Monday, September 18, 2006
My Last Week at LAF
Things are finally starting to wrap up here at LAF. I was way too busy last week. I thought that after I handed in my resignation, they’d stop making me work. Boy, was I mistaken. They figured they had me for two more weeks, so they might as well load me up with work.
It was so bad last week that I actually had an Office Space type of moment. I was all set to leave at 5:00. I was all done with my work, so at 4:56, I decided to start shutting down my computer. That’s when I saw a guy I’m currently working on a project with (let’s call him Jim) approaching my cube. He asked me to print off a couple things so he could talk to the partner on the project, Bill.
Apparently, printing everything wasn’t enough. Instead, I got roped into a meeting until 6:00. Did I mention that it was Friday night?
To make matters worse, they kept trying to “teach” me things in this meeting. For example, they’re telling me the difference between a SAS57 and a SAS73 review. Um, who CARES? I’m going into a completely different line of business in exactly one week. Do you think I care what the difference is between these two pointless reviews are? Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it as quickly as I can so we can all get out of here.
In other developments, Wang came to talk to me about a project we worked on awhile ago. We charged $40K for it. Our actual costs? Oh, about $160K. So Wang is trying to get me to change some of the time I billed on the project from actual work to “training.” If I were staying here, I would have been a bit upset, as that would have affected my year-end review. But since I’m leaving, I was more than happy to accommodate them. Hell, they can zero out all my hours if they want. It doesn’t change the fact that the project was unprofitable. But at least now it looks good. And that way next year, they can do the same project for the same price and lose the same amount of money. And that, my friends, is how good businesses are run.
It was so bad last week that I actually had an Office Space type of moment. I was all set to leave at 5:00. I was all done with my work, so at 4:56, I decided to start shutting down my computer. That’s when I saw a guy I’m currently working on a project with (let’s call him Jim) approaching my cube. He asked me to print off a couple things so he could talk to the partner on the project, Bill.
Apparently, printing everything wasn’t enough. Instead, I got roped into a meeting until 6:00. Did I mention that it was Friday night?
To make matters worse, they kept trying to “teach” me things in this meeting. For example, they’re telling me the difference between a SAS57 and a SAS73 review. Um, who CARES? I’m going into a completely different line of business in exactly one week. Do you think I care what the difference is between these two pointless reviews are? Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it as quickly as I can so we can all get out of here.
In other developments, Wang came to talk to me about a project we worked on awhile ago. We charged $40K for it. Our actual costs? Oh, about $160K. So Wang is trying to get me to change some of the time I billed on the project from actual work to “training.” If I were staying here, I would have been a bit upset, as that would have affected my year-end review. But since I’m leaving, I was more than happy to accommodate them. Hell, they can zero out all my hours if they want. It doesn’t change the fact that the project was unprofitable. But at least now it looks good. And that way next year, they can do the same project for the same price and lose the same amount of money. And that, my friends, is how good businesses are run.
