Alan’s head hunting

Alan had gone for a word with the boss this afternoon, which cleared up much of the to-ing and fro-ing that was going on regarding his non-existent job application. It turns out that Alan had been moaning about wanting to get a new job sometime soon, which was overheard by the Quality Assurance’s boss’s wife. She mentioned to Alex that there was a job advertised up on the sixth floor, to which Alan politely said “I might take a look”. She told him that he could apply, then he could always withdraw his application if he changed his mind. Then on the Monday they had the management meeting in which our boss asked QA’s boss how many people had applied for his vacancy. He told them ten, but they are expecting eleven. Then he became quite smug that they were going to poach Alan from us.

The boss from Quality Assurance on the sixth floor came round yesterday, showing some people from outside what goes on in our building. With my Team Leader being out he collars Alan to talk them through what we do. Alan is always very good at this, I always feel hassled doing this, in case I say the wrong thing or get too sarcastic that people can’t tell I’m joking.

Later in the afternoon Alan comes over for a chat and I ask him how he got on with them.
Apparently the QA boss had gone back later and asked why he hadn’t applied for the job on his section, after he had applied for a similar job many months before on a section his wife works on. The deadline for applications was yesterday, but Alan really wasn’t interested in working in that department. As I’ve said before, the sixth floor is a bit of a quiet place to work, but the QA section is worse than most. Whenever we have cause to go up there everyone has their head down working, no one is ever away from their desk and it just looks a really boring environment to work in. Coupled with the fact that it would have been a sideways move rather than a promotion, he decided it would be better to tell him that he is looking for a job outside the company now.

What I thought was odd was later on, our boss had come to see Alan and asked if he had put in for the job, and that they had been discussing him in a management meeting last week as a likely candidate. I’m not sure if our boss wanted him to go and move section (they haven’t always seen eye to eye on everything), or if he was concerned that he might loose Alan.

This morning though. The boss asked me if I knew what had been said between Alan and the boss of QA. I gave him a flippant answer saying that Alan told him his section was boring and he wasn’t interested in working for them. It sounded like the people who had applied for the job were unsuitable, less experienced staff, only looking for more money.

So when the deadline for applications had past and Alan hadn’t applied, it was our boss’s turn to be smug. They’re just like big kids really.