Too much testosterone

If I go deaf shortly, it will be because I am the only woman in our little band of wandering engineers. When we're housed with everyone else though I rarely notice this little fact because there are all sorts of other women in the company, so you can wander the halls and see cute shoes or a neat new skirt or just hear a friendly female voice. Frankly, I almost never actually do this, but I am beginning to realize that I benefitted simply from knowing the option was there.

Most days I listen to my iPod at a volume that is low enough that I still hear all the conversations going on in the hall and offices immediately adjoining mine. There are two reasons for this - first, I'd like to put off going deaf for as many years as I can (I actually suspect that I will at some point go deaf. My parents are both starting to have hearing issues (that they vehemently deny) and honestly, I've had dreams (not in the aspiration category of dreams but actual sleeping at night dreams) about being deaf my entire life. It just feels inevitable) and second, if you aren't semi-tuned-in to those conversations you get volunteered for things and miss your opportunity to explain why you're not the best fit for that particular task. (Generally speaking you always want to not be the best fit, because these tasks most likely are thankless and doomed.)

Lately I'm finding that the iPod get clicked a little louder...then a little louder...then a little louder as the day progresses. Pokey (who is now housed directly to my left) seems to be on a "prove I'm a studly, worthwhile employee" kick of late. I think this has gone up in direct proportion to the number of wildly visible mistakes he's been making and, more than likely, he's feeling insecure. So I get to hear Pokey going on and on about how much he knows and how he read such and such and it said this and the other and how when he worked at XYZ he used to do a, b and c and it was so much better and this new research is crap but that he goes to school to stay on top of things and so on and so forth. The thing is, most of what he says is also not quite true - like someone who read A Tale of Two Cities and got the fact that it was about the French Revolution but thought that it was really just a diatribe in support of the guillotine as a humane mechanism of execution. And then he turns around when the next thing is messed up and tries to say that I'm the one that made the error. (Generally this doesn't fly as they know that I spend huge portions of my day fixing his stuff, but the fact that he continues to throw me under the bus given the opportunity makes me realize that one of these days it's probably going to stick and I'll end up screwed because he's worthless as an engineer.)

If for some bizarro reason Pokey is actually keeping his trap shut, Dwight on my right is bemoaning all the responsibilities he has and how he wishes he didn't have to go to all these meetings so he could get work done. But if you offer to help out there's nothing he could possibly delegate or offload because it's all so important that it just has to be done by him and - big sigh - he guesses he'll just have to put in longer hours. So I'm guessing it just makes him feel important. (Sometimes he will share - he looks for things that are either thankless or doomed, preferably both, and is happy to offload those on me - and it's always me, never Pokey. I choose to believe this is because he realizes Pokey would just mess it up further. I'm fairly certain that's a delusion on my part, but it makes me feel better.)

And if Dwight is keeping quiet, then it's our manager going on in his geeky, almost socially inept way about this great idea he has for something we should do and we'll go ahead and start it and then when we're finished we'll show the customer and they'll love it - insert chest-thumping ritual as he-man, master of grand ideas is unveiled. This inevitably leads to dog and pony shows the likes of which I had to give yesterday, the final result of which was the customer essentially saying, "Hm. I'm allergic to dogs and really dislike farm animals. Why don't we rethink this and get some user focus groups together and develop real requirements and start over from there." Then the manager chimes in that oh that's a great idea and this was really just done to demonstrate capabilities. And the net result from my point of view is that I just wasted a ton of time developing something that will never see the light of day. And while I understand that sometimes that's the name of the game, when it's consistently the only game you play, it just gets old and demotivating.

Consequently, my iPod is now cranked up to a level that all background noise is removed and I can float along in my happy little musical bubble. At least for as long as I can still hear.

Did you say something?