I'd finally gotten in the stuff I'd ordered:

• A plastic hood,
• A plastic hose,
• Duct tape, and
• A small party-sized tank of helium

Loaded it up in the car and headed in to work.

Traffic was traffic.

Got to work, grabbed the stuff, and went inside.

Went to EBM's office, shut the door, and took a seat in his chair.

Grab some paper and a Sharpie, write the words "[EBM] did this. You win, [EBM]."

Cut a small hole in the bag, put one end of the hose in there and made sure it was sealed.

Other end of the hose obviously went to the helium tank, sealed properly as well.

And then I put the bag over my head and wrapped a few rounds of duct tape around my neck to seal it there.

Opened the valve to the tank and took regular, calm breaths.

"Fuck you," I say.

Hours later, EBM gets in to work.

Strolls into the office and sees his door is shut.

"Who the fuck is in my office?" he asks, turning the knob and pushing the door open.

"JESUS CHRIST!"

Yeah...

It's time for me to quit.

Notification scheduled for delivery to site lead at 0900, and I've removed the reminder to stop it.

I'd say it's been fun, but...

It really fucking hasn't.

But ultimately decided better about it.

The TLDR: it was a way that hopefully would end in me being a martyr and EBM leaving.

Or at least shaken.

So yesterday, the plan was—and maybe still is—to submit my notice.

Except fwend reached out last night telling me that I shouldn't.

I can't.

So there's at least a couple people that either want or need me around here.

Which is touching.

But.

When it comes down to it, that's not enough.

Not in the face of plans to self-terminate.

Ultimately, the fact is that nobody needs me here, and EBM doesn't want any of the process folk here.

Except Suze.

EBM had come over and asked one of the other process folk a question.

And it seemed to be going pretty well until...

"I know what it's for! I just..."

And then he huffed off in his typical EBM manchild hissy fit kinda way.

"When does Suze get back?" he asked someone else.

"Tomorrow."

"Thank fucking God," he said.

Two things:

Fuck you, you goddamn baby.

But also:

We literally have an app that tells you when she's getting back.

Maybe if you checked your own shit, you wouldn't be so fucking clueless.

Across so many fucking domains.

Stupid asshole thinks that because he (allegedly) got some kinda CS degree that he's some kinda genius?

No, asshole.

That means you're just smart enough to be dangerous.

Like a fucking toddler that just found its birthers' gun.

Fucking.

Christ.

I've decided to redirect my notice to fwend for three hours to give her a chance to convince me it's the wrong idea.

But I verified my pension and disability last night and was surprised to find that because of what I'm guessing are COLA adjustments, they're both now totaling $5,000.

It's not enough to be rich, but it's enough to cover the expenses I need to survive with my wife and pets.

And yeah: I only discovered it because I normally don't check financial shit unless I feel it's important.

And this is pretty damn important.

$5,000 from those compared with $4,400 from this job... yeah, it's not worth it.

Because I'd take a pretty substantial paycut to remove the EBM tumor from my life.

Pending some massive shift in my brain chemistry over the weekend and/or a pay raise in this upcoming paycheck...

I'm putting in my two-week notice on Monday.

Boss man—whom recently got a neat new moniker of EBM, or Evil Boss Man—came around the corner.

"Oi!" he yelled. "Who's the process people on [project]? I wanna have a quick sitdown and discussion about it just to make sure we're on the same page."

And so I got roped into it with Jen, our newest process person.

Because somehow, I think she somehow became my ward, and now I get to supervise the work she does.

And though I'm more than happy to help her—or anyone—I'm loathe to sit in another meeting with EBM.

Meeting kicked off, and he asked a bunch of questions that I didn't know the answers to because it's not my fucking project.

And after a mostly alright meeting, he wrapped it up with, "I'm confused how the process people don't know what the MVP is."

Motherfucking

Broh.

So we had the way ahead for the project and we came back to our stations.

And FNG dev was gushing about how he managed to get a UI element to refresh every minute.

EBM was walking by and started gobbling that knob so hard.

"Wow," he said. "That's really fucking cool!"

And after a lot more unnecessary praise was dumped on FNG, EBM said, "That's not right."

"Well that's how the story was written."

"Well whoever wrote that is wrong," EBM said. "But thank you for doing that. That's awesome."

What the fuck.

Yeah, EBM is clearly a twisted asshole that doesn't want any of the process folk here anymore.

We're pretty much just support staff for Suze, and I'm done doing that.

Not remotely looking forward to losing the income this place provides, but I think it'll be nicely offset by the lack of anxiety.

Even just told my wife:

That dude is increasingly making me want to kill myself. Just so I can have a note that places the blame squarely on him.

What an absolute toxic waste dump of a human being.

...Knock on wood.

No meetings as of yet for today or the rest of the week, and really the only thing pending is a potential demo to boss man tomorrow for the project I've been assigned to for the past year.

If there really is a God, boss man won't be a complete asshole and will deem it as good enough.

Though I won't count on it.

Because he is an asshole, and it's one of the things he excels at.

Had a meeting yesterday where Rowdy was involved, and he got super pissy because, and I quote, "I don't have time for this shit."

But the thing is...

He really does have time for that shit.

But instead of spending it on actual work, he spends half of it outside smoking.

So if your eight-hour work day is cut down to only four, then yeah... technically you don't have the time, but...

But...

You could always not go outside for half an hour every hour.

He also got pissy about ADO, when Jake started asking if we were going to stop the current sprint and instead focus on bugs.

"And this is why I fucking hate ADO," Rowdy said. "If you get stuff done, you get stuff done. If you don't, you don't. Nobody is tracking our metrics."

...But maybe we should.

Because the real reason Rowdy hates ADO is because it keeps people accountable.

And he dosn't like that.

Because accountability is the enemy of the lazy and incompetent.

Not that Rowdy is completely incompetent...

Just that he's almost completely lazy.

That's really all I've got.

Yesterday wasn't terrible, but not great.

It just...

Was.

Nightmare Gaggle™ was relatively standard, though boss man wasn't as aggressive as he normally is.

But then he closed the meeting by... it's hard to fully capture how it went down, but...

As he was standing up, he slowed and said, "This is... fine. ...We'll just leave it at that."

And went to his office.

For whatever reasons, those particular words in that particular tone were the final straw that broke my brain.

I went to his office and asked him what he'd meant by "this is fine".

"What the fuck are you talking about?" he asked. "I don't remember saying that."

"You said it five minutes ago at the end of the meeting. I'm just trying to figure out what that meant and what we could be doing better."

"You guys just write things down," he said. "You don't exercise critical thinking, which I expect from my process people."

Which is absolute horse shit.

Because we absolutely do critically think about things; we've just been quick on the uptake that nothing we say is ever correct.

At best, we get a "I disagree, but to your point..."

"But to your point..."

"To your point..."

I fucking hate those words.

And all because of that man.

Told fwend and Suze about what he'd said.

Fwend was unsurprised.

Suze was... I guess... defeated? She asked if he'd given any examples.

And he had given an example: a particularly technical project that's well beyond the scope of process analysis.

I brought up my concerns to him about it and he finally fucking agreed that it's way too technical for our folks to figure out.

"And maybe it's not a process issue," he said. "Maybe it just needs time."

Just needs time.

This, I think, is a large part of what's contributing to his anger issues.

So many of the projects we have in this office take a lot of time.

A lot.

And though I can understand his dismay with it, I can also confidently say:

I wasn't here eighteen months ago.

And regardless, it's not my fault nor anyone else's in my row that things take as long as they do.

We gather requirements and write user stories.

We don't do the heavy lifting.

So maybe...

Just maybe...

If you're angry things are taking so long, start cracking down on your developer and database leads to do their fucking job and actually fucking lead.

A Lead Software Engineer oversees software projects from start to finish, balancing hands-on coding with team leadership, project planning, and technical design. Key responsibilities include defining software architecture, mentoring junior engineers, reviewing code, ensuring quality and adherence to standards, and collaborating with stakeholders to align technical solutions with business goals. This role requires a strong combination of technical expertise, strategic thinking, and soft skills like leadership and communication.

Yeah, okay.

Wouldn't guess it to see this particular lead and his way of doing things.

But then maybe another reason shit takes so long is because each of the leads has their own way of wasting time.

One of them goes on half hour smoke breaks every hour. So out of an (maybe) eight hour work day, he's actually working four hours.

If that.

Because they both have chronic socialization issues which eats away even more time.

And the other one, by the way, takes walks outside every hour or so, that typically span from fifteen minutes to nearly half an hour.

Fucking... fuck.

• Urgency
• Initiative
• Decisiveness
• Socialization

Those are the four things that I picked up on as weaknesses at my last command.

And they're sure as fuck present at this place.