It sounds like a success to me. You figured out who the azzhat was. I hope you got rid of him soon after this.
Hahahaha. They didn't, but he worked in another department and I'd never seen him before and made sure I never got any project he was anywhere near, thereafter. Hahaha.
Ahh the joys of big company mandatory team building events.
Little company ones are way better. We went to the bar and the nicest and best well-rounded DBA I've ever worked with was told as a total surprise that he was promoted to VP of Architecture last week. Well deserved and we all meant the applause he received.
Same thing when we asked for a round of applause for the PM who *volunteered* to organize and prioritize the IT ticket queue. That guy is a rock star and we've plowed through things I thought would never get a decision made ever, simply by him demanding one be made or kill the ticket forever. The backlog started disappearing when he interjected himself into the process and started telling people "no" when they'd try to derail us from "his" projects. They had to have a very good reason or he would tell them he would add it to our weekly priority shuffle meeting.
I tried to get that started when I was acting manager but got run over by politics. It's a lot easier for someone who has NO involvement at all in the process other than the process itself (he couldn't fix a server if his life depended on it) to say "no" because the person can't say, "oh you can just do this real quick and then get back to your 'little list'".
The chicken wings were good, too. Free chicken wings are always good. Even when they're bad. ;-)
Ironically it's a great time to be working at this place. The two of us "managerial types" got all the really scary bad practices stuff stopped and servers and gear up to some sort of standards over two years, and us being that busy highlighted the need for the PM to get in there and make folks make decisions on the rest of it, and we're clearing backlog stuff that's been ongoing for two years.
The irony is that I'm taking time off to go do some flying and told the new sysadmin that if he doesn't like his desk, he can use mine.
It was announced that the product I thought was a bit stalled on Marketing and Sales sold two entire States worth of government customers and the new Marketing girl is prepping for a big road show, too. And one of the other businesses snagged a big customer also, even though that one is painful on the IT side of the house. Good times.
As much as I'm deeply an Operations / Keep Crap Running and Make it Better kinda guy, I know in the end it's all about the bottom line and I'm happy to see the business starting to see some momentum.
If they start bringing in the idiots with dominoes and sending us to hotel conference rooms to set them up all day, I'm out! Hahaha. Keep taking us out for wings and beer (sadly I had to forego the free beer - I really want to stuff my fat ass into a glider later this summer, WITH a parachute!) and telling us sales are going well, I'm there.
Even if I'm only a part-timer for this summer.
