I get that as a member of the IT, sometimes we have crunch time and we have to work saturdays. I’m okay with that, really. And I understand that sometimes, deadlines have to be shifted.
But if you say, “Yeah, you should probably be done by 1” and at 1 I am less than halfway done with the work you have given me on a Saturday where I had other plans at 2 because you said I would probably be done at 1, and then you imply that the reason for this is because I’m moving so slowly (even though when I need support because I’m not trained how to do the thing I need support with, it takes 15 fucking minutes for anyone to respond)… It’s kind of a dick move. It leaves me kinda feeling like shit, makes my imposter syndrome flair way the fuck up, and makes me terrified that the crucial time-sensitive project that starts next Saturday will end up just as thoroughly fucked - and no, I can’t get the resources I was hoping for from you anyways.
But either way, thanks for spending the last week making me feel incompetent, useless, weak, and stupid.
One thing I’m actively stamping out in my office is the tendency to say the letter “O” instead of “zero” when discussing SAP transactions. “Vee Ay Oh Five” gets a gentle correction from me.
I just love it when headhunter (or other) firms set up phone interviews and then don’t bother calling. I was supposed to have a call at one. No call, no explanation.
About a month ago I was supposed to have a call with a client firm, but they were having an emergency. This was fine, I would have been happy to reschedule, but the interviewer kept putting me on mute without telling me and then dropped the call without telling me. I call that rude.
I found out yesterday that PTO is capped at 40 hours and I have 100 hours banked. So with exactly 7 work days left this year I’m taking an unexpected 2 week vacation. Yay me. I’d really prefer to have had a chance to make some plans.
The cap was mentioned during a meeting while I was on vacation and didn’t hear about it. Someone just happened to mention it during yesterday’s meeting or I’d have been totally clueless and then pissed off next year when 60 hours evaporated.
Well, hope you find a fun way to spend the time anyway.
Is your passport up to date? I read once about someone in a similar situation that went to a travel agent and asked what they could do for him RIGHT THEN, and managed to score a nice trip someone had cancelled out on at the last moment due to ill health.
That happened to me – boss suddenly told me I couldn’t take vacation during that school year, so I had to take my two weeks starting at 5pm – and my first reaction was to buy a bike rack and some road snacks, and drive all night to Cape Cod. Spent a fortnight biking between youth hostels (including a vintage life-saving station on a beach on Nantucket Island).
I still think of how monastic that was. There was no time for girlfriend or pals or family to come along. Ahhhhh…
Today was so fucking stressful and it really didn’t have to be. I had to write a huge grant for new programming, basically build the entire thing from scratch. I knew it was going to be hugely time consuming so I started planning last month. Over a week ago I asked for specific help with the budget, since I’m not really in charge of deciding where funds will be allocated and the feedback on our concept paper indicated they won’t fund capital expenses. The grant was due 5pm today, and I got the first version of the new budget 7pm last night! It was not correct. Budgets are a pain in the ass and can be the most time consuming part, but I also had a ten page narrative to write that needed to fit the budget. Now I’m continuously revising the narrative to accommodate continuous changes in the budget! Then I go to have the CEO sign the cover letter and she wants to fuck with the budget even more. We met over a month ago about this grant, that would have been a great time to suggest her specific funding goals, not three hours before it’s fucking due. Anyway I talked her out of it.
I also sent several critical players a workplan I drafted on Tuesday - a snapshot of activities and proposed outcomes that would take all of 5 minutes to review. I requested feedback by 12pm noon Wednesday so I could incorporate changes into the narrative. As of this morning, still no feedback. Then I had trouble with the budget narrative and figuring out where the numbers in the new budget came from. The person helping me with that said she’d get back to me and disappeared for hours. I had to go to HR, write down every person’s salary and calculate backward until I figured out the % FTE for each personnel item. I’m not great at math.
The bottom line is, I felt abandoned for a major project. Because I had to teach myself a number of new skills today due to the absence of support, I got the grant in a mere 2.5 hours before deadline. This isn’t typical of my people, I assume it’s holiday related.
Bright spots:
It’s one of the best grants I have ever written. I am really good at writing grants so that’s a significant statement. I have high hopes for funding a long overdue program.
I learned a lot, including some shit I probably already should know by now.
I retired from the Canadian government 15 months ago, after 42 years (I enjoyed my work, and it was all pensionable time!). A got an email from my old boss this week saying that one of the central agency departments wanted to contact me about a potential project. I talked to the director, and found that several senior people had recommended me for this project, and they would like to come back for a few months. Very flattering, and it is something I had been pushing to get off the ground before I retired, so I would like to work on this.
BUT, the government implemented a new pay system just before I retired, and my pay was seriously screwed up when they didn’t process my separation properly, and it’s still not 100% fixed. I was talking to my old director yesterday, and she said that 60% of employees in my old department have unresolved pay issues lasting more than 30 days, and there are even worse problems with new or changed employee files.
I think I will probably call him back and decline, as the last thing I need to happen is to introduce new errors in my pay and possibly screw up my pension as well. I will regret losing the opportunity to make sure the project is done correctly, though.
I ended up at a psychiatric hospital last night after a panic attack because I was worried I was going to hurt myself. Which was because of a conversation with my boss. Put simply: it was not a good conversation. Nothing too damning towards him, but I’ve been so stressed out and our employer-employee relationship has been… strained. And yesterday I just snapped.
Now I have to work again on the 27th, and I have no idea how I’m supposed to face that.
I’ve never actually paid for a cell phone, because my work does so I’m always available. Isn’t normally too much of a problem… but, with most of the plant idle for Christmas, one of the few units running is one of my units, and they’ve managed to bollux something up.
I can have them blend off a limited amount of the crud they’ve made, but it’s a very limited amount, and then there’s no room to make good stuff to fix and be used. Meanwhile, it’s obviously a mechanical problem (charge meter error), not a chemistry or analytical error. So when they call me, all I can tell them to do is get the mechanical E&I folks to fix the problem.
But E&I doesn’t answer their phones. 'Cause it’s Christmas. So they keep calling me, since I do answer my phone… but can’t do anything other than tell them I can’t do anything to help.
Keep us posted. I for one will tip a cold one toward you in congratulations.
I have a friend who writes grants, then has to do most of the work when they get it.
They’re so overworked he often hopes (secretly) that the proposal will crash and burn.
That’s exactly what sick days are for. You need to recover, especially before you work with your boss again… But, assuming you went in today, how was it?
I’ve been in your situation. My only panic attack, ever.
Luckily, after a day off, I discovered that I hadn’t had to take that day to have things back to normal “Situation Normal, Jerk Boss”.
The boss had gotten over it immediately (in fact, I doubt he even noticed the effect he’d had on me). He’s classic Type A: “I don’t care how people feel (I just need to step on people to get things done).”
And I’m classic Type Z: “I care too much about how people feel.”
Nothing a year of counseling couldn’t cure. I mean, if your boss has that kind of power over you, you need to fix that. I worked with a guy who’d get SO mad at “Jerk Boss” that he’d say, through clenched teeth, “He can’t kill me, he can’t kidnap my children, he can’t burn down my house, he can’t really hurt me…”
…Rough. I had to lead the entire team again, and the first thing my boss did was show in no uncertain terms why I shouldn’t be doing that. Then, we stopped about 5 hours early, because the movers were way behind schedule. I still did not feel good after getting home. Today was less awful, if only because most of the day I didn’t have to micromanage a team - just correct their multiple mistakes. It’s becoming increasingly clear that we are not enough people for the job and everything’s basically fucked. We’re now working saturday as well, and I have no idea if we’ll get done by then either - not least of which because most of the people I’m working with are not trained to do this work, and the one other guy who is keeps getting called away to do other things.
I honestly can’t tell if I’m horribly overreacting to stress or whether it’s legitimately awful. Today wasn’t that bad. I dunno.
My heart goes out to you. I have had similar issues in the past with bad jobs… dunno but there’s a certain type of work environment that triggers the worst of my psychiatric issues and I get to the point that I am facing hospitalization due to anxiety and depression… then I just walk out. It’s happened a few times and it seems to be a pretty consistent pattern based on some key workplace characteristics:
-lack of clear expectations/arbitrary rules
-lack of structure
-continuous negative feedback
-systemic incompetence
Not to get all Freudian, but that environment basically describes my household growing up and I think it forces me to relive all that somehow. I’m sure every person responds differently but those seem to be my specific triggers for jaunts into crazytown.
Whether it’s ‘‘just stress’’ I still think it’s legitimately awful - for you. And I don’t know what your current job prospects are looking like outside of this one, but this is not a healthy situation for you and it’s probably not going to get better. It’s time to start looking elsewhere.
