Division By Subtraction

So last week, a co-worker (who we shall call "D") announced that he was taking another job. Things didn't work out with management in his negotiations for a raise, and in the current negative-employment market he jumped at one of the several offers that quickly came his way.

I've only been with the company for just under a year, but "D" was one of the first people who introduced himself to me. He shared a few jokes, and it became evident during my next few days there that he was the life of the party, beloved by all.

He always had great input when we would try to decide where to go for lunch. He would even drive sometimes. "D" would liven up our meetings with cute geek-oriented puns. He was pretty good at CounterStrike, but not quite good enough that we would hate to play with him.

One time he helped push my car out of the snow.

Thursday was his last day. Friday morning was accompanied by a feeling of emptiness, of loneliness, even despair. We were infuriated with management. How could they have let him go? Surely we had the resources to keep him happy? How would we go on, knowing that we had lost someone so irreplaceable? If they treated "D" that way, what about the rest of the employees? Action must be taken. The battle lines were drawn. It was a travesty.

And then we looked at his "work".

After pulling ourselves together emotionally, we began to review "D"'s code, in order to plan out how to continue on his projects. It was clear within minutes that it was garbage. Our tender feelings for "D" disappeared, and by the end of the day, we were rejoicing that he had left. Everything had to be scrapped, and we needed to start from scratch. We were puzzled. How could this have happened? Why hadn't anyone ever taken the time to actually look at his work? To look at the value that he provided (or didn't, in this case)? We had allowed ourselves to be fooled into thinking that such an insignificant player actually MEANT something to our team, and as a consequence had divided our company against itself.

Farewell, "D".