Cast Overview

A month has passed since my first day of work. I was told to give 2 weeks time observing the office, before devising my career plan for 2011.

Lots of things happened within this month, I foresee some very exciting office politics this year. Before dragging further, let me introduce you the cast with overview:

HR:
Our HR is now conversing more like a human.
She is also in charge of IT stuff now.
She no longer has the priviledge to force us to book flight through her, with her personal credit card which has points earned when book through AirAsia. The travelling stuff is now taken care by our travel agent entirely, and we are all allowed to contact the travel agent ourselves. People whose job requires them to travel are given a company credit card now. Mine is still pending, and the HR is taking her own sweet time.
I am happy to see the changes in HR, but I am still wary of her.

Finance:
Ms. AB, I never introduced her before in my blog. We do not have much interaction at work, but we both arrive at the office the earliest. She is still good at her job, but she is having a lot more overtime now. She is upset of Ms. Azreal's lack of competency and lack of support from the corporate finance team, which is located million miles away from us.

Sales:
Mr. Twoheadsnake is now in Sales. He is no longer hanging out with Azreal and HR. He is now trained personally by the new MD in Sales role. He is still bitter about my chance to go to USA. He still thinks pretty highly of himself.
Personally, I think sales suits him, because he is has the salesmen's calculative mind, good in manipulating people and has the engineer's cautious mind.

Mr. Decamouth still thinks that he is the MD's favourite. I also found that Decamouth has serious problem managing stuff. He has high ego, limited knowledge, but didn't want to admit that fact. He also doesn't know what he doesn't know. He is good in drawing smoke screens with what he knows, good in taking credits and good in playing the "I am the oh-so-pity-victim here." role.

Sales support:
Mr. Cockroach is now taking care of the order processing stuff. He has Azreal and Ms. Sulky report to him. He is still a Tai-Chi master, but getting more cautious now, by wanting double, triple back up for himself before taking any action. He is still devious as always. His delegation emails these days are harsher, especially when it has some technical/engineering work required. It almost sounded as if I did not want to support him at all, he is playing the "You all have to support me, or I will copy your boss in the loop. Or I will make you look bad." role.

Ms. Azreal is as busy body as usual. She is one of the order processing administrator. She is still making a lot of mistakes, learning very slowly, showing very little initiatives to take up tasks.

Ms. Sulky, I never introduced her before in my blog either. She works for the company for a long time, she is very responsible and very serious. She used to be our marketing personnel. She is as grumpy as always. She is now in sales order processing, and is extremely busy due to Azreal's lack of competency at her job, and Cockroach's lack of support.

Technical Support:
Mr. Porche, he is in charge of technical support and doing some sales too. Mr. Experience and myself report to him. He has changed to someone that I do not know anymore, he doesn't hold his stance as strong, and is changing his side rather often these days.

He is still professional at his technical role and still long-winded at his explanations. He is becoming more cynical, but he is forcing me to learn observing the office interactions and think of strategies to counter it.

Mr. Experience, he too, I never introduced him before in my blog. He works for the company for decades, he is now resuming his previous role, which is the site supervisor. He is still professional as usual, but I also realised that he is getting tired.

The boss:
He likes to make a lot of expressive noise to woo the sales guys (Decamouth and Twoheadsnake) who apparently likes it. He is also pretty cautious of me, but he doesn't like me to be formal with him. But I don't know how to be informal towards someone who are cautious of me.

He is like a slimy eel, one cannot pin him down to discuss a topic for more than 2 mins. He slips away and comes back to the topic as he likes, and slips away again. It is frustrating to communicate with him. But I feel that at least when he does not slip away, he listens.