The sales weasels are at it again. Sometime last week they set up a little mini-golf game behind my cube. Every 20 minutes or so, a I hear a “whack!” and then a little ball will come tooling past my doorway. There’s nothing like being snowed in with work, and hearing, “come on baby, hook! hook it! yeahhh!!!” just as you’re starting to figure out a complicated problem.
My team leader gathered all of us into the CEO’s office early this morning. We learned that the company is not doing well, and we may be having a “Developers Weekend” to try and get more work done. I’ve heard of events of this sort at large consulting firms, but have never experienced an all-weekend coding extravaganza for myself. To make it fun, we can play music as loud as we want, and then go bowling or drinking afterwards. But I hate loud music, bowling and drinking, and suggested that we just go home afterwards. Maybe that’s not “team spirit”, but on weekends, I prefer to play for the “home” team. Hey, I might as well be honest.
I’ve learned that the “damsel in distress” effect is real. My father-in-law once offered some good advice to one of his daughters whose car needed a small repair: park it next to the door at Advance Auto Parts, raise the hood, and wait! Plenty of help was soon offered to her.
A comely young damsel recently joined our firm and wasted no time asking pretty much everyone for help. She made her way to the cube next to me today, and I overheard: “hey, do you know anything about site maps?” “Me? Yeah yeahyeahyeah,” came the reply. “Great! can you show me?” she said. ”Um… um… Lemme see here, I think, yeah… watch this!”
What followed for the next 30 minutes was so disgusting that I got no work done until it was over. Mr. fleet fingers was happily banging out code for his damsel. A few minutes would pass before she would say something motivational: “wow… what a great site map!” And then: “wow… I don’t have to do any work now!” And so it went.
When it was finished, she came over to my cube and said, “hey, YOU never write code for me!”. And honestly, I felt a little guilty. If she were a guy, she would have no job.
