Noobs

Work's been a big distraction of late. Hell, work's been a big distraction since early 2007. The little promotion-with-no-pay has eaten up time, that's for sure.

I forgot to mention that the team I'm on grew from the original 5 guys to 11 in total. Sadly, each addition has, in my opinion brought the quality of the team down just a little bit more.

The first "noob" to join the team has proven himself quite lazy and doesn't like working through things. When I ask him questions, I usually get stared at, so when it's a yes or no question, I go with the safe "no" from his stare. Not only lazy, but fat as sin! I know I'm not a bodybuilder/hunk-of-a-man, but when we'd run up to the top floor of the building to grab breakfast (5th floor to the 8th floor), we could run. He meets us there once the elevator arrives. That, and his desk chair's taken such a beating, it now moos whenever he leans back in it. The poor thing. It needs to be put out of its misery.

The second "noob" is someone I worked with before and he's fine. He's funnier than I recall, but I was on a team of 50 then, not 11. He gets into his work and stays there for the majority of the day.

The third and fourth "noobs" arrived on the same day, with ZERO experience. One is better than the other and can sit down and focus on work for hours at a time. Sadly, he really enjoys the company of Noob #1, so he can stray into the laziness from time-to-time. The other "noob" was someone I never paid much attention to before a few weeks back, but usually every day since, I find myself snapping at him. Usually, I snap after the 4th time I've repeated myself. There's been 2 occasions I've asked him a question and he's responded with a question of his own and I've said "Are you seriously asking me that?" I get the feeling he doesn't understand that I have years of experience over his weeks and sometimes it's best just to answer questions when asked.

The fifth and sixth "noobs" arrived while I was on vacation. I didn't know one of them was on our team for a week as he never spoke to me. It took a while, but I discovered he doesn't speak to anyone unless spoken to first, so he totally doesn't fit with the rest of the team. The final "noob" seems friendly enough and has some previous experience, which helps, but he's not an efficient worker. Sadly, I can see his monitor most of the day and he's usually got some casual game running for "distraction." Not good. We don't have time for distractions.

And I don't have time for noobs.