Shouting at Anne day, I might add.

Buehler shouted at me because, following established procedure, I sent an e-mail to the e-mail address the developers set up for communicating with the group and asking questions. I asked a question about a software update.

One of the developers is in the office today and it was Buehler's perspective that I should just have bypassed procedure and asked the developer.

Buehler is under the impression I was just being too lazy to walk the ten steps to ask the question.

I am under the impression, (a) that I was on the phone, on hold when the question occured to me so I just sent out a quick, one-line e-mail; and, (b) that I'm sick to death of these, "he said, she said" conversations and that I want to get answers to my questions in writing.

I do feel sorry for the Stooges, though. Two of them were here when Buehler shouted at me and they seemed to think it was a major deal. They slunk away to the conference room and haven't come out since.

I don't feel sorry for the Third Stooge, He's the "project coordinator" and he also shouted at me (in e-mail) this morning.

They're a software development company. I asked if they were bug-testing a piece of software that they had asked me to "take a look at."

(Now, mind you, I know they probably aren't because they either don't have the staff or don't have the interest in bug-testing properly, as witnessed by the fact that everything we've released so far has been full of bugs, but if asking me to "take a look" at something means they're later going to blame me if there are bugs, then I want to know that up front.)

He wrote back and said if I had any questions i should call him.

I wrote back and asked, quite reasonably I think (okay, it was potentially inflammatory, but I used a smiley), if that meant they weren't bug-testing, and then he shouted at me and said they had "QA'd the changes you asked us to make" which, if you think about it, is hardly the same thing as bug-testing the entire piece of software. Then he "shouted" that what he meant was for me to call him.

I think, again, I think I'm being quite reasonable to say that if he thought my question needed a phone call response instead of e-mail, it would have been simple enough for him to pick up the phone and call me. (It's a local call, after all.)

I think he forgets that my company is, in fact, the client in this situation. Checks, when they are written, flow from my company to his.

I think him shouting at me was obnoxious. I think Buehler shouting at me was obnoxious.

Just obnoxious, though. Not scary-making. Generally I'm pretty freaky about being shouted at. I have weird and inexplicable shouting issues.

For some (good) reason, this morning's shouting didn't actually upset me.

I mean, I'm wallowing in a self-pitying pond of self-righteous indignation even though I'm well aware that I was partly to blame for both situations, but I think that's just human. Right?

The good news is that I'm demonstrating my snit by working twice as hard (my brain is an odd place to be) and I've gotten more done in the first four hours of today than I did all day yesterday.

I'm not calling the Third Stooge, though. If he wants to talk, he can pick up the phone. Until then, his project and the payment for the same can just sit in limbo.

It's good to be passive-aggressive.