01/08/06 to 01/08/10


I hate Marketing.

Monday:
Mike called in to let us all know he'd found a leprechaun over the weekend, so he'll be bringing it in tomorrow before Amy gets back. The piece of stone it's sitting on says 'Kerry', so it'll have to come off that one and be stuck on to the Connemara one that Donna's been keeping in her desk.
It's real good news. We're all relaxed now, and glad Amy won't be having hysterics. It looks as if Mike's going to get away with it.

Her postcard arrived today. She said what a terrible vacation she was having and it'd rained every day so far.

AJ called us together for the morning meeting and said he'd decided over the weekend to implement a "team player" policy, to follow on from last week's "practical assistance" policy. He wants us all to help our colleagues whenever possible, and not wait to be asked for help.
Donna waited until he'd wandered off to his office to say she didn't need help and didn't like him implying she did. LeeAnn was more direct - she said she'd kill anyone who tried to interfere with her work.


Tuesday:
Donna said Carly told her there'd been another meeting at Head Office, and it looks like the new corporate color scheme's going to be red and white. The Marketing team that's been working on trying to get the rebranding of our item through (the one that's nearly eleven percent of our on-site turnover but totally insignificant as far as Head Office are concerned.) have been told to drop all that, get some ideas up together, and then run them past the CEOs. They're having a meeting with some of the CEOs tomorrow afternoon and Carly said AJ's one of those on the list to attend.

We were all waiting for Mike to come in with the Kerry leprechaun, and he finally made it about half three. James took it off the piece of stone it was on and stuck it on to the Connemara one while we all stood around and watched. It looks pretty good.
Donna went over and put it on Amy's desk, and she and LeeAnn lined it up and made sure it was exactly where the original Connemara had been sitting, while Mike took the original one and the empty Kerry stone and put them in his case to dispose of later.

Donna called us all over to look once it was set up, and that's when we all noticed a couple things:
 it's sitting with it's head tilted the wrong way - it's tilted to the left and the other eight are tilted to the right,
 it's got a red hat on - all the rest have got green ones,
 it's got a green jacket on - all the rest have got red ones,
 it's got red shoes on - all the rest have got green ones,
 it's wearing a red skirt, not green pants - because it's a female leprechaun,
 Amy's sure to notice,
 Mike's dead.

AJ came out from his office to find out who'd screamed, but nobody told him.
He wandered around for a while as we all tried to settle down (and Mike tried to calm down and pretend he was all right) and then said he's just been asked to have a consultation with the Head Office Marketing team that's working on rebranding our item, and so he won't be around tomorrow afternoon. We all know it's to show him the new logos for the new corporate image, but obviously he doesn't.

Amy's back tomorrow.


Wednesday:
Amy's back.

She said it'd rained nearly every day, and she'd had a miserable time, so she was glad to get back really. Donna told her the postcard had got to us all Monday, and she said she was surprised because normally it didn't until the week after she'd got back. She's brought us all some French chocolates and we all said oh she shouldn't have and why not put them in the break room, and tell us all about the vacation - anything to stop her sitting down and noticing Connemara's changed.

We all finally had to stop and let her sit down when the switchboard began to light up, but Donna and LeeAnn were waiting until she'd finished and carried on getting her to talk about the house her husband's brother had rented and how much she disliked his wife and how many rows they'd had over the cooking. She told us all how much she'd hated the vacation, but she began touching all her lucky charms and fiddling with their placings as she was talking so eventually we all gave up trying to distract her and just waited.

We waited all morning - she didn't notice.

The big printer was working fine after the lunchbreak. Mike hadn't bothered to disconnect it - he's just sitting there waiting for Amy to realize what he's done.

AJ went off to Head Office straight after the lunchbreak, then came back about three and shut himself in his office. None of us really cared - we're all still waiting on Amy.
It's like waking up in the morning and lying there waiting for the alarm to go off - you just know it's going to make you jump even though you're waiting for it.


Thursday:
The backup failed last night, because the tape ran out again. It's a 19GB server, it had about 10GB on it yesterday morning, and now it's got 18.8GB on it.
I called up Guru Bob and told him the server was full again, he said did I archive last year's stuff and I said yes, and it's been fine since then. He said OK, go through and see what's been added, and take it off. I said can I have that in writing? so he laughed and hung up the phone on me.

I went in to AJ's office and lied to him - I told him I was going to have to check all the files before I could get the server back up. He said OK as long as it doesn't take too long, so I told everybody to not sign in and went back in my office to search for any files or folders added yesterday.
I found one.

AJ'd accessed a folder on one of the Head Office Marketing servers at about four yesterday, then saved it to his personal folder on our server - it's a whole load of different color logos and letterheads, and it's 9GB.

I went back in to see him, and told him they had to be deleted or I couldn't get the server up. He said no, they couldn't - he had to store them on the server because his laptop came up with error messages if he tried to store it on there, and he'd called up Marketing and they'd told him to save them to our server.
I said why store them on our server, why couldn't he just keep accessing them from their server? He said Marketing told him to because they took up too much room on their server. I said they're taking up too much room on our server.
He said oh they said it'd be OK because, although they've got several servers and we've only the one, there's more people using theirs than there are using ours. I said no, it doesn't work like that, and nobody here will be able to do anything if all that Marketing stuff's on our server.
He said OK then, delete them, but wait until he'd checked with Marketing to make sure they still had the originals on their server.

I stood there waiting until he called up Marketing. He said they said it was OK to delete them as they still had the originals on their server, and a backup set of copies on another sister company's server too, so they didn't really need backup copies on our server as well - but it would make it difficult for him to look at them and decide which new logo and color scheme he'd be choosing for us. They suggested I put them on a diskette for him before I deleted them. I said I couldn't do that - surely he could just carry on accessing the originals on their server? He said well, yes, he supposed so.

I went back in to the server and deleted the folder, then did a quick backup and let everyone on OK. The server's working fine now.

Amy still hasn't noticed Connemara isn't right, and it's getting real tense. Mike's the worst affected but we all flinch every time she moves or says something.


Friday:
AJ said at the morning meeting the corporate image was being restructured to respond to the changing marketplace, and he'd had productive input to the discussion.
He means they're going to change the logo and the corporate colors after all, and they told him so.

We all just nodded - nobody cares. Even Fiona couldn't get up the energy to say anything about the cost of scrapping our existing letterheads. He came around to bug us all before he went to the afternoon meeting at Head Office too, but nobody could be bothered still - we're all waiting on Amy.

We were all tidying up and getting ready to leave for the weekend when she finally noticed.

She got excited and we all rushed over to calm her down, but she told us all she was OK.
She said look - it's a sign! my friend was saying we should go to Ireland next year and I was wondering if I should go with her and where to go if we did go, and it's a sign - we're to go to Connemara! look everybody - isn't it wonderful! … I never noticed she was a little girl before …
We all quickly agreed it was wonderful and how we'd all noticed Connemara was a girl and had always been a girl. Mike said her husband was in the parking lot already and waiting for her, Fiona held the door open for her, I grabbed her coat and bag for her, Donna and LeeAnn hustled her into them and out down the stairs, and James locked up behind us.

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 read 01/07/30-01/08/03 or read 01/08/13-17 

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