Religious holidays should not impact software delivery deadlines

Hugh White-intimidated

The hue of   Hugh White's skin (Head of Diversity) was whiter than ever when he left our CEO's office today. To quote White, "I prefer the bullying any day of my wife, Comrade Ludmilla White (nee Khrushchev), to the bullying of your poisonous boss, Ma'am". 

I may not have mentioned before that Hugh calls me Ma'am. Hugh is from Utah.

It appears that the naive Hugh updated CEO Stan about the various religious holidays negatively impacting our scheduled software deliveries. Instead of obfuscating issues with a few slogans, Hugh spoke truth to power. Armed with excessive details about North Korea's Communication Day (8/4) and Public Health Day  (5/4), as well as the Easter (universal) and Passover (Jewish) holidays, Hugh told Stan that next week is a "lost work week. But at least we are diversity compliant".

CEO Stan flew into a rage pretty which reminded me of the You Tube about  how angry Hitler became when Twitter went down. 

Stan threw Hugh out of his office, and called me to ask me if I like my company car (a Honda Insight) and my seat at the leadership table. Heavens, what a question. Is the Pope Catholic? Do the Faroe Islands belong to Denmark?  I replied in the affirmative.

Stan told me to "thin out the number religious holidays NOW, or your goose is cooked, Ramsbottom. This is not a temple, it's a system house that delivers quality software".

I walked back to my room pondering what Stan had requested. I passed by Comrade Carl Marks (our chief nerd) who was ranting and raving that "the domination of the west is over due to the spineless Americans. We should move our HQ to Tehran. Gloria, you will  need to cover your shapely legs up, because in Tehran women cover themselves and shut up".

On days like this, I wish big data had all the answers; I also wish Hugh was less "transparent" and more agile, and Carl was more normal.

Next year, in Tehran