Hahahahahahahahaha

Funniest outcome I could have imagined:

I came in this morning and Alex--remember, bratty, uninvolved-except-for-laughing Alex--said "Oh Gladys? Good morning. Also?" (flips me the bird, with a smile.)

Me: "What? What happened?"

A: "Well, this morning, The Crazy stopped by Joe's office... and told Joe 'I want ALEX to build my machine.'"

Me: "Ooh. Nice vote of confidence, that." (I'll admit to being a little worried there.)

A: (shrugs)

Later, I stopped The Crazy in the hall to ask her about an unrelated issue, and jokingly said something to the effect of "Well, since you snatched your build away from me and broke my heart, I have plenty of time to do this other stuff..." She laughed--have I mentioned that I have ABSOLUTELY no problems with this woman, other than that she promoted Joe?--and said "Well, because he gets here earlier in the morning, so he can work on it when I get here..."

She must have seen the "Huh?" written all over my face, because she elaborated: "I don't want to give out my password, so he has to work on the machine when I'm free so I can type it in whenever he needs me to." (Which is often--building a machine is full of "restart", "log off", "connect to server" and the rest.) Alex starts at 7:30; I don't start til 10, when she's usually curled up in a series of meetings and can't be bothered. So--not so much a vote of no-confidence, more a schedule thing.

The funniest part of it, of course: Erwin lost all chance of having me offer to help him in the future (and he now has the same number of builds, minus one--shame I can't give you a hand there, Erwin ol' pal!) and Joe pretty much squandered his remaining credibility with me--for NOTHING. For the chance to play a stupid playground prank, which didn't even have its intended effect of making ME do the work. (It would have been better if she'd handed it back to ERWIN, of course, but I can live with this outcome too.)

I repeat: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.