Janet hesitated before going down the hall to David’s office. She turned around and sat back down and sighed. Steve stopped by her cubicle and said, “What’s wrong?” “I have this problem and I need to ask David a question. I’m really stumped. But he’s going to tell me, ‘Don’t bring me a problem without […]
“Juliet, I really screwed up big time. What am I going to do?” Romeo moaned as he plunked himself down in his VP’s office. “I can tell you, but I can’t admit it to my people. They will never respect me again.” “If they discover what you did—and they will—they will never forgive you if
“I need a little breathing room in my group,” Carl said to Steve. “I have fifteen people reporting directly to me, and you and I both know that’s way too many. I need to promote somebody, but I’m having a little trouble deciding who to promote.” Carl shook his head as he looked at his
“We have mandatory all-hands meeting this afternoon. I’m going to have a stomachache then,” David said. “What do you mean?” Jenny asked. “You haven’t even had lunch yet. How do you know? What are you talking about?” “Look, you know what our wonderful division head, Martin, is going to say. He’s not going to take
“You know, if you want something done, you just have to do it yourself,” Clive muttered as he strode down to his office. Susan looked up from her desk and sighed. She stood, followed Clive down the hall, and knocked on his office door. “What? I’m a little busy right now!” he replied and turned
“It’s time for our annual management meeting to rank everyone in engineering,” Don, the VP started to explain to his three directors. “Hold on a minute,” interrupted Dave, the development director. “We didn’t do this last year, because we explained we can’t be objective and it makes no sense. We thought we eliminated this nonsense.”
“Have you heard the new thing that Andrew is doing?” Gabe asked, shaking his head as he headed towards the cafeteria with Cynthia. “No, what?” Cynthia said. “We have to fill out time cards with our actual time on them. He wants to know how much time we really spend at work. The more time,
“Hey, George, I want to talk to you about training for my group,” Andrea said. “Don’t start with that again,” George said. “I know you have a group of developers who need training. Two years ago, when you ran testing, you had a group of testers who needed training. Why do all your groups need
I caught up with Fred, a friend of longstanding, just before what I thought would be his normal two- to three-week vacation in August. “Where are you going this year, Fred? Are you bicycling or white water rafting? Or something else exciting? I can’t wait to live vicariously through you again!” “I’m not going anywhere
“Everyone is worth saving. Everyone is worth saving.” Jimmy was muttering under his breath as he walked into my office. “Hi, Steve. I’m here for our one-on-one. I have a real problem.” “OK, let’s hear it.” “Frieda is a problem in my group.” “Jimmy, we have discussed Frieda before. I thought you were going to