The beatings will continue until morale improves

First of all, I must apologize for my recent hiatus from posting. Things have been very busy at the Biotech Mecca, although (as usual) nothing really moves forward.

I would like to take a break from Captain Fantastic and spend a bit of time writing about morale. What precipitated this unanticipated change in topics, you may ask? It has come to my attention that the executive assistant is leaving. What makes this special is that it's only been a couple of weeks since the useless receptionist was sacked, and the executive assistant has only been employed with the Biotech Mecca for less than six weeks.

Originally, the Biotech Mecca had only the receptionist. At least, she usually sat at the front desk. That is when she wasn't napping in her car, participating in deep religious conversations with the accountant who is supposed to be doing the SEC filings (remember him?), staring with moon eyes at the Sarcastic Brit (who is apparently the sexiest man in the universe), or just generally staring out into space. Please note that this list did NOT include answering the telephone. Since there was no automated switchboard at that time, it made everybody at the Biotech Mecca somewhat difficult to get in touch with.

Anyway, the receptionist was responsible for greeting people at the door, issuing purchase orders (and God forbid actually ordering crap), as well as performing generally assistive tasks. The truth of the matter is that she was hired by a couple of people who thought that she was hot (I would hate to see their opinion of ugly). She also had about a 25% success rate with ordering things, and was nearly as bad about keeping track of the paperwork for this. Despite these things, she was sent to training so that she would be qualified to do the SEC filings. I should also mention that she managed to convince her boss (the unmarried accountant who thought that she was hot) that it should be no problem to stop working Fridays. After all, she wasn't being paid that well anyway.

Before too long, it was decided that the Biotech Mecca had grown enough that we needed a person to take care of accounts payable. Hence the Dragon Lady was hired. Being a cross between Tony Soprano and Rambo, the Dragon Lady didn't take kindly to lost paperwork and soon assumed the ordering part of things. Then, she started answering the phones. Then she started taking care of all of the shipping. After that, the Dragon Lady started taking care of things like making sure that the cleaners came in to do the floors, and eventually also picked up the task of being the personal assistant for the CEO and the COO.

Oddly enough, it was determined that another person was required. They hired the Amazon princess. As far as I can tell, the only thing important to this particular princess is her horse. As she sits in the cubicle across from me, I have gotten to hear all about the horse (and about how sweetly I talk to my wife on the telephone.) Anyway, the Horse Princess apparently has a long history of working for functional companies. It seems that in functional companies, executive assistants are not required to go and fetch lunch, run to the business store, and clean up the conference room before important meetings.

I do not need to tell you that the Horse Princess and the Dragon Lady don't get along. I have always been told that power struggles between women can get ugly. I now understand what that means.

After a week or two, the insightful management decided that all of this administrative assistance was too expensive, so they axed the receptionist. Of course, the Dragon Lady had managed to take over most of her duties anyway. The only problem was that they needed a warm body to man the front desk from 9:00-5:00. The Dragon Lady worked 7:00-3:00. It was decided that the Dragon Lady and the Horse Princess would take turns working late. Unfortunately, nobody ever told the Dragon Lady, who suddenly got pushed into a 7:00-5:00 schedule and has yet to see a dime of extra money. Needless to say, she's not happy to see the Horse Princess work from 9:00-4:30. Apparently, that is because the Horse Princess takes her lunch at 4:30 so she can leave early and go to see her horse. I don't want to know.

It didn't take long for the Dragon Lady to start breathing fire. When 7-5 turns into 7-6, and you feel like you are running the whole show (doing what two weeks before was supposed to be the work of three people), it tends to make you irritable. The next thing that happened was that the Dragon Lady was asked to manage the company morale. I believe that they were thinking specifically of the Sarcastic Brit and myself, as we tend to be unsubtley pessimistic about anything to do with the Biotech Mecca.

It seems that the Horse Princess has only two functions. The first is to talk to real estate agents about moving the company to somewhere that doesn't suck. I believe that the proper description would be somewhere that we could conduct business without the Occupational Health and Safety Administration throwing us all in jail. The second is to revise all of the forms that the Dragon Lady has been spending the last year creating. However, that answering the phone for the executives when they are away (which is pretty much all of the time) is not on that list.

I get the picture that the Dragon Lady has not been very interested in playing ball with the Horse Princess. Perhaps this is part of the reason that the Horse Princess has given her notice. Perhaps it is because the senior management has a long track record of lies and incompetence. In either case, she gave one week notice, and is leaving tomorrow. From what I hear, the CEO had no idea why she would want to leave such a wonderful company, and nobody has bothered informing the COO who got home from a three-week vacation in the Middle East (religious pilgrimage perhaps?) only to be shuffled onto a plane bound for New York to try to sooth irate investors. Perhaps the COO won't notice anyway though, who emailed me today to find out what is going on at here at the Biotech Mecca.

When the Horse Princess told me that she was leaving, I asked her why. She cited her commute, the horse, and the generally screwed up state of the company. She told me that at least we would be moving to a nice new facility. My response was "Great. Then we can be a crappy company in a good facility." She didn't argue. She did make a point of telling me how important I am to the company. She then asked me how I have made it almost two years. My response is that the company is much better than it used to be. But those stories are for future posts.