Co-worker, please shut up. I don’t care about the intimate details of the life of the multimillionare guy who hosts your dog club space. Really. I don’t care. I’m typing this as he’s still telling me about it.
Sorry, Melaleuca, I didn’t mean to get you in trouble. But thanks for the translation (not that I’m daring enough to use it. 
)
Yep, we all have access to that information here. Everyone knows I’ve been here longer and make less than just about anyone. I believe it’s due to the fact that I never pursued raises aggressively, and in fact didn’t know I needed to…I just mumble and clutch my red stapler. [del]And one day I’ll burn the place down.[/del]
No, I just came in to tell a thing that happened this morning…a secretary at the main building sent out an email to several groups saying that a meeting was cancelled “because of catastrophic conditions” at the building I work at. This vague message went out in large red font. Next thing you know, people are panicking, my mother among them, thinking there’s a fire or a gunman or something. People are calling about the “catastrophe”, we’re all WTF?
Turns out, some wet ceiling tiles had fallen and damaged an instrument. The only disaster around here is the dumb cunt who sent out that email.
After some consideration and a good night’s sleep, I am going to enjoy watching these idiots I now work with fire themselves when they get busted using Facebook, cellphones and charging their shit at work. Fuck all y’all.
Fuck my work for not having enough lockers for everyone and their shit. You need at least two more microwaves and to get rid of that busted piece of shit cooler and get a new cooler or fix some shit already. Fuck assholes who hog lockers, too. There is a sight that says lockers have to be emptied at 10 pm every night.
Always good to hear about idiots getting fi… wait… you can get fired for “charging [your] shit at work”?
Here’s to finding a job where they give you free electrons!
Oh, crap, now I’m just begging for metallic/crystal/lattice/Schrödinger jokes. I meant that literally; I was NOT making a bad nerd-pun!
So the whole harassment case is going to end with a whimper.
I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but V, who is working a part-time job with us, is also working a part-time retail job. Last holiday season, V asked her boss H if she could take Wednesdays off so she could get some more retail hours in. That was fine, H said. This year, V wanted to take Wednesdays off again. Obviously she couldn’t ask H directly so she tried to ask this time through an intermediary. H turned her down. V felt (quite rightly, I suppose) that H was retaliating at her over the harassment charge, and went to the VP to make the same request. VP turned her down as well–who knows whether it was because he didn’t want to overrule H or because he didn’t want to get involved in it all.
V could have done a number of things at this point, I think, which would have kept her job safe. Instead–I think by this point because she had just been beaten down so long she realizes they just want rid of her and she’s going to dare them to fire her–she’s just taking the Wednesdays off anyway. I understand that procedures are already underway to get V fired for insubordination.
So, after all that, the bully will win. Our company wanted the bully to win. The consultant they’d hired to try to prove that H wasn’t a bully, that the rest of us had been just whining brats, and who came back with a report that, yep, H probably would have been let go a long time at any sane organization, had said as much to me and to others here. I had believed that if it came down to a decision between facing a potential discrimination lawsuit and keeping H (who, mind you, has never met her goals, has failed at most projects she’s worked on for years, and is in danger of being let go at the end of the year anyway because the Chairman is starting to openly wonder why her division has been such a failure under her watch), they’d keep H in a heartbeat. Now they don’t even have to worry about any potential lawsuits after V fell on her sword and committed a fireable offense out of despair.
I suppose all that leaves me is with what I do myself. On one hand I suppose I should be happy to have employment, I know two people here have just talked about losing their jobs and a couple of my Facebook friends just lost theirs too. On the other hand though I have my health to consider. My mental illness is getting markedly worse, and my wife and my counselor have started to notice. I’ve snapped at people here and people are taking a wide berth. I’ve upped my meds but all that’s done is made me sleep a lot more. My doctor has been pushing me to take a second leave of absence–this time to just go, leave the cell phone and computer at home, disappear for three or four weeks. I won’t want to come back. I’m tired of being here and I’m tired of living, frankly. I’m back here on a Sunday afternoon fixing the database once again because I have no desire to go home or do anything else. If I talk about my job with my wife she will start yelling at me to just deal with things or to find another job. I don’t think she realizes I’ve been doing that for the last year, working one or two jobs on some pretty heavy medication, with no friends, no hobbies other than walking, no desire to keep living. As for finding another job all I’ve found are scams or jobs in far-flung parts of the country, or even in other parts of the world whose recruiters apparently want be but drop me like a stone when they find I don’t have the right paperwork.
The situation with H didn’t directly involve me, I know. But one of her colleagues did bully me pretty badly, to the point where other people were going to HR on my behalf. Nobody there took it seriously and the whole situation caused me to go from “mildly depressed” to “full-on bipolar” and I haven’t been able to get better. I didn’t want this place to ruin others’ lives too. Now I understand it won’t, and now I need out. I’m just hoping it’s not permanent.
Not really a gripe, more of a mildly funny.
One of my co-workers is trying to get hired someplace else.
He’s been sent (by a buddy) a picture of the itinerary for the day he has an interview scheduled.
Something like:
9:15 am-- Co-worker
Other person
9:30 coffee break
On this basis, he has determined that his interview will last no more than seven and a half minutes, and is therefore not worth stressing too much over.
Suggestions that perhaps both people will be interviewed at the same time were met with a skeptical shrug.
If I were a betting woman, I’d bet that the interview will in fact last longer than seven and a half minutes-- in fact I could see the interviewees being offered a chance to share in the coffee break.
You were with me that whole day. 
Chuck their shit out, put your shit in. Same rules as communal laundry rooms - you leave your shit, it gets moved on you.
You do need out. You know you have no future with this company; my advice is to try very hard not to let any of it get to you, and keep looking for another job - you’ll be out of this terrible environment some day, and things will be better when you’re not getting your soul crushed every day. I wish your wife was supporting you better, but if you have to do it without her, that’s what you have to do. We’ll support you here.
Cognoscant, I’m betting your wife would be happier in the long run if you came home and said “That job is detrimental to my mental state. I’m quitting.”
I’ve never met a spouse or friend that’d choose “Go Crazy” over “Get The Hell Outta There”, and that includes the new mom I knew, whose husband was the sole paycheck, but was in a toxic job.
Yay, free electrons.
No seriously, I bought a charger that plugs into my cigarette lighter for five bucks at Walgreeens. Now all i need are cords to plug into my lighter charger and i won’t have to charge my shit at this call center.
The rules state they don’t want us surfing the internet to random shit, using facebook, and what not. These desks are tiny so i can see why they made that rule. Perhaps they could set up a place where people can plug their gizmos in. They don’t want to facilitate information theft and they don’t want anybody to spill shit or attract ants and other pests.
I do not agree with all the rules but i want a job and paycheck more than i want to check facebook.
The deal with the lockers seems to be that people have staked out a locker and management has not kicked people out of lockers. I don’t know how I am going to make this work put but maybe some assholes will get canned and clear some space. 45 people were in my class and we started with 55 or so.
No way. I want to leave! And yes, it could be a firing offense, but in the big scheme of things it’s really not a big deal. I mean, I still have my job, and I know I am getting my (tiny!) raise next year for sure…that information was in there too.
(Really makes the end-of-year performance review kind of bullshit, though, doesn’t it? Looks like I am getting my raise either way. )
It’s really nice to know someone else is in the same boat! The thing is, they are judging by their own metric. One of them even said, “I can’t believe you’ve stayed!”
That’s between me and me, lady!
I need a red stapler. 
These days the conversations between my wife and me seem to go like this:
Day one: Me: “I’m having an awful time at work, these are the things that are happening.” Her: “THEN WHY DON’T YOU JUST QUIT THEN???”
Day two: Me: “I’m thinking of leaving my job or looking for another one in another town.” Her: “YOU CAN’T DO THAT TO ME, WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS AND OUR FUTURE???”
And it’s this endless cycle of “you have to leave, it’s wrecking your mental health/you have to stay, we need the money and I can’t live as a single parent again” that’s bogging me down. My son is going through some problems and (yes despite my bipolar condition) I feel like I’m the only person keeping him off the rails a lot of the time. My wife alternates between treating him like a much younger kid and treating him like the most evil person on the planet.
But this can’t go on much longer. I have a meeting with the VP today. I am hoping that he fills me in on what the hell is going on in the office, seeing that I am supposed to be supervising people who have also been bullied by H and I would appreciate it if I had some idea of where we stood–especially as the consultant made promises to some of them that the company isn’t keeping and they’re understandably getting restless. (It isn’t helping that there are big rumors a of a second bullying incident going on in another department here that threatens to make our office’s problems look like someone’s lunch money getting stolen.) Of course I expect to hear nothing, so I suppose that it will be another “good roads, fair weather” L. Ron type meeting. And once again I’m going to have to bite my tongue about my mental health going totally off the rails–over the weekend I spent one day asleep for 12+ hours and the other day in such a blind panic I couldn’t do the work I brought home for myself–because, quite truthfully, he and the rest of the company don’t really care that much.
What, are you each only allowed one line per day? If you don’t let a full day go by before you respond to her input, maybe the conversations can be more productive.
More that if I say I’m frustrated, she wants me to leave. If I say I want to leave, she tries to convince me to stay. “I’m just giving you the pros and cons!” she claims. Yeah, the cons are that I stay in a place that’s damaging my health, and the pros are that I could move to a place where I have no family or support…wait that’s not a pro either. Or she tries to convince me that “things could be just as bad at the next place you go to.” Much as I’m aware that the world contains a lot of incompetent buffoons and striving bullies, I’m not sure 100% of the workplaces in America are filled to the brim with them…certainly her own workplace isn’t, nor did my last job, so why so negative.
It’s times like this that I wish I had even ONE damn source of good advice on my career. ONE person who could look at my resume and say, “hey, here’s a few good places which you could apply to, even if they’re not in the exact field you’re working in now.” Because I’ve been beaten down so long here by my job, my wife, and my mental health that I don’t believe I deserve to have a job at all. I see other people without jobs and I have a kind of survivor’s guilt.
So, maybe ask here? A vague-enough mention of the field minus location shouldn’t be identifiable, and we have people with all kinds of experience. Unless you happen to specialize in the simulation of hydrogen tunnels using ab initio quantum chemistry and *** orbitals (a field which by the way doesn’t even exist, so I sure hope you’re not in it), there’s bound to be someone who can help.
Conversely, you may try searching for some trade terms: perhaps that way you can locate Dopers with experience in your field.
The converse, of course, is that if you leave, your company is going to have an equally difficult time filling your shoes.
Especially if you wear an odd sized shoe.
Well Converse shoes are pretty old school. They’d have to go back a ways.
Nava: I don’t want to talk about what sector I’m in because it’s a small one and people talk a lot. But these are some of the things I do on a very regular basis:
–Administer a database a lot like a sales database.
–Do a crapton of the data entry on this database (probably 70% of the non-financial material at this point)
–Train others on how to use said database.
–Run reports, mailing lists, and related information for colleagues from our database.
–When necessary, use SQL and VBA to run said reports (our database manufacturer for some reason howls about this breaking the contract, but there are ways around it)
–Administer the underlying data for two websites (soon to be three) and do a bit of programming for these.
–Handle client problems with the websites, and serve as the liaison with the website manufacturers
–Use SPSS, Tableau, and other stats packages to run data analysis on our activities, and report to the executives on what I find
–Supervise accounting procedures for the office, and do research and make suggestions on the arcane tax laws/guidance for our industry
–Supervise research on high-net-worth clients, and occasionally do said research
–Keep care of large checks that come to our office (“You are the largest person in the office and the least likely to be messed with” claimed the VP) and ensure that these reach the bank
–Keep in contact with the official company stockbroker about any transfers which come in, and handle other issues with the bank
I’m sure there’s more but that’s what I can remember now. The only thing that I really enjoy (and the thing I feel I’m best at) is the computer programming and stats work. Sadly, I don’t have a degree in either statistics or programming and most of the jobs I’ve seen outside of my sector require one. I’ve taken a couple of MBA classes but time and money are a little tight–and, there’s not much guarantee an MBA will substitute for the stats or programming degree anyway.
So that’s what’s I’ve got. I feel like I’ve got a little bit of a lot of decent skills, but not enough to add up to a particularly good job. Any advice is welcome, yes.
Is your name Juanjo and do you live in a small Spanish town? Because you sound like one of my brother’s coworkers: he’s officially the Controller (National) but extraofficially the Dude Who Used To Be An IT Consultant and who therefore knows more about the company’s databases than the people who get paid to know about them.
It seems to me like when you look at possible jobs you may need to forget about specific sectors. With skills like those, you can move into jobs which exist in many sectors such as “database admin” type ones, for example. I realize it’s hard to do when you’re feeling like Hell shat all over you, but the most important thing to remember is, “don’t close yourself in” - don’t impose artificial limits. Your skills are very transferable, into many different kinds of jobs and in very diverse sectors, don’t chop your own wings off.
And yes, you deserve a job
Tiny complaint, barely registers compared to some of these:
I applied for another job internally, interviewed, and was offered (and accepted) the job yesterday. My new manager needs to call my current manager to inform her of this. That’s hard to do when current manager didn’t show up yesterday and isn’t coming in today either.
Dude, sell the skills. If you can do all of that, then it doesn’t fucking matter what sector you’re in or what your job title is. Open up a little and start looking at jobs that require even half of those skills.