This week at work has been very informative. I’ve learned quite a bit about the goings-on behind the boardroom doors — other-side-of-the-office stuff — that’s got me both worried and excited.

To begin with: the list of people who are leaving grows —

• Ross
• Jim
• Joy
• Chuck
• Peter Dolina

And of course there’s the list of people who have already left:

• Micha
• Jill
• Connie (Asian QC woman who always listened to music in her headphones distressingly loudly)
• Paul
• Ann E.
• David J.
• Trish
• The American History I product manager
• The sociology content developer who lasted for about four days

Of course, the big shock on that list is Peter. And as might be expected at DLI, what’s being disseminated from the upper echelons as to why he’s actually leaving is vastly different from the reality of the situation. I talked to him at length yesterday about these things. Initially, I just wanted to talk to him about me moving to the tech side of the production line here and how his departure might change/halt that. He encouraged me to learn Visual Basic, get a Microsoft Certification for it, and then I could make — in his words — a minimum of $80,000 a year. That’s certainly a nice thought — better still is the idea that I would have a very marketable skill that would provide a certain degree of job security. I would know that even if DLI folds (and I really think it will), I have a decent chance of getting a job.

Peter didn’t just share with me a bit of career advice, though. He told me a little as to why he can’t stay at DLI. In short, he doesn’t agree with Layne and Bob as to how the company should be progressing. There are certain problems that need to be turned around — how Peter would go about turning these things around is fundamentally different as to how Layne and Bob will turn it around. He also mentioned that there are certain people whom he cannot work with. He said, “I cannot work with your vice president,” and he later talked about Val by name. Discussing my marketability were DLI to close, he said if I were MS certified I would have no problem getting another job. “Other people, like Val Rader — I don’t think so.” He also said that there are certain people who he doesn’t feel is helping the company at all, mentioning Celina by name.

Strange — those are the two people that Rob detested more than anyone else. I personally don’t feel particularly comfortable around them, but I bear no ill-will toward them. And I really can’t comment on how well they work. They seem to be good at firing people, though.

That wasn’t the only time Val’s name came up recently, though. When walking to work yesterday (or maybe it was Thursday) Chuck and I were talking and Chuck said that he and someone else (Joy?) had been together, talking about the fact that so many people are leaving. They’d all made that list — project managers in a meeting, with Val, Layne, and Bob making another list in some eight-hour marathon meeting — and Chuck said, “We left a few things off that list.” I asked him what those things were, and he said quickly, “Val, Kali, and Adam.”

(It’s funny — Joy said that we editors were going to hear something about this list at some point. That was two weeks ago. Nothing’s been said yet.)

Chuck went on to say that Val just doesn’t know how to deal with people. “I don’t think he’s intentionally malicious,” he explained, “but he just says stuff that’s not really appropriate.” He feels Val should have been fired with all the others that got the axe some time ago. I would say that Peter would agree.

None of us spoke about Kali, but Mary and I did — without naming names explicitly. She’s feeling rather upset because Kali and Adam poo-pooed the sociology text, saying it wasn’t good enough. Of course that makes her feel great since she’s the only one who’s been working on it and it’s equivalent to saying, “Your work is inadequate.” She told me that she’d gotten some help from Peter B. who’d corrected some things. Kali didn’t like those parts and changed it back to the way it was before. Never mind the content integrity issues that implies — it’s just very annoying that Kali always takes it upon herself to be the final authority. She can’t say, “I don’t like the way that’s phrased,” and simply leave it alone. Phrasing, voice — neither of these things really can be objectively defined as “wrong.” Even if someone says, “This is a more effective wording than that,” and even if it better for most readers, it doesn’t mean it’s objectively, unquestionably better.

It seems that our criterion for readability is, “Does Kali understand it.” That’s the first criterion. Second, “Does Adam understand it?” It doesn’t matter if everyone else understands it — if they don’t, it goes. This is what Mary and I talked about in coded terms. I hate to say it, but in some ways I don’t think Kali is the sharpest knife in the drawer. Well, maybe not that — she simply needs things explained in a very simple manner — baby steps, so to speak. She seems to assume that everyone else really needs that too.

Returning to the question of whether “Val, Kali, and Adam” should be included on that list of why people leave DLI, I do have a strong feeling that Kali (directly) and Adam (indirectly) had something to do with Paul’s leaving. Something? I think everything, really. His “And no, I won’t answer one more [explitive deleted] content question. Don’t EVEN ask!” in his last email seems to be a direct reference to the way editors were forced to badger him to death with content questions. Why was I always doing it? Because I knew that once Adam got it, he would be sending it back with those types of questions. I was just trying to save myself a lot of work later by getting as much of it done now as possible.

And then there was the last Friday he worked there, with Kali sitting at his desk, insisting that she sit at the keyboard — “I have to drive,” she laughed — and thinking aloud, reworking it there, asking Paul, “Is this okay?” I’ve sat through that — I know how painful it is, and I know how unintentionally demeaning it is.