office politics (and drinking)

Today I walked past 3 of my coworkers and they all looked at me funny. I smiled and said, "what? are you all talking about me?" I kept about my business but soon learned that, yes, they had been talking about me. One of the three, Brian, only 2 years ahead of me so the next in seniority, stopped at my cube to say that my time has been monopolized too much by one consultant in our office. That he's going to talk to my manager, Deb, about getting me to work on projects more evenly. This wasn't so much a jab at me, but more so at the consultant who is pulling me from work that I was previously assigned to.

Please don't read into this that I do great work. (However, I do.) The reason that people fight over me is that I have the lowest billing rate in the office - my time is worth $185 /hour and I'm the only person in the office less than $200. So, the more work I do on a project, the more likely that it will reach its budget.

Anyway, Deb then stopped by my cube to ask me what I'm working on and I quickly had to recite the things that I had been assigned to - most of which I wouldn't remember in normal situations, but Deb scares the bejesus out of me to make matters worse. She's actually a great boss and I have no reason to be afraid of her. During today's discussion she pointed out that she knows how difficult it can be for the "new hire" to tell a consultant that he doesn't have time to spend on another project. It was somewhat of an embarrassing situation, especially since everyone around me can hear what goes on in my cube and Brian was standing right there too. And really, this didn't help my situation. I still have the consultant pestering me with extra work and the people I normally report to are pissed because I'm falling behind on my real stuff. And, I have to tell Deb that last night I stayed till 8 o'clock to work on the project - 3 hours of overtime. Ugh. Just after all this, the receptionist, Schar, delivered a fax to me and she said that I looked very diligent with my pen behind my ear. She always shows up at just at the right time. I suppose she hasn't noticed that I always have a pen behind my ear.

After work, we had a celebration for those people that passed their exams in the last sitting. After pregaming in the office we went to a Mexican place. Burritos and margaritas on the company! Some good office gossip was passed around and one guy managed to embarrass himself many times over. That definitely made up for the rest of the day.