fractal007
Senior Member
since 06-01-2000
Posts 1989
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0 posted 05-19-2009 12:11 AM
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Kelvin Basir entered the office, crossing to the corridor toward his section of the building. He began his morning ritual by dropping off his knapsack filled with books about software development, the job he wanted, at his desk. Next, he walked on over to the coffee room to make some coffee mixed with hot chocolate, a sugary pick-me-up to get him going on projects that were not very interesting and to get him excited about something that was not very remarkable. Actually, that was his excuse for consuming the beverage. In truth, he liked the distraction of a caffeine-sugar buzz while he worked. Just getting the cup could be an adventure, since he was afraid the secretary would see him grabbing two packets of hot chocolate instead of one and chew him out for it.
Kelvin was an aspiring developer working as a software tester and he'd been working this same job for the past five years. If you'd asked him why he was still doing the same thing he would have told you that he just wasn't assertive enough.
“Good morning,” Kelvin said to a few passers by. Inject positive feelings into others, he thought to himself. Distract them from anything special about me.
He left the coffee room and, cup now in hand, headed toward his desk to check his email. There was nothing interesting there – a new build of the system under test, a reminder of an imminent fridge cleaning – certainly nothing about his imminent termination or about planned organisational restructuring or any number of other things about which he worried at least once a day.
Next Kelvin started Io, the code editor, and looked over the code for his latest pet project – an automation suite for conducting diagnostics. This was what he loved doing most. He would launch a project, tell no one about it – they'd laugh at him after all, because he was QA and not development – and then go at it.
The rest of his job as a software tester was just an annoying distraction from the real work of producing that killer app. Once he had that out the door he would be famous. “Kelvin,” some manager in development would say, “We want you on our team!”
Forget the fact that one needed to submit a resume to get the job one wanted, to go through hoops, in short to expose one's self to scrutiny. Kelvin thought he could get what he wanted by staying put and faking it in the shadows. To be fair though, a lot of his projects had impressed his superiors in QA.
This particular project was how he spent the rest of the morning. After all, his coworkers resided, for the most part, on the other side of the country, 3 timezones behind. He could afford to pursue his own interests for a while until they came online and started asking him to do the mundane chores more befitting someone of his actual job title and role.
When lunch time rolled around, Kelvin headed back to the coffee room and dragged his lunch out from under those piled on top of it in the fridge. It was so frustrating to see everything falling all over the place whenever he tried to get at his own lunch. He looked up and saw the strange new guy standing there. Kelvin had meant to talk to him if only to give himself exposure to more social situations. But the guy looked intimidating since he had been there occasionally at night when Kelvin bore his darker side, an aspect with which we won't concern ourselves for the moment.
“Hey,” Kelvin said.
“Hi!” the new guy said. He had short brown hair, a neatly trimmed beard, and intense fiery eyes.
“You new here?” Kelvin said.
“Yeah.”
“What team do you work in?” The phrasing of that question sounded so stupid. You're trying to tow the party line, Kelvin thought to himself. Sound like a model employee.
“I'm in inventory,” the guy said. “My name's Salam. What's yours?”
“Kelvin,” Kelvin said. “I work in QA.”
“Oh that's awesome!”
For someone in inventory, Kelvin thought, Salam seemed pretty positive.
“Well, I'll see you around.”
And so they both went to different places to eat lunch. Kelvin sat with some of his QA friends, chatting about various uninteresting topics, like what one of the women had done with her boyfriend that weekend or what one of the men had done with his family during his vacation.
Kelvin was getting used to trying to ride the flow of conversations. The things he thought about and the topics he liked discussing were rarely ones that interested others.
It was a typical day.Life's short. Think hard!
Me!
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Your portrayal of a disgruntled employee aside, I am certainly glad that I enjoy my job more than this guys does