fuck this job.com

Hi, it's me, gloooom. My story's sad to tell, etc, etc, you can read it in my previous blog entries if interested.

Today I turned yet another corner. Seems like endless corners to turn yet I'm still not out of this maze. Anyhow, one part of my job is maintaining a publicity website for my institution. (It's not the ONLY publicity website we have, just a specialized one) I post press releases that people send me. I don't ask questions. I do what I'm told. What I do is supposedly "technical" - ha.

So today, our institution is having a huge very important day. They're launching a new product. VERY important. All activity has been building up to this for months. Everyone (but my department, of course, because we're the ship's rats) is dressed to the nines. THAT sort of day. The sort of day where if you want to look relevant to the company you'd better make sure you're on the clue train and do whatever you can to get with the program.

I thought I'd depart from my usual job-specific rant (yes, I'm still in the job from hell and fully expect to drop dead in chair there) and talk about something I really hate... the pointless office luncheon road trip.

So, you've got a hellish job where you are overworked and have to get stuff accurately completed by the end of the day or else (because you have to do the exact same thing tomorrow). Phone calls to make, writing to submit, problems to solve, people to spam. What could be MORE fun and productive than being dragged to a two-hour luncheon at a shitty cheap restaurant with all of your non-nearest and non-dearest friends??? Yes that's two hours of your work day you're not getting back... AND you get to be bored out of your fucking skull and eat lousy food. Oh, AND you still have all your work to do when you get back.

I threw away my calculator today.

To know why this is a big deal, you have to know that I have had this calculator for all of my 16 years at the company. I've taken it with me from department to department. Just a cheap solar calculator but it has served me well.

Yesterday I applied for a job outside the company. First time I have ever done that. So even if I don't get the job, I did something revolutionary (for me). And I celebrated that today by throwing away my calculator. I'll get a new calculator... something that represents my new outlook.

I am so ready to leave this place. Maybe I wasn't ready a year ago when I interviewed for a job within the company at a different department. Everyone says this is the bestest place to work in town but you know? It's not all that.

If not, it would be great if you could. Just like you can sue an employer for bad physical conditions that lead to permanent physical disability, it would be great if you could sue an employer for bad spiritual conditions leading to permanent spiritual disability. In other words, the soul-killing job.

It will be a much better world someday when the spiritual well being of one's employees is just as important as the physical well-being.

So last week I was working along as usual and suddenly realized: Oh my God, I totally forgot to go to a scheduled meeting on a fairly important project. The meeting was one hour ago, and I didn't even remember I had to go. Very unusual for me...

And then I realized my boss was going to be at this meeting too. So why didn't she call me and ask me where I was??? Even if she had yelled at me (which she probably wouldn't have) and told me to get my buns up there, I would have understood. But... no response?????

I waited to see if she'd contact me after the meeting and ask me what happened. Nothing.

Remember how I said I'd be back to complain? Here I yam!

Although things on the job are less suicide-inducing than last year at this time, all is not tranquil. Indeed I am sensing a new disturbance in the Force. It's not like anyone ever tells me anything, so that's how I know what's going on up above in the hierarchy... I use my psychic powers - oh, and observing the stupid, arbitrary decisions that rain down on my head from above. Yes, it seems the president of the company has NOTICED my department's existence and now wishes to extend his insanity downward to us.

You can tell there has been in a disturbance by the weird, last-minute assignments you get, usually with handwritten scrawled notes attached from your immediate supervisor. Oh wait, I don't have a supervisor. OK, from the higher-ranking guy who gives me stuff to do but who isn't actually responsible for making sure I have adequate time off, adequate coverage for my duties when I'm off, adequate resources to do my work, etc. Assignments that have very little to do with your department's alleged mission, but which are marked "IMPORTANT." It means that way, way, way up the hierarchy, someone is doing some crazymaking. Someone's had a "bright idea" and is inflicting it upon someone else, who is inflicting it upon the next person down the line, and by the time it gets to you, it arrives with absolutely no justification or explanation, just "DO THIS."

Hi I'm gloooom and I'm back. I don't know if anyone here was around about a year ago when I started posting about my shitty job, my escape attempts, etc. I'm still at the job and I am happy to report it is somewhat more bearable, but not because anyone got smarter. But I feel ranty today and thought I would check back in.

Let's see what's happened since I've been away! They finally hired a replacement for the bon-bon eating division VP who was canned about a year ago. I have met this guy exactly twice - once at his welcome lunch, the second time in a hallway. Have never received an e-mail from him. I'm not even sure he's real - perhaps they just hired an actor to play him those couple times. A year later, we are still not allowed to order stationery, because, you know, they might be changing our division name soon. Which they said a year ago. They also restructured us, but nobody's jobs have actually changed. Amazing, the non-restructuring restructuring!! Now that's progress.

Last night I was lying awake in bed and the perfect description of my current job experience came to me...

My job feels like being forced to sit in my own shit for 8 hours a day.

For some reason, being able to put it this way seems helpful. I am forced to work with substandard software and nobody will permit me to fix the problem, because nobody cares, I can't get anyone's attention no matter how hard I try, and everyone else seems perfectly happy to sit in THEIR own shit until it starts stinking (well, it already stinks, but they apparently can't smell it). Just having a way to describe my own feelings to myself seems comforting.

So today was supposed to be the meeting which I suggested to my boss we ought to have about various projects that we haven't met about in ages... including the AWOL software. You know, for a while I actually thought this meeting was going to happen, but SURPRISE SURPRISE, it was called off for today. And not rescheduled, although there's a chance we may have it next week.

Boy, am I surprised... not!!!

I sensed a general perplexedness about the meeting among my co-workers... like they didn't understand why they had to go, and yippee yahoo, it's been scrubbed.

So, since my boss acted true to form (blowing off meetings and procrastinating like she always does - apparently she decided to take the morning off), I e-mailed someone from another office who's also been wondering where the software is, and I told him exactly what was happening (briefly). Maybe THAT will get back to my boss. At this point I don't fucking care. I have no other way of getting through to her.

Hi it's me, gloooom. I was on my first vacation in more than eight months but now I'm back. I went to work in an OK mood this morning but by the end of the day I was on the verge of tears at work yet again because of the crappy work I do where I have no technical support and can't figure out what the damn program is doing wrong. And I am no slouch at kicking the tires on stuff, but this is just ridiculous. Trying to send the same e-mail 6 times at the end of the day. 11 glorious restful days off and I come back and by the end of the day I'm just as stressed as I was before I left.

Just to be clear, the ONLY reason I was able to take vacation at all, is because the company practically shuts down between Christmas and New Year's. It's not like my workload has changed. I probably won't have another opportunity to take a single day off until summer.

Well, don't kill me everyone (after my last few months of bitching), but I was offered the job today that I interviewed for earlier in the week, and I declined as gracefully as I could. I have mixed feelings, and am disappointed at how things wound up, but I also think I made the right decision. If you are going to go down in pay, it absolutely has to be the right job and you have to feel completely good about it... I just didn't quite.

Throughout my working career, I have always gone job-hunting when I am at my wits' end. And naturally have taken the first thing offered. Now that I am older, I have to stop doing this and get much more serious about what I want to be when I grow up... which is... very daunting to think about. I am one of those people they call "renaissance souls" (a fancy term for "shiftless loser with way too many interests") and my problem is that I get bored with something almost as soon as I start it, which makes going back to school for a master's seem like a dead-end proposition. I simply cannot afford to spend time and money on another degree if I know I will lose interest before I complete it.

Well, I had me interview today with Possibility #1. Everything went well. Fantastic weather so my hair wasn't mussed, the interview went great, they seemed really interested in me, etc etc. Trouble is, I'm now hoping they don't offer it to me... because I am going to have to decline.

Why? Not because of the people. They seemed nice and on the ball. They even expressed an interest in learning the latest technology, which is the exact opposite of the people I currently work with who can't be bothered with learning anything new but leave it all to me. Maybe not even because of the work, although it would be a shock to go back to regular administrative type scutwork.

Well, tomorrow will be the first job interview I have been on in almost 11 years. I am not sure I want this job, especially if I can't entice them (with my, uh, sparkling personality and impressive credentials - snarf) to offer me more money than the job posting says. I am trying to shake off my negative feelings about this whole situation and
just be "theirs" (the other dept's) for the morning. It was tough to sit in on this morning's weekly meeting (yes, we had one!) and try to hide my turmoil. As usual, we were all in place at 8:30 a.m. and our boss was nowhere to be found. She always makes a grand late entrance and one of my co-workers snitted that he thought this was disrespectful of our time. Whatever. Anyhow - after about a half hour of Christmas party discussion - it was asked, you know, like, where the hell is this dept. going? (That wasn't the question, but that's what it meant) and as usual, bosslady had no answer except "I'm going to be talking to the head office about that" and, as usual, hinting at changes ahead, including "position changes" or "new positions" or something involving the empty offices of people who have already flown the coop. Hmm. Well, don't know for sure, but she may have another position to fill by the end of this week... it all depends on how I feel about this other job, and how they feel about me of

Well, my interview is Tuesday. And all the sudden I'm assailed by mixed feelings, few of them good. The truth is, I am pissed off about my current job because I KNOW I could make this software problem go away if only they let me. Or rather, if only my stupid, disengaged, in-over-her-head boss would let me. I'm sad because this job pays well and - aside from the endless treadmill of work - I don't ever have to answer phones or do accounting or stuff like that. I came home and bawled the other day because I am just so, so sad and disappointed that it has turned out this way. When I got salaried over the summer I was kind of excited, but it's just become so, so shitty.

Sorry for the double post but this really didn't fit in the other one... Last night I finally realized why I've reached the point where I'm actively seeking another job, after over 10 years at this one. I've realized that I've had it with being expected to go out on various limbs, solve problems, start new projects, etc... and I do it dutifully, and then I look over my shoulder -- and nobody is following behind me.

I've been forced so far out of my comfort zone, that I've outgrown these people. Or at least, I have outgrown the dynamic in this department.

Y'all know about my software problem. Well, that's just the tip of the iceberg. People giggle and shrug when I bring up the software problem; they don't take it seriously. My boss planned this big, very visible new project that I am expected to work on every day... pushed and pushed for me to debut it before it was really ready (while another co-worker who was involved, went on vacation at a critical moment)... and now seems to have lost interest in it. We never have meetings about the project, *I* always have to bring up any problems with it, etc.