I got absolutely sweet fuck all done today, because I had to deal with one interruption after another. It got so bad that at one point (during lunch, naturally), I found myself fending off a third-level nested interruption – i.e. an interrupted interruption got interrupted. And then the phone rang.
By then I had smoke coming out of my ears. It turns out that Dad was right; smoking IS bad for you.
So yes, I’m a little stressed.
Earlier this week, senior management informed us that the corporate tree surgeons would be paying us a visit. The memo they circulated said – in essence – “There are traitors in our ranks, but these individuals have been identified and they will be dealt with appropriately. Long live Mother Russia!”
Of course, since our esteemed leaders did not see fit to tell us who’d been targeted for the chop, the paranoia level in the office went up by several orders of magnitude. Almost immediately after the announcement, a flurry of résumés flew out into the ether in search of new opportunities.
Management clearly weren’t expecting anyone to jump before being pushed, but owing to the relatively small and incestuous nature of the industry, it wasn’t long before word filtered back to the upper echelons that the rats were eyeing the lifeboats.
The panic only set in when they suddenly realised that they could end up losing technical staff they actually might need to keep the company’s projects on track. That “oh shit” moment was beautiful to behold, although the hasty and amateurish attempts at damage control that followed were considerably less so.
The good news is I won’t be clearing out my desk just yet. Actually, that’s the bad news, too.
