My (ex)Colleagues

I had my fair share of weird colleagues from the past 4-5 companies that I worked for but none of them will trump or even come close to the ones that I'm going to share with you about. For obvious reasons, real name of all person described here will be withheld to protect the identities of these folks.

a) Feisty Salesman (Account Manager)

Yeah, this is one feisty lady to be working with, you wouldn’t want to be on the other side of the table when she sets her crosshair on you, she really likes to argue and she argues a LOT! She will argue everything there is to argue for, from my point of view she's way too competitive and I do mean it negatively. She's a headache to manage and to work with, detrimental to team motivation, she doesn’t listen to advices and would rather act based on instincts rather than based on cold hard facts. She will seek for assistance if she's already knee deep into trouble. She doesn't follow team instructions but will act according to her own intuition which is propelled by her own self interests. She was asked to leave not too long ago, who needs enemies if you have friends like this?

b) Bimbohead (Account Manager)

She likes to brag about her past success, whether it is the truth or not is an entirely different matter. She never failed to mention that, once upon a time not too long ago, she managed to clinch a deal worth millions of dollars, which turns out to be about 200K or so. What struck me dumbfounded is the fact that she can't articulate the products that she's selling. Conveying the message of a product benefits is one thing but to completely fail to differentiate between storage array and tape library is simply unacceptable. She even requested my assistance to design a disaster recovery solution using Documentum and Captiva, how miserable is that? She’s a total nightmare to all system/solution consultants alike,  every meeting and discussion will be dragged 2-3 hours because of all the crap that keeps spewing out from her mouth.  Whenever a customer asked why should we buy this particular storage model, she will reply with "because our company is a EMC Velocity Partner", this type of answer may impress a person with an IQ of a 2 year old but it is completely off the mark and without any relevance to the question posted by customer.  She was asked to leave the company for failing to meet her quote much too the smile of all consultant. She only manages to close deals worth a pathetic 9k, not even 1% of her alleged past achievements.

c) Conniving Thief (System Consultant)

He will try his very best to impress you with his very well polished communication skills. He will go the extra mile to get you comfortable up to a point he is willing to reserve a parking space for you in front of our office which is very scarce and hard to get during office hours. Whenever we went out to lunch or late lunch session together, he will always brought up topic about his family matters and of course financial problems. He will talk about his family health problem, funerals and everything under the sun that requires him to fork out huge sum of money while expecting us to pay for his food bills. Everything that was told by him, if we were to believe it, will make even the saddest soap drama or telenovela looks pale in comparison. What sickens me is the fact he has 3 hand phones, Nokia e71, HTC Touch and Sony Eriksson and even bought a full HD LCD 32 inch TV from our CEO. The financial problem is largely due to lackadaisical attitude in managing his own finance; imagine at the middle of the month, he suggested having lunch at Tony Roma's. I'm flabbergasted by his suggestion, how could he suggested that while at the same time complaints about not having enough money to make ends meet? Imagine his wife dejected face if she learned that her husband is having 80++ lunch while she's staying at home eating leftovers. This is not even half of his problem, his real problem started when Feisty Salesman (refer above) lost her credit card and reported about that to the authorities and our company HR. Magically the card reappears when Feisty Salesman by chance inform Conniving Thief about it. Feisty Salesman became suspicious about it; she decided to embark upon CSI styled self investigation. She contacted her credit card company trying to discover where and when the card was used when it was reported stolen. It was utilized a couple of times throughout the duration that card was stolen, the first instance was at Shell Petrol Station and second one was at Pizza Hut One Utama. Of all people, Conniving Thief should have known that at every petrol station and at almost all up market Pizza Hut restaurants are installed with closed circuit TV. His picture and his family was recorded while enjoying their lunch at Pizza Hut, talk about getting caught with your pants down! This matter was brought to HR dept attention, but Feisty Salesman decided not to pursue her attention to get Conniving Thief sacked. His excuse when confronted about this was, his family badly wanted to eat Pizza Hut, my dear god!, how could've him uses stolen goods to feed his family?

His story doesn't end here, a couple of weeks back one of my other colleague hand phone was stolen when he left it unattended on his desk around 9 p.m. Guess who was in the office when it all happened? There are only 3 people in the office, the victim, the Conniving Thief and another Account Manager. What's your take on this? I for one will not jump into conclusion, but your guess is as good as mine. By the way, Conniving Thief is oblivious of the fact that every one in the whole company knew about his Pizza Hut ordeal, but no one confronted him as they couldn’t be bothered about him.  I used to hang out with him but not anymore, I've distanced my self from him after these incidents.

This is a guy who will be kind towards you but sooner or later he will ask for something in return

d) Good for Nothing Guy (Senior System Consultant)

This guy was appointed to be a Senior System Consultant based on his close relationship with some of the big bosses; I was not piqued enough to investigate this claim so I just dismissed it as a mere rumor.  I was quite relieved when somebody senior was hired so I can share my knowledge and hopefully learn new things from him.  It was a huge disappointment to know his level of knowledge doesn’t qualify him to be appointed as consultant let alone a senior system consultant. His work is constantly challenged by customers and questioned by our bosses, even our CEO in of their management meetings told my boss to get rid of him as he doesn’t bring any value to the company. After many months of complaints from customers, account managers and bosses, he finally decides to tender in his resignation citing his incompetence is the main reason. All of this not before numerous complaints by customers and principals consultant, he can’t even write proposal, produce BQ or design a solution without asking for sample of template. My final take and word is “Good Riddance!".

e) Mercenary (System Consultant)

This worth for nothing chap is simply the kind of guy who is only interested to render his service to the highest bidder and to push forward his own agenda and guess what?! I'm actually describing myself here! =)

Regards,

MARK