In an extremely unexpected development, Lisa and I were asked to interview a replacement HelpDesk/FoxPro person today. It turns out that the contractor guy that we thought was a shoe-in for a permanent position as the resident company FoxPro developer at WonkaTech, has quit.

He was certainly acting like he was an employee rather than “just” a contractor. I think I’ve written before about the “tiers of worker superiority” that exists at WonkaTech. I’m sure it’s not a unique thing, but we work in an IT department where contractors are the lowest of the low… and employees tend to “lord it” over the contractors.

Anyway, this guy – let’s call him “Dave” – was doing a lot of meetings and posturing but not much actual work, which is always frustrating when they’re supposed to be looking after certain projects.

Anyway, Lisa and are on vacation for nearly 3 weeks shortly, so it was a bit of a last-minute panic to check out this new candidate.

It turns out that she’s fine, kind of self-taught but smart and keen and we think she’ll do just fine if she gets the right kind of mentoring. We’ll have about 4 days next week to kick start her into the job, if Dave doesn’t get in the way.