Seeking Teddy's Promotion

A few posts are going to tie together here.

Not long ago (it couldn't have been long ago, this blog isn't a couple of months old) I mentioned that I was being considered for a promotion to QA. The perks were a bigger workspace and a raise. The downside was that I was going to work under a guy I didn't want to work under and a slightly less pleasant job.

As it turns out, every single factor in the equation was false. The raise was nixed, the department was moved under the control of my current supervisor, and QA now has the same 4x4' cubes that we do.

I expressed a lack of enthusiasm and the promotion opportunity was withdrawn.

A week or so ago I took some Meeting Notes about some attendance troubles in the RLD departments and in particular with a QA employee named Teddy Forbes.

Now I've got a lot to say about Teddy, but I'm not ready to at this juncture. But the important thing about Teddy is that he has been dissatisfied with his position for some time and has wanted out of QA and in to System Testing.

When they were moved back into the smaller cubicles, he issued an ultimatum: either you get me out of QA or I quit.

To which the company responded: "We have no other positions available to you at this time. Do you intend to excercise the latter option?" Our boss Willard actually talks like this.

So Teddy is gone.

Lesson: Never issue an ultimatum to this company. According to Willard, there have been some very essential people that have gone off the tracks to senior management by being impatient and issuing ultimatums.

So two days after Teddy leaves because they will not transfer him to Software Testing because "there are no openings for [him] at this time" they send a company-wide email job posting for two positions in... Software Testing!

I noticed that there were no requirements for the job that I did not meet. Willard then pulled me into the small conference closet room. He strongly suggested that I apply for the Software Testing spot and said that I could put him down as a reference.

This would be the second time in a month or so that he's tried to help me get a promotion. That means I'm either really good because he things I'm bound for better things, or I'm so bad that he wants to kick me upstairs.

There is some bad blood between Teddy and myself. He has, in the past, been quite condescending to our department. I'm frankly glad he's gone.

If I do apply and get for and get the spot that he has spent months pining for, that would absolutely, positively be icing on the cake.