Cillan’s sacrifice

Fairies and Baboons

“They are freakin’ insane!”

Cillan sat on the uncomfortable visiting chair in her boss’s office. She was certain that Ragnar, who looked indifferently at her and tried to appear uninterested, placed that chair there only in order to be off with his visitors, who only disturbed him in his important job, which, if she knew anything about it, was half made up of surfing through Aftonladet’s sports site, and the other half in Expressen’s¹.

“They keep complaining about each other all the time, both teams. I have tried explaining to them that they are two halves of the same project, but they refuse to listen! What can I do?”

Ragnar clicked randomly on the keyboard that lay in front of him in order to mark that Cillan’s daily complaining quota was consumed, and that she should now leave his office and let him continue wasting his time until three o’clock, when he no longer endured surfing and instead usually went home. He cared no longer coming up with any excuses. “Try to open up a bit, Cecilia”, he said. “You are a good project leader. Surely you can find some solution if you just put your mind to it. Now, go out and play!”

“A group project manager like me does not end up in this role if they can’t say the right words at the right time”, thought Ragnar. “I am so good at what I do! Cillan looked actually really inspired, didn’t she?”

“What a worthless boss I have”, thought Cillan. “How did he end up in this role anyway? Is it so that they couldn’t find a place where he could cause less damage to the company?”

She went back to her cubicle, which was positioned in the middle of the open plan office. From her chair she could see both of the teams she was responsible for, despite the barricades they raised in front of them. Formally, they said they needed those whiteboards to be able to sketch together and stick their post-it notes on them, but Cillan knew that their real goal was to build their respective mini forts, inside which they could gang up and trash-talk about the other team.

To the left sat the Fairies, who developed the user interface, or front-end developers as they were called. The team’s official name was DEV-FE3, but with time, and with the other team’s insinuations that such job was slightly feminine, they began calling them Fairies². To the right were the Baboons, who to begin with were named DEV-BE3, and were working on back-end development. The Fairies extracted the “back” part in the team’s description and started calling them Baboons because of the latter’s famous back sides. Both teams hated their names and the other team.

Bowling

Cillan woke up in the morning with the word “bowling” on her lips. When she went to bed the night before she couldn’t possibly fall asleep. She lay there and thought about the meeting with Ragnar and tried telling herself that her boss was perhaps totally incompetent, but he was right about one thing: she was a good project leader, and she could find a solution. If she could only come up with how.

In the end sleep came, together with a lot of strange dreams. But when the alarm clock rang in the morning she had found the solution: she will take the sworn enemies to the bowling hall, where they will play in mixed teams and weld together. This couldn’t possibly go wrong.

Cillan e-mailed both team members and told them about her plan. On Thursday they will join for a common activity and even if attendance wasn’t mandatory, it would be very pleasant if everybody could join. She also promised a gruesome death to anyone who came with weak excuses, just to be on the safe side.

Cillan wore her most secretive face to both teams’ morning meetings and when asked about what will happen on Thursday simply answered that only time will tell. Both teams expressed mute anticipation towards the activity, mixed with a hope that it would not involve excessive socialization with their arch-enemy.

The bowling was, obviously, a veritable disaster. The teams refused to mix up, so much so that a few people threaten to go home if they would be forced to share a lane with the others. Finally, Cillan gave up and stopped trying to blend Fairies with Baboons. “Now begins all the fun”, she thought, “they will mock each other and laugh at the misses.” In reality, it was worse. Both teams totally ignored each other and played and enjoyed themselves separately. “Try to open up a bit, Cecilia”, said Cillan to herself in her boss’s nasal voice.. “Surely you can find some solution”. What a great solution, she thought ironically. I will probably get the Nobel price for it. Oslo, here I come.

Whining

“This might be the tenth time they change the requirements. Sometimes it feels like they do so only to screw with us”. Cillan sat at the morning meeting together with the Baboons and listened to the familiar grumbling. This time, it was Lasse’s turn. Cillan wondered if they actually kept a hidden list somewhere, in which it was determined who’s turn it was to complain every day. The others agreed: “perhaps we should find out how many times they change their mind every time and calculate the odds before the next round”, suggested David. “Or play requirement bingo”, Linda joked. They all laughed together bitterly.

Lasse, David, Linda and Mats constituted the Baboons whining team. They were banded together, skillful and sour. Cillan thrived in their company. Though it was a bit challenging not to let herself get carried away with their sarcasm and thus consider that life was miserable like they pretended it was. Spend enough time with them, and you get the feeling that the end of the world was so close that you could relax and laugh at your fate. On the wall they hung an A3 page proclaiming “Carpe Diem — life is too short”. But Cillan thought sometimes that she had probably already carped enough of diem and spent too much time with them. What if they could once in a while stop complaining.

Later, it was the Fairies turn. “I don’t get how hard it can be for them to understand such simple requirements like the ones we give them”, whined Mimmi, the unofficial leader. The rest agreed — Jonatan, Dilba and Roger nodded. Mimmi felt wind filling her sails and continued. “Earlier, when we had joined meetings and explained to them how we wanted the interface to be like, they understood nothing. They couldn’t simply hang on, the poor souls. But this is why we started using the requirement system. There, everything would be explained in detail and they wouldn’t have to strain their small brains, and instead simply follow the instructions. Apparently this was also too hard for them. The Baboons are in need of help, clearly” she concluded. “Especially that David”, said Jonatan. He got up and pretended to be confused and took some disoriented steps before he crashed into an invisible wall and collapsed theatrically. The Fairies giggled cheerfully over the dramatic show. Cillan tried restraining her laughter. She did not know how to reply to those hollow accusations, and was too tired to repeat what she had already said so many times before: that they needed to cooperate better, that they were two halves of the same project. She simply couldn’t muster it.

She liked the Fairies a lot. They were creative and constructed beautiful web sites. She felt inspired when discussing different design ideas together with them. But they were also self-righteous, and had a hard time accepting other people’s suggestions, or even listening to them.

What am I going to do, wondered Cillan and decided to skip the meeting with Ragnar. He was not going to notice she didn’t show up in his office today anyway. He was probably too occupied surfing in any case.

Blood

The weekend arrived and Cillan felt she had to detach herself from work. She tried finding activities that had as little as possible to do with brawling teams and incompetent bosses. Thus she went to the swimming hall and crawled among old ladies who swam in circles and kids who dived in from the pool edge. Finally she got quite frustrated since she could not get any flow in her training and instead took a brisk shower and then went home. In order to avoid thinking about work she decided on a take-away pizza and a Dexter marathon. She loved that show. There was something about this mass-murderer that she really liked. Sure, he killed all of those poor people, and yeah, you should not do that, but still, they got to pay for their crimes, and Dexter was so pleasant and explained to them patiently how thing stood before he cold-bloodedly sent them to hell.

After three or four episodes Cillan became sleepy, and the dreams blended themselves with the pictures on her screen. Ragnar was laying on a bunk with his hands tied with handcuffs on the sides. Dexter waved a very long and sharp knife in front of his face and talked with him in his mild tone: “how would it sound like to you, if your boss ignored you and told you to go out and play when you tried explaining that you’re having difficult problems with your developer teams? Do you understand how frustrating it could be?” Sweat ran along Ragnar’s face who understood that the end was near. He knew not what to say but tried anyway. “Sorry”, he whined, “but I don’t know how to act as a good boss. I ended up there by mistake. I’m going to resign and become a plumber instead.” Dexter shook his head. “That’s what they all say. I wish I could believe you Ragnar, but unfortunately I don’t.”

The chasm

On Sunday, Cillan visited her mom, who lived just a few streets away, but who Cillan didn’t call on too often. Not if she had enough food in her fridge, anyway. She had her mom in an appropriate distance, she used to think.

Her mother had always a lot of food in her fridge, her floor was always vacuum-cleaned and the cats always well groomed. How did the old one manage that anyway, wondered Cillan. She wasn’t especially old, actually. Recently retired. And the floor was always clean even before that. There was something about that generation perhaps, she thought. They kept track of things. Cillan decided to consult her mom about her job. She thought though that it would be best to leave out the technical details, in order to avoid having to explain each and every one of them.

“There are two teams, like, and they each do their thing, but the first team is like dependent on the other team’s services, like”, she explained. Her mother understood nothing and only noticed the unimportant facts. “Could you stop saying ‘like’ every third word, Cecillia? And what do you mean by services, anyway? Do the first group wash the other group’s clothes? I always thought you should find a real job instead. Remember when you were little you wanted to be a dental hygienist?” “I hate dentists, mom!” said Cillan “and I actually earn quite a good salary at my job and enjoy it quite well, thank you for asking”, she continued and finished with a loud “LIKE”. “Don’t get yourself so worked out, dear”, said the old one. “So they are fighting with each other, these two teams, as you call them?” “Yes, they are called teams. It’s quite a new word in Swedish, which had emerged merely fifty years ago, so it might sound a bit strange to those who have been around for a while now. In any case those two teams have stopped communicating and only speak wickedly about each other. I have tried getting them to see that they must work with each other, but it doesn’t help. I don’t know how to solve this!”

Cillan explained and explained. About the morning meetings, about Ragnar, about the bowling and about Jonatan’s theatrical display. In the end her mom said that that personal attack sounded a bit too strange. “It sounds like in kindergarten, when a boy pulls the hair of a girl he likes”, she said. Cillan became bewildered. “Do you mean that there is a thing going on between Jonatan and David, and that’s why he…?” “I mean nothing, Cecillia” said her mother, “I’m just saying that when you were in kindergarten then…” “no thanks, no more such stories” cut Cillan in. “Now I have to get home and think things through.”

Cillan could not fall asleep this night either, but instead lay awake and thought about what her mom said. The thoughts ran around her head like ghosts who were hunted by Pacman who just dined an a large capsule and now yearned for some ghostly supper. She wondered if it really could be true: did Jonatan really yank on David’s braid? But they seemed to hate each other! They belonged to opposing teams!

And then it hit her: Romeo and Juliet, West side story, Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter³ and now Fairy-Jonatan and Baboon-David.

She must solve this team conflict for these lovers’ sake. She must conjure away this hellish chasm before someone drinks a deadly potion or starts shooting with revolvers.

Germany

From somewhere, the theme music from Mission: Impossible was playing. Cillan was uncertain of where the notes were coming from. A man went slowly past her but suddenly turned around dramatically and looked at her without blinking. It was Tom Cruise. He said: “your mission, Cillan, should you choose to accept it, is…” “What the hell”, thought Cillan, “is Tompa⁴ also going to tell me what to do now?” “No no”, explained the agent, “that’s not what I meant. Your mission is to answer your phone!”

Cillan woke up confused and realized that her mobile phone was ringing. It said “Mom” on the display. She remembered that she used the film theme music as a ringtone when her mom was calling, since it reminded her in some intricate way about her relation with her.

“Germany” said her mother. “What time is it?” answered Cillan. “In the war”, continued her mom. “Tom Cruise said I must answer the phone”, observed the daughter. “Quarter past one. I think you should hear this, Cecilia, otherwise I wouldn’t have called you so late. But I had a rough time trying to sleep after our talk”, informed her mother. “What on earth are you bubbling about?”, wondered Cillan. “You are bubbling quite skillfully yourself”, said the mom and continued. “The Soviet Union and the US. They were sworn enemies before the war.” “Were they?” asked the daughter. “Yes, and after it also. But during the war they actually cooperated. Do you know why, Cecilia?” — “Because you woke them up in the middle of the night and asked strange questions mom?” “Wrong. Because they had a common enemy in form of nazi Germany. Are you awake?” “Thanks mom. I’ll think about it. Good night” finished Cillan and hung up the phone.

“Must find me a Germany” she thought while falling asleep again.

Finding an enemy

Ragnar, perhaps, thought Cillan conspiratorially. It was Monday morning and she sat at her cubical in the open plan office and tried establishing some kind of a strategy and select a candidate for a mutual enemy who would unite the fairies and the baboons and make them collaborate towards a common goal.

But Ragnar was a bad match, she thought. No one cared about him or listened to him either. She wondered if any of the team members even knew what his name was or which role he occupied. A bad candidate in other words.

Tech support? They were actually good candidates when she thought about it. They always made too much fuss when one talked to them if one had a broken mouse or too few monitors. They would always reply with something like “come back after lunch” or “we need to order these first, perhaps next Thursday?” — if they could be found, that is. Or if they needed one’s manager’s signature before ordering gadgets, which was probably a legitimate request, if one had a boss who actually cared about stuff, and not a Ragnar. But on the other hand, the last thing one wanted was to end up on their black list. It would then be impossible to get any support whatsoever, even if one would try to bribe them with cinnamon buns and soft drinks. Rather, one should look for a better candidate for a common enemy, one who you could actually manage your life without.

Platform? The DBAs? The architects? Requirements? None of those were a good fit. Either one did not care about them or could not manage without them. Hmm, thought Cillan. Now that was tricky.

But an evil thought started creeping into her mind, and began taking form. She began realizing that the answer to the question was inevitable, like the feeling one gets when playing Monopoly and standing at Stureplan and realizing that one’s rivals have built scary-looking hotels in each green street, including the extremely lavish Diplomatstaden, as well as four houses in both blues: Centrum and Norrmalmstorg, who both guaranteed their visitors a devastating bankruptcy⁵. She realized that the evil enemy must be herself. No one else was qualified for the job.

In the morning meeting with the Fairies, Cillan put on her most annoyed face, shortened the planned deadline by a week and demanded that each of the team members would account for exactly what they did yesterday, which assignments they would take today, as well as which problems they might have encountered and how they intended to solve them. The otherwise quite laid-back Fairies became utterly stressed by the interrogation and wondered if the project leader might have suffered from an extra troublesome PMS. The same treatment was applied to the Baboons, who became really scared and mumbled awkwardly when they suddenly realized that they could no longer hide behind narratives like “I surfed a little yesterday and got some nice inspiration for the meeting next week”. In some manner they understood that their slackness had come to an end. Now it was time to come up with some really persuasive accounts of their handlings. For the first time Cillan realized how scary she could look like when she was angry.

Time went by. Cillan decided to be annoying, but not in Ragnar’s way. She thought that if there was a scale between indifference, in which her boss sat and surfed aimlessly, and manic control freakness, then she could may as well be on the latter’s side. She had heard rumors about “management-by-fear”, but never had a chance to exercise it. What a great opportunity for some experimentation, she thought.

After a couple of weeks’ tyranny, Cillan announced that the morning meetings will thereafter be held commonly for both teams and whoever has issues with the arrangement could proclaim so for the rest of the project members and explain why this was a bad idea and propose a better solution. She said all that with such a scary tone and blazing eyes that no one even considered mouthing a beep against her suggestion.

Cillan believed in two scenarios: either the anxious developers would become more introvert and sit and quiver in their respective corners, or they would try to find comfort with each other, which was what she thought would lead to solving their cooperation problem. The way to the other alternative, she concluded, went through increased terror.

By discreetly spreading diverse documents in different locations in the office and as a few e-mail messages happened to end-up at certain project members e-mail boxes by mistake, Cillan managed to spread wicked rumors that the teams would go back to using old and obsolete technology that she knew the developers hated more than anything in the whole wide world. The final touch, which the project leader thought would break the poor crowed’s defense, was to introduce a certain office dress codes that the developers must follow. No more t-shirts were accepted and sneakers must be left at home.

All that was left now was to sit and wait, thought Cillan.

Waiting

The atmosphere in the open office plan became decisively different. Few talked to each other and when they did so it was in whispered voices. Apart from the satisfaction that Cillan felt, partly because she knew she could not back down from her plan now and partly because she realized she might have a tiny, repressed sadistic aspect, she felt some anguish and pitied the poor souls she had so brutally abused. More than once she felt an urge to call everybody and tell them it was all just a game and that she was still the same happy and funny Cillan who worked with them during the whole time. But the time for that had not come yet, she thought. Cooperation was around the corner — just wait a little longer. Then they could all be friends again.

After a few more days she noticed that the developers started gathering themselves in different constellations they were not used to. Now it is happening, thought Cillan. The moment she’d waited for had arrived. But a side-effect of her annoying actions was that the team members simply stopped talking to her, other than when they were utterly forced to. Cillan began to feel like an outsider, as if the whole project was developed somewhere else, and not right there, in front of her. At the meetings the developers said typical things they thought the project leader would like to hear. She began to feel like she was loosing her grip. Time to tie the knot and disclose the whole story, thought Cillan. Enough is enough.

She decided to reveal everything in the morning meeting the next day. She hoped that the developers would laugh and feel like the whole thing was just a big joke and that everything would return to the way things were before, except for the rivalry which will be all gone. I wish I wish I wish, said Cillan to herself. Tomorrow all will be over.

In the morning lay a mystical atmosphere over the office. The team members all sat and waited for her in the conference room when she arrived, and she could see that they actually talked to each other: Mimmi and Linda, Mats and Dilba, Jonatan and David. All sat and whispered to each other as if by old habit. Cillan felt that her mouth’s edges were starting to point upwards after have pointed downwards for what felt like forever. Now it was time to disclose some well-hidden secrets. She took a deep breath and prepared to…but suddenly a knock came at the door and someone came in without waiting for an answer. It was Ragnar. He said he didn’t want to interfere with the morning meeting but that he had some urgent words to exchange with the project leader. In his office.

“Three developers came to me”, said Ragnar, “and said they represented all of the members in both teams. They said that they had a rough time working with you. I said I didn’t understand what could be wrong, that you were a skillful project leader and so on, but they insisted. They threatened to resign, down to the last developer, if they had to work under your command. What have you done to them Cillan?”

Cillan was dumbfounded, and felt like Eurydice who just saw her husband turn around to watch her despite the prohibition. She realized that her boss was still talking, and reeled out words like “another role in the company” and “demotion” but she didn’t care. She took a piece of paper and wrote “I, Cecillia Lindqvist, hereby resign from my post and would like to express my thanks for the chances I had to work with all of the skillful colleagues I had the pleasure to meet. Thanks and goodbye, Cillan”. She handed the note to Ragnar and ran out the door and went straight home.

In the evening she went home to her mom to cry a little and to get something to eat. Her mother tried comforting her and told her she was the one to blame. Cillan agreed.

Suddenly her phone rang. Cillan looked and saw that it was an e-mail message and that it consisted of one word and was signed by two names. That’s what it said:

Thanks,

David and Jonatan

[1] Aftonladet and Expressen are Swedish tabloids.

[2] Fe is Swedish for a fairy.

[3] Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter (Ronja Rövardotter) is a children’s book by Astrid Lindgren about two rival families who live on different sides of a chasm and about the kids in each of those family who… ok, no more spoilers.

[4] Tompa is for some reason a Swedish nickname for all Toms, and especially for Tom Cruise.

[5] Stureplan is the last yellow street in the Swedish monopoly board, followed by the greens, of which the last and most expensive one is Diplomatstaden, and the blues, Centrum and Norrmalmstorg.