[Rick Lee]

Yeah, I'm gonna do it, no question. Today our HR boss sent us an email listing the criteria to be eligible to apply. One of them was to "be in good standing," meaning at 100% of goal in every metric. Trouble is..... we are measured by quarter and we're well into Q2 with no comp plan for 2014 yet. We have our revenue figures for Q1, but no one knows what the goals for Q1 were, so we don't know where we are relative to those goals. But the shoo-in - I'll call him Stan - is in the same boat I am there.

Stan is a great guy, a gun buddy and probably my closest friend at work. We'll definitely get along fine if he becomes the boss, and I'll be on his radar for the next one. He's so obviously getting this job, that we all joke about it publicly to the current boss. It's almost insulting that HR tells us they're posting the job internally and externally.

On another note, there's another guy - I'll call him Jim - on a different team we all can't stand who is also applying for this job. The current boss can barely bring himself to be polite to Jim, Jim's boss doesn't like him, BUT he is a good performer, puts in the most hours and is super, almost overly, ambitious. He has no chance of getting promoted because the bosses know no one would ever work for him. Jim means well, is a nice guy, is super smart and hard-working; he just unknowingly rubs people the wrong way. I can see him being butt hurt for the rest of his life, not understanding why he can do his job so well and never get promoted. Anyway, not my problem, but we all laugh about it in the office.