Mike got canned a few days ago. From what extremely little I know about the situation, he was fired. He wasn't laid off, he didn't quit, and it happened very suddenly. One afternoon I'm loaning him a CD to quickly copy to his hard drive, and by 6:00 I see him over my shoulder, carrying a box of stuff and the plants he had in his cubicle. I thought he was just leaving for the day when he said "bye", but then Daisy told me what was up. This was really strange, especially for an office. I didn't think people could leave that quick. I thought they always had to give or be given a 2 week notice, do an exit interview with HR, fill out the paper work, and all that stuff. Hell, there's usually an email announcement and a goodbye party. But not for Mike.

He was only 21, but had been with the company for at least 2 years. He got his foot in the door by knowing somebody's son. No degrees, but he really had a lot of knowledge. Even though he wasn't doing QA work for the same product I was (and was thus in a different department, more or less), we'd come to him with general questions from time to time. He knew a lot about databases, SQL, and all these other things which snooty bitches like Molly are still unadmittedly clueless about. I know he screwed around during the day sometimes, downloading mp3s or what not, but he certainly worked late when he had to. I remember one night where he stayed here until 3:00 AM to prepare the lap top our VP was going to use for a demo.

So Kole, my manager, gives me one of those no body text emails with a subject line, "Please come by my office." I never feel good about phone calls or emails like that. She was also asking me "Did Craig talk to you yet"? Craig is our director, my boss's boss. "Uh, no. Should I go talk to him?" "No, I'll go see if he wants to talk to you." More little vague bullshit talk here and there during the day. But when I do see her in her office that afternoon, it turns out that she wants ME to take over Mike's job. The whole time I'm listening her, I hear a two word question screaming in my head: why me? And this morning I have a meeting with the rest of the folks from this product (even though I knew about it, Kole took a note I had on my desk for myself, wrote "10 AM, ROOM SL" on the back, and taped it to my monitor. She could have reached an extra 3 inches and used a post-it note.)

So why me? I'm already the last person to leave the entire office every single night, working on finishing the damn release of the product we do. I even worked on a Saturday last weekend. And by the end of April I have another thing to test for the Clinical folks. Does everybody else on the team have a full load too? Is she afraid of assigning something challenging to her pet, Molly, even though she boasts a "Senior QA" title which I don't have? Or maybe this is something I should be flattered about, and she really thinks I'm the right person for the job?

Well I finally asked her about it. She gave me the praising talk about how, yes, I am the person for the job. The most qualified to take something brand new, learn it, test it, and make some documents for later reference. Oh well, I'm sure it won't hurt my review that's coming up. But for the record, I'm more than happy with the money I'm currently making.