchell does very large projects that have to be managed. Frank can't manage sh*t.

Frank can't even really draw properly. I mean, he draws beautiful images by hand (which is probably why he got the job he has). But technically speaking, his drawings are crap. Nothing lines up correctly.

It's so funny how people lose their minds when they see that you're very skilled at art or music. You can get away with all sorts of incompetence in other areas.

Anyway, I had a brief meeting with Mitchell today. Finally. There's a big new project.

My fingers are crossed that I will soon be free of Frank's stupid grip.

Crossing my fingers for you!

Crossing my fingers for you!

Thank you :)

I started the new project in earnest today. It's pretty big, and I get to do the initial set-up. This is the first time I'll be starting a big project since the Disaster Project. Since then, I've contributed to various stages of large projects, but I've only taken small projects from start to finish. So, this will be nice.

I do have some fear that the project could go awry. I don't think anything will go wrong under Mitchell's supervision, but what if somehow Frank gets involved at a high level? I shudder to think.

Yesterday, as I left to go home, Frank stopped me and asked how his (Frank's) project was going. He was referring to a stupid drawing that I was doing for him while waiting for Mitchell to ramp up. He told me the day before that he he didn't care about the project at all. So I was surprised at his intensity as he asked about its status. I reassured him that I'd finished the things he wanted me to finish.

I figured that would settle him. But it didn't.

His next question was, "Did Mitchell talk to you?" I said, "Yes." I figured Frank was really asking what my schedule was going to be like, since I was still responsible for some of his (Frank's) projects. Maybe this was why he seemed stressed out. So, I began to summarize the tasks that I had been assigned.

But Frank cut me off, saying, "I don't care about Mitchell. I care about me." Then he stuttered as he tried to form a question asking whether he would be able to pick up where I left off. I reassured him that he would. He said he needed a bit of my time tomorrow to go over it, and I said, "Sure," while secretly hoping he would figure it out by himself, or forget altogether.

Then he said, "Now I care about Mitchell. I just wanted to care about myself first." So I gave him a very brief summary of what I'd already told him about that. Pretty much one word. He said, "Well, great. Have fun." I said, "Ok," and left.

So, I think Frank has some beef over this whole situation. I don't know what it is, though.

I spent a good part of today feeling dread, anticipating the short meeting that Frank wanted to have. Thankfully, it didn't happen. But that doesn't give me back my peace of mind!

I wonder, does Frank not want me to work for Mitchell?

For all parties involved, it would be a boon. Mitchell's team works predominantly in Revit. However, they still rely on AutoCAD in their Revit projects, and that's not ideal. It causes more harm than good. I have the Revit skills they need to get them up to speed with the program's full potential and stop them from relying on AutoCAD. Mitchell and his team have the project experience that I need.

It's a mutually beneficial situation.

I've had this sense, from quite early on, that Frank needs to see me fail. He's waiting for it, betting on it. Even though I continue to demonstrate that I am up to the task--often even more so than he is--it seems to me that he is fixated on this one outcome. Even though it would take an act of god for me to fail, he is fixated on it.

Well, he's always been bizarrely irrational.

But seriously, what is his deal?

This is what I wrote back in September, after I wrote the letter to Mark, one of the company's owners. I said to him in that letter that it sometimes felt like Frank was out to get me.

I explained my worry that Frank's negative opinion of me, unfounded though I felt it was, could damage my reputation with my coworkers and the firm's leadership. I also communicated my fear of becoming a sacrificial lamb. In an effort to reestablish my good standing with the firm, I asked to be reassigned to a different PM and associate.

 

Mark got back to me early this morning, thanking me for my honest and detailed email. I spoke with him in his office shortly thereafter. He actually opened the conversation by defending Frank, assuring me that Frank was a nice guy and almost certainly not out to get me.

Well, I beg to differ from Mark's opinion. It's been six months since then, and I did try to see things differently. But my initial impression remains.

Also, a while back I wrote that it seemed like Frank was afraid of me. I can't find that post now. But I wonder if I wasn't on to something. It seems like a crazy thought. Why should he be afraid of me? But he's full of sh*t and I'm 100% real. I might be scared to see me coming if I were Frank.

I think Mitchell and I can really take off. Maybe Frank sees that, too.

My mom sent this to me.

Definitely captures something about me as a kid.

Well, I was never exactly Batman. But I was Darth Vader for Halloween when I was six.

I f*cking loved Darth Vader.

I was a weird kid.

I went to a meeting with Ivan a couple weeks ago. He drove.

I've described Ivan as a diva. I don't know if that's what he is, but it's the best word I can find to describe his personality. He's very nit-picky, and very inconsistent. Those two qualities make for an unpredictable personality.

Ivan is also prone to mood swings. I'm told it's due to dips in his blood sugar level, caused by his diabetes. I'm sure that's part of it. I also think he entertains himself by taking a bite out of people sometimes. He likes to get a rise out of us.

In contrast to his fluctuating moods, he has a plodding, methodical way of problem-solving and is quickly frustrated when he information starts flying at him from different directions. His approach to problem solving reminds me of a tortoise. His temper, not so much.

I haven't really cracked the code on Ivan yet.

My experience with him has been fine. Not the best, but certainly not the worst.

He's taken a bite out of me a few times, but mostly he leaves me alone. I don't think he makes sense all of the time, but I can tolerate his idiosyncrasies because I know he's not an insecure, mindless, egotistical assh*le. And I still appreciate the immediate, direct way in which he addressed my issue with Frank.

Anyway, as I was saying, Ivan and I drove to and from a meeting together. I let him set his methodical pace for the in-car chitchat.

As we left the client's office and merged onto the highway, a large tractor trailer truck merged rapidly onto the ramp next to us, on my side of the car. I made an uh-oh sound at the speed of the truck's approach.

Ivan said offhandedly, with his typical indifferent intonation, "Don't worry; I'll protect you."

I don't know why I thought that was so funny.

I also sensed that it was a glimpse of his true nature and disposition.

I don't want to look at my phone right now because my gym is trying to screw me out of a bunch of money.

I prepaid for an entire year back in December/January.

However, for the last few months, I haven't been able to go due to this ongoing back/neck issue I've been having.

Finally, I asked my chiropractor write me a note. The note said that he didn't want me to go back for 6 months.

According to the agreement, I could cancel my membership with this note.

Well, I had a text message conversation last night with some dude from the gym. When we got down to brass tacks, he said he couldn't give me a refund. He said, "You signed an agreement." Like I was a little kid who didn't know what responsibility was.

I wanted to shove the phone up his ass. But instead, I explained to him what the agreement said and why he owed me money. I told him I would sue the gym if they tried to keep my money.

He apologized and said he had to talk to the owner.

My phone dinged an hour ago and I've been avoiding looking at it. I don't want to get pissed off.

Today was so busy at work! I hardly had time to think straight.

I had plans to work on one project, but then an older project reared its head and I spent a couple hours answering questions for that client.

In the middle of it, I got pulled into a meeting with a vendor that lasted for 1.5 hours.

When I got out of that meeting, the plumbing engineer came to my desk and asked if I'd completed my unit mixes for the building--everything today, with both projects, seemed to revolve around unit mixes.

Weird.

These past few weeks, I've mainly been working for Mitchell. It's been great. Occasionally, I do have to work on a project for Ivan or Frank, but this is basically limited to projects that were in process when I started working for Mitchell.

Today, something interesting happened with Frank's project. This is the project that I inherited from a person who left the firm, and which Frank was giving me such a hard time about. I worked on it from January through March, roughly speaking. After I stopped working on it, our structural team continued to do redesigns (that is a whole 'nother stupid story, but I won't get into it now).

This morning, the structural engineer came to my desk and told me he made a bunch of columns wider. So, I went through the drawings with him to check which columns were ok, and flag those that would cause problems.

There were quite a lot of changes, and it started to occur to me that we were now looking at a redesign/change of scope situation. I said as much to Joe, and he said something like, "Well, apparently the client hasn't been paying, so I don't know how much more work we [structure dept] are going to do on it after this submission."

I remembered that statement a couple of hours later, when I got an email from the client asking me to forward CAD drawings to their designer. I immediately forwarded the email to Frank and asked if this was something he wanted me to do.

Sending CAD files to an outside party can subject us to a certain amount of liability. Not to mention the fact that we are basically sending our intellectual property out for someone else to pirate and/or manipulate.

In addition to this, a couple of things have happened with this project that struck me as shady, not the least of which was the seemingly endless stream of signed and sealed sets that Frank kept asking me to send out when the client clearly had what they needed for their permit review.

Instead of waiting for Frank to respond (he slipped out for lunch), I went to the our billing and finance people and told them of my plight. They agreed that it would be a bad idea for me to send the CAD files. They would talk to the boss (Mark) and let me know what to do.

A little while later, Frank responded to my email saying that even though he didn't like the "smell" of the client's email, I should go ahead and send the CAD files out. He came to my desk a couple minutes later to elaborate and no doubt bestow upon me another valuable 'learning moment' (did I ever tell that story? Oh god).

I stopped him before he started talking and told him that I'd forwarded the email to billing/finance on account of the fact that we never cleared up the contact info for the actual project owner (which is true), and that they told me not to forward the CAD. Frank was content with that. He made some comments about how they owe us money and how all those print jobs we sent out weren't so expensive.

Not long after, I received an email from Mark basically telling me to tell the client that they can't have the CAD until they pay their bill. So, that's what I did.

I find it amazing that everyone but Frank seemed to know what to do in this scenario. I really don't understand how he is useful at all.

Goddamned Frank. Life has been so nice without him. I wish he would just disappear forever.

Alas, he persists in bothering me.

Today, at 3PM, he came to my desk and asked me to print that goddamned 150+ page set for the 7th fcking time. Once again, totally unrealistic time frame.

I gave him the biggest attitude. Well, I gave him a hard stare and some sort of expression that indicated extreme annoyance. This flustered him, and I didn't care. He said, "I'm sorry to be such an annoyance," and I just raised my eyebrows at him, like "Are you."

Finally, he slunk off into the print room to arrange something with the print guy. He came back and basically told me that the guys there would take care of it, all I had to do was put the files in the correct place. I agreed to take it from there.

I went to the print room to talk to Damien about the job. I told him that I almost killed Frank. He said, "I know. He told me."

I thought that was funny. Frank is some kind of weakling, for sure.

The last few weeks at my job were pretty eventful for some of my coworkers. Two of them, Larry and Brian, quit. One of them (Mitch) is probably going to get reprimanded in the near future for being a persistent dckhead.

I'll really miss Brian. He used to sit right near me. He was like a ray of sunshine shining down upon our little section of the building. A couple of us bantered back and forth all day and had a grand ol time. When he left, it was a little like a punch in the gut.

Larry was a slightly uptight sort of guy, but he was really easy to work with. He was just starting to relax a little when he suddenly left. I think he got a hard time from some of his peers in the engineering department, possibly because he was a Revit guy. CAD-based hostilities aren't limited to architects.

Mitch is generally an ok guy. But when things don't go his way he tends to view them as acts of aggression by others.

The incident that seems to have set things in motion occurred suddenly on a Thursday morning, about three weeks ago. Mitch came storming out of the engineering department and shouted, "Brian!!! Get down here right now!!' Then he stormed back to his department.

We all just sort of sat there, stunned. Who talks to people like that? I mean, if you're yelling at your own kids in your own house, or even if you're a teacher wrangling a few miscreants, I get it. But this is an office.

Brian decided to disobey Mitch and not follow him down to the engineering department. I'm not exactly sure how that whole situation played out, but during the next few hours, I believe that Brian resolved Mitch's technical issue with the assistance of Ivan and another engineer, cutting Mitch out of the equation completely.

The antipathy between Brian and Mitch dissipated, but didn't fully resolve. And I suspect Mitch felt like an ass after his immature wanna-be-father-like outburst.

The following Tuesday, Larry came up to Brian and basically said, "Hey, you changed a couple of things on your drawings and that really messed things up for us." It was not a hostile exchange, but I could tell Brian was taking offense.

One thing about Brian that was not-so-good was that his slight seniority over some of the non-licensed individuals in the office was starting to go to his head. He adopted a slightly imperious way of speaking that made me cringe at times. I attributed this to his age (32) and relative inexperience. I often felt glad that he had no authority over me because I think that would have gotten ugly fast.

So, when Larry brought the issue up to Brian, Brian responded in a semi-condescending and dismissive way that made Larry go away, but did not make the problem go away. Larry instead brought the problem to Brian's semi-subordinate, Ariel. When Brian saw this, he went over to speak to both of them and the resulting fuss brought Ivan out from his den to question the goings-on.

That's always the worst thing that can happen at times like this because when Ivan gets involved in a coworker debate, there are no winners. And so it was in this case.

Unbeknownst to Brian, Ivan had told the engineers to stop working on the project altogether. This revelation made Brian look and feel like a fool. Not long after that, he said, "I'm going for a walk" and left the building.

When he didn't return two hours later, Ariel texted him to find out where he was. Brian said he would be back tomorrow, and that he was doing something work-related.

Another not-so-great thing about Brian: He had terrible attendance. He called out at the drop of a hat. I don't know how many sick days he took, but it was a lot. Plus, when things got too intense for him, he'd actually take the rest of the day off! So, this behavior was not unusual and we all expected him to return the following morning.

I believe that Brian also fully expected to return the following morning, as well. But that's not what happened.

I'll talk more about that tomorrow.

To be continued...

OMG you left us all hanging!

My niece is getting married this weekend. When she was five, her favorite joke was:

Knock knock

Who's there

Cheerios

Cheerios who?

It's a serial, I'll tell you later

Hmmm... maybe you could do a choose your own ending activity.

Lol, luminous one. You're funny

So, as I was saying, Brian had terrible attendance. And it wasn't uncommon for him to take 'mental health' days. But he was very dedicated to his job, and despite all of the stress was very happy working for our firm. We talked about it often and had in fact just talked about it a day or two before.

When I heard he quit, I didn't believe it. I thought it was a manipulative ploy by Ivan to whip Brian into shape. I thought this because the way it came about was confusing.

Here's how it unfolded:

On Wednesday morning, Alana came in and said to me, "Oh, did you get that email from Ivan? I am so sad." I was like, "No, what email?" She said, "He send out an email saying, 'I'm sorry to tell you, but Brian quit last night.'"

Then she said, "The thing is, Brian doesn't even know! When I got the email last night, I texted him and said, 'I'm so sorry to hear that we won't be working together anymore, but I wish you the best in your career, etc. " And he said back, "I didn't quit, Alana! Don't worry. I'll see you tomorrow."

So, for a period of time, I thought Ivan just got sick of Brian's attendance shenanigans and was pulling him up short in a passive-aggressive sort of way. Like, "Oh Brian, you left without saying anything yesterday. I thought you must have quit." Then Bran would be like, "I shouldn't have done that; it won't happen again."

Sure, it was manipulative and immature and unfortunate on both sides, but I thought there was a chance that things could be smoothed over and that a slightly more realistic Brian could come back to work.

Even after Justin packed up all of the things in his desk into two boxes, I half-expected Brian to come in. He would just unpack, settle in and get to work.

But, he didn't come in. All day, Alana and I wondered if Brian knew, how he found out, how he was taking it.

That night, Alana spoke to Brian. He asked her if they'd packed his stuff. She lied and said she didn't know. She told him to call Ivan and he did. But not long after, Brian texted Alana and said, "It's over. I no longer work there anymore."

Alana related all of this to me on Thursday morning. When I left work later that day, I marveled at Ivan's cunning: Instead of firing Brian and letting him collect unemployment, he 'quit' him by deliberately misinterpreting his actions (stupid though they were). Brian definitely set himself up for it, but damn, Ivan was cold.

Then a day later, I learned more. On Tuesday night, Brian had fired off an email to Ivan with an ultimatum: if Ivan did not give Brian the raise he wanted, Brian would quit.

So, Ivan really didn't 'quit' Brian. Brian fired himself.

I love the guy, but what a dumb ass, lol.

The timing of Brian's negotiation disaster was particularly unfortunate because his birthday was a couple of days later. I got his number from Alana and texted him "Happy Birthday" when the day came around.

After the "thanks" and the "I miss you" exchange, Brian volunteered his own version of events. He said that he'd had some tough days, was tired of the stress, and that he decided to seek new opportunities. I saw no point in challenging his 'official' version of events, and did not do so.

Thus end's Brian's story at our firm. At least this chapter of it. Maybe they'll hire him again in the future. I know that Ivan really did like him, and was genuinely sorry to let him go. Brian was a valuable member of his team. He just put Ivan in an impossible position.

On to the next mini-drama: Larry.

I don't know what Larry's story is. As I said in my previous post, I suspect friction within his own department was to blame for his departure.

Larry was relatively new. He started after me, while I was in the midst of that horrible disaster-project with Catherine. I believe his first day in the office was my first day back from my vacation, the vacation where I couldn't sleep for days at a time due to the stress I was feeling over my job.

I was not in the best frame of mind when Larry and I were introduced, and I'm afraid I was a bit rude to him. I didn't mean to be, but at that moment I was swamped at my desk with zillions of unresolved issues piling up around me. When Paul disturbed me to introduce Larry, I shot them both blazing looks of anger. Paul was unphased, but I saw Larry recoil with indignation. He had taken my meaningless dirty look personally.

For a while after that, Larry was very uptight around me. But he wasn't a jerk. I worked with him a couple of times, and he was professional. After a while, he started to drop his guard a bit. As I said in my previous post, he became more relaxed in general. However, I think he ran up against a lot of challenges in his own department. I noticed that his coworkers (including Mitch) did not communicate information to him, and that they would often complete or assign his tasks without telling him. That's a common way to be passive aggressive in this industry.

And actually, now that I write that down, it occurs to me that it's something Frank probably instigated. That's a total Frank-move to assign someone's work to another person without telling the first person, and I know that Frank did not like Lawrence. I'm also starting to think that, in general, Frank deliberately creates an environment of confusion because it prevents people from tracing mistakes back to him (Frank). But I digress.

Anyway, I didn't realize that Larry was gone until a week after he left. He typically worked very early hours, something like 6AM to 2PM, and he often worked from home. So, when I didn't see him for an entire week, I thought it was strange but not completely out of character for him.

During the week that Larry was absent, I followed up with his boss, Victor, about a load letter that Larry had been working on. Victor didn't seem too concerned about Larry's absence from the office. He anticipated that Larry would be done with his portion of the load letter in a day or two.

But when I didn't see Larry at all again this week, I asked one of my coworkers if he had quit. My coworker actually laughed at me and said, "Where have you been? Larry just up and left and took all of his project information with him!"

So, another one bit the dust.

Damnit, I just realized I've duplicated a pseudonym. Mitchell and Mitch. Mitchell being the guy I love working for, and Mitch being the rage-filled dildo in engineering. Is that going to be too confusing for people? I'm running out of fake names!

So- my guess was that Brian would typically disappear into drinking, and not return. Which could still be true given the real scenario. But - he also left himself vulnerable for a set-up, by boxing himself into a corner with the salary demand. And now he can't get unemployment.

Much like my colleague who quit (he reportedly demanded a better salary or he'd quit. So my employer let him quit and hired someone new).

Still, I hate when employers play games.

That is strange about Larry though.