Yesterday we had our MS Project training downtown. It was actually rather well done, I thought. I know I learned a lot of things and I’m fairly sure everyone else did too. I think that since most of the project managers had been playing with Project before, they were familiar with some of the basics but I think yesterday’s class probably helped make some of their basic knowledge a little more grounded. I don’t know even if that makes any sense . . .
The truly interesting part of the day, though, came at the end when most all of us (excluding Mitch, the new religion project manager, and Teresa, the new American History project manager) went for drinks. The conversation turned, among other things, to Kali and how everyone felt when they found out she was leaving. Sonny said, “I was thrilled. Matt [Maslin] and I started dancing.” It turns out that Kali was quite disliked (or even hated) by a several of the project managers, including Armando. Sonny said that she was very harsh on all of the editors, especially Matt — and that she was even getting Matt set up to be fired. And that before Kali announced that she was leaving, Matt told Sonny, “After this upload, I’m out of here.” And that Sonny had interviewed at two other places and even had a job offer because she was sick of dealing with Kali. In Sonny’s opinion, Kali was an awful editor, a terrible manager, just generally power-hungry, and so on. She especially took exception to Kali’s tendency to re-write whole chunks of chapters. And I think Sonny was probably a little annoyed with how Kali would make CD’s sit down with her and help her as she re-wrote their stuff.
I believe Rob and I were the only ones who really had anything positive to say about her. He pointed out how she had stood up to Adam during the W-Civ1 upload a few months back concerning broadening the scope of things. And I said that I never really had any problems with her and that I felt as an editor she looked out for my interests. To which everyone responded, “Well, you were one of her favorites.” I guess I always knew that — she was always calling me over to fix her computer and such, but I never really thought of me being a favorite. I’ve never really been anyone’s “favorite,” at least not to my knowledge. I guess I don’t know what the signs of favoritism are when I’m the object of it.
The real surprise was to hear Sonny talk about how Matt was catching so much hell with Kali. According to Sonny, when he was called over to Kali’s cube he referred to it as his “bi-weekly dressing down.” I never really heard what was being said in those “meetings” but she had them with a lot of editors and I think that’s what she was referring to as “training.” She wanted everyone to be like her as far as editing goes.