Here's something I learned today: No matter how small a team is in an office, there can still be a lot of ass-kissing and ladder-climbing bullshit that two people are hiding from the rest. This isn't even the business word; this is in a software company with no dress code, where we call our boss's by their first name, and within a small team of 6 (including the manager). And I'm not criticizing the idea of wanting to advance your career; just bullshitting the rest of your teammates while explicitly praising the whole concept of "teamwork" on the same day.

A little over a year ago, I quit my job doing QA (a.k.a. software testing) at one company and started doing QA for another one. This QA team at that point was one manager (let's call her "Kole"), two contract workers (let's call them "Molly" and "Anita"), and two full-time QA (including "Daisy", and now me). A month or two later, another full-time QA was hired ("Harry"). A close team of 6, compared to my last job which had 20+. Around this time we also got "Craig", a new director, i.e. the manager's boss.

Fast forward about 6 months. I can't stand Molly. She tries to act like my boss, but she's not. If it was Kole giving me an order, I could understand that. And I have no problem helping out people in the company, regardless of our ladder positions. But for a contract worker, who's simply under all the same management as me, to assign me things with DEADLINES? And get mad if I don't do everything according to her schedule? I could go on and on about her, but two things are worth noting at this point: 1) I ripped through 2 different stress balls last summer over, mostly due to the shit she was giving me, but 2) I was more than relieved to find out that I was hardly the only other person on the team who couldn't stand her, and who noticed how much of a pet she was to Kole. And I'm not basing that solely off the fact that Kole (who strikes me as a wavering agnostic) keeps a few of Mali's Islam books on her desk.

Daisy, Anita, and myself have individually spoken to Craig about our different problems with Molly. And Craig really seems like a down-to-earth, professional, no-BS kind of guy who does listen to us. And he's not dumb; he sees the tension there.

Oh, and although Anita and Molly started off as contract workers, they were hired to full-time sometime in 2001. Rumor has it that upon being hired, the first words out of Molly's mouth were "Can I now fire people?" And remember, there's nobody below us. Just us 5 folks plus a manager who also works.

A few weeks ago, Molly has the idea of having a surprise party, flowers, plaque and all that to salute our boss Kole. This was for recognition of all the stuff she did for the software release. In all honesty, we ALL worked our asses of to do this, and if anything was to be celebrated I thought it was to US, as a team that started off almost invisible to the other departments a year ago. But whatever, I went along and put in my share of $10 and signed the card Molly picked out.

After the surprise lunch party and weekly meeting, I talk to Anita. It turns out that there's been a LOT of stuff going on behind our backs over the past year. Ultimately, it looks like this whole surprise party was really schemed just to make Kole look better in front of Craig and the rest of the company. Kole, it seems, really wanted that director job for herself, which is why she acted rather skeptical of Craig when he was first hired.

I said to Anita, "But if Kole was to become the Director of QA, then she wouldn't be manager any more, so wouldn't they have to also get a new..."

Pause. Close Eyes. Hang head.

I think I've had enough office gossip to last me the rest of the year.