It has been a few weeks since my first run in with the gang, and and issue where our Barry county affiliate got pissed at the team, and they in-turn, got pissed at me. Now that some time has passed I am doing my best to reflect on the situation and see more objectively what can be done about it.
Let me go back to the beginning...
Had a domain migration in Hastings. Moving 10-12 PC's over to a new domain, we assigned one person, ME, to do it on a Monday. I got through about 4 machines the first day, they were all hijacked, some would not even accept a new domain without getting cleaned out first. It was a classic case of all users being local admins on their machines. The job was never going to get done in one day, we could see that by early afternoon. I had the coordinator there call my boss and get an extension. It was granted, and all was well. So I thought. I am getting calls from the lead engineer, asking questions pertaining to why it is taking so long, they still had other servers to get built, and they had to get done soon. We all agreed that when I got done in Hastings, I would work on it when I got back. It could not have been more than 15 minutes, when Jane, the coordinator up three and I overheard other people talking about how it was taking FOREVER for this stuff to get done, and nobody is able to work. It was an obvious exaggeration, but nonetheless, when told to the right people with the right delivery can do wonders. So this discussion gets right to the CEO, who lands in Jane's office with me not more than one minute later, demanding a conference call with my team, and bosses. The Hastings staff all acknowledged that I was working as fast as I could, but wanted my team to know that clearly to get this done on a time line they were comfortable with, that I needed more help. They agreed to it, and decided to send the Lead Engineer up to not only bring the server up that I was supposed to work on when I got back, but to help with the migration as well. The engineer shows up 3-4 hours later after building that server, and we stayed at the Hastings office till 7-8 pm. This was a Tuesday, and this migration had already been underway since Friday night prior, for 4-6 hours per day. The Lead Engineer was pissed, and with few words, showed his dissatisfaction towards me, and few words, made it very clear that I was on his shit list. This was also the same situation for my boss, whom I still had no words with in the days leading up to this moment, he's pissed too. "You (I) should of kept my hands around this." was the lingering thoughts of disdain that they had for me. Once I saw this attitude from the Lead guy (LSE) I decided that I have no apologies for these shit heads. I worked my ass off on this, I would have done nothing different looking back on it now. The drama that ensued not only was out of my hands, but inevitable.
From then to now, the only thing that has changed is that the LSE never talks to me, unless it is a problem to be fixed, and the boss, from what I can tell, just complains in his corner about me, quiet enough that I can't hear it, but loud enough that others can, such as that LSE. They have no projects on tap for me, and I feel as if they are cutting me off from doing new project work. It must be some sort of "punitive" thing they have concocted for me. It is a bunch of bullshit, I don't deserve that. I really wish they would come clean and just tell me to my face what their issues are, so we can get over it and move forward. Rich is sitting over at his desk doing a VMWare project that I should be involved in if it is going to involve Barry County. No offense to Rich, he is kind of stuck in the middle of this, getting work that at one point I may have shared with him. Now he gets it all, never with any involvement of me. I used to help him out, sharing what I know about our systems with him, and things that I learn along the way. He shares a very small fraction he learns from the router stuff he does for Jason, and never gets me up to speed. I will no longer help a guy that is going to get potential project work that I may have gotten in the past. He will get no help from me. Now its competition, nothing personal dude.
As for the LSE debacle, the only perk of working 63 miles from my doorstep was learning all the stuff that I was by getting projects. I also made this very clear when I took the job, as long as I was able to get new R&D work on the side, I did not mind doing the Help Desk stuff. If it is going to be this way, I see no reason to work in Battle Creek no longer. I am a patient guy, and I will sit this out, see if more of the dust settles, but by the end of April, if this shit hasn't changed. I should pursue possible new lines of work, potentially closer to Lansing.
