Vocabulary

Someone I work with was supposed to be off work this week, but this morning she informed us that she would be working from home instead for most of the week. After she let us know that, another coworker, sent an email to her, and everyone else on the original email, calling her the "penultimate team player." I was a bit confused as to why the second coworker would want to insult the original sender of the email for saying she would be working from home. I definitely do not think being called the next to last team player is a good thing. Maybe she could have called her the ultimate team player. That would have been a much nicer thing to say.