Insensitive

I haven't written in a while. I usually blog ovre my lunch breaks, but those lunch breaks have been much shorter as of late. Last week my boss was away, but, despite this mouse's urge to play, demands from works kept me at work. This week another co-worker is away and so demands from work again kept me from play. I don't begrudge them their time off - they work hard and often come in on weekends and everyone needs some time off. My other co-worker is another story, however.

J is the closest person in the office to my age. She sits right across the aisle from me. She also has a young child. You'd think we'd have a lot to talk about and become good friends. But she comes in late, leaves early, barely present in her cube, and is borderline incompetent at her job. And she is a Parrot Man. Oh, and did I mention frequently absent? My favorite J story comes from the early phases of our project where she asked me to help her debug some code. Paraphrasing:

If (A and
B and
C and
D and
E
) then
{
do something
}
else
{
do something else
}
else
{
do another thing
}
else
{
do yet another thing
}
else
{
do that thing that you do
}

"Why doesn't this work?" (Insert laughter) She's not kidding. (Sober) 30 minute explanation ARGH!

She's been taking a lot of time off recently, so it was no great surprise when she didn't come in to work last Tuesday. We got a phone call from her saying that she was going up to Chicago for the week. She told us that she was going through a divorce and couldn't be in St. Louis this week when her husband came back from a business trip. Ordinarily we'd be okay with this, but it isn't like she doesn't have work to do. And because she wasn't here, her work fell on to us. We had our own work to do, but it shouldn't have been a problem. However, she's not our strongest programmer, so there is a high probabality that there would be mistakes. And she failed to write ANY documentation on what she's been doing for the past few months. After a frantic week trying to cover for her and get our own work done, she rolled in on Friday, was present for half a day, spent most of the time on her cell phone, and left early. Hey, at least she was here.

On Monday, she wasn't in at 10:00 when I went to my boss and asked if I should go through her projects and supply documentation for all of them. My boss didn't want me to do it saying that J had to learn to do it herself. Silently I'm screaming "Perhaps this would have been a good conversation to have had with her a month ago!" But I nod and smile. J comes in at 11:30, has a tearful conversation with my boss, and leaves after 30 minutes. That's telling her. In her defense J was on time for most of the rest of the week. But she had the nerve to complain about how hard it was to go back and create documentation for things she worked on months ago. And when she completed it, it wasn't complete or thorough, but was just a listing of the functions that had changed. Glad we straightened you out.

I don't mean to be insensitive. I realize that J is going through a tough time. That work is probably the last thing on her mind. And if it were anyone else I'd be glad to help carry the load. But J is the little girl who cried wolf. Except she wasn't that good at tending sheep before the wolf came. And I am looking at the next couple of months where she maintains this standard of reliability. I'm happy to help, but I don't want to have to do her job too.

Update: J wasn't here yesterday either. No explanation offered. And I still don't know what she's working on.