Frustrated

"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury) 02/26/2015 at 01:20 • Filed to: None

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Last week I took one day off in order to teach a class, but the class was canceled due to weather. Fine, I could use the time off. I still had a few items to finish up before a planning review on Monday, but I had plenty of time to get it done. As I was about to head downstairs to finish up that project on Sunday night, I get a text from a friend/supervisor that simply read, "Is there any way you could take me to the hospital?" Of course the answer is yes, so I head over to pick him up. I don't know if his wife is out of town, I don't know what the situation is that requires a trip to the ER, I don't know what the child care situation is like (they have an 11 month old child) - all I know is that when someone sends a message like that you don't ask a lot of questions and you go help - end of discussion.

Wife was home - same ailment, but not requiring a hospital visit. Friends are over to look after the kid. We get to the hospital around 6:30 and get help in the ER, but it is still undetermined if he is going to be admitted or treated and released. I stick around until the doctor decides to release him, and by this time it's after 3:00 on an icy midwestern morning. I get home a while later, completely exhausted and suffering from a massive, pounding headache. Underdressed in the snow, haven't eaten in 18 hours - I don't know what caused it, but I do know that there is no point going into the office in this condition, so I call and leave a voicemail at the main desk, a message that doesn't get forwarded to my vice president or anyone that will be in the meeting.

For the last few days it's been nothing but grumbling that things didn't get done in time for the meeting, disappointment in my choices, and that this is a slip backwards, something that I can ill afford with a performance evaluation coming up soon. WTF people? It's not like I intentionally blew off the deadlines because I didn't feel like working - I WAS TAKING A FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE TO THE FRICKING EMERGENCY ROOM! What was I supposed to do - tell him to take a bus or taxi? Drop him off so that I could get back to my spreadsheets? Take my computer to the ER and work on them there? I thought I was doing the right thing by helping out in a time of crisis, and thought that perhaps because of this I could get a pass and perhaps a 24 hour extension.

I was already a tad jaded, but I am getting so sick of the corporate world and their self-imposed deadlines. I haven't had a vacation in years, work on average 60 hrs/week (including nights and weekends), have next to no social life (for the first time in ages I might possibly have girlfriend but no time to figure out if that is actually the case), take miniscule lunch breaks, and for what? The pay is nothing to get excited about, the benefits are lackluster at best and the work/life balance is definitely skewed the wrong way. I'd look for another job but by the time I get home in the evening I'm too exhausted and frustrated to do much of anything but make a snack and vegetate in front of the tube for an hour or two before falling asleep. I'd like to take a week off just to search, but the deadlines never seem to allow for this. My married coworkers don't appear to have problems getting time away, but I guess because I'm single the prevailing attitude is that I don't need to go anywhere or do anything but work, work, work. Enough already. Enough.

themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 02/26/2015 at 01:42

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STep 1) Prepare Resume

Step 2) Find a new job

Step 3) Laugh at your old job

My life got 1000000000x better when I did that. I wasn't working 60 hours a week. I had the opposite. I felt like I might as well stick my thumb up my ass for all the good I was doing. They routinely ignored my suggestions and input and......essentially, they ignored my work, shit remained broke, and then my reviews were crap because they ignored my work and never gave me a raise and threatened a pay cut or to even fire me. So I left, the place is in shambles now, people are jumping ship left and right and they're running out of lifeboats. New job pays WAY better, I have good work to do, I get recognition for my work, and I have co-workers who also want to do a good job.......feels good, man.

NotUnlessRoundIsFunny > themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles 02/26/2015 at 01:57

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This.

Or really, these?

Sam > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 02/26/2015 at 02:01

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Get a new job? It may sound easy, but that's because it usually is. (Unless you got that degree in sociology your parents told you not to get)

Let me go all real talk for a second.

Everyone dies. Once you die, you don't respawn, you don't get to retry, you don't get to do anything else ever again. Why would you go through life doing something you hate? You've only got a limited time on earth, so you have to live it to the fullest each and every day.

Now here is my challenge: if your performance review goes poorly due to these recent events, don't try to defend yourself, don't make excuses, and don't even tell them why you didn't meet deadlines. Just tell them you'll be leaving in two weeks, right then and there. If you're working in a field which has lots of openings, you'll probably find a job within the first week. Good luck. I'm tired of seeing so many people stuck in jobs and lives they hate, for no real reason.

/rant

TheBloody, Oppositelock lives on in our shitposts. > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 02/26/2015 at 08:23

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Time to move on like everyone said. I was in the same situation a while back. Got told in my review that I was not meeting deadlines when the person telling me this was literally the reason I couldn't get anything done. She would block me on everything, she was a manager of an IT systems team and had some useless philosophy degree so has zero clue, which is fine but don't act like you know everything and everything must be done your way. She is so useless at her job I had to explain to her the difference between memory and storage... To somebody who apparently "did" my job prior to me being hired. Oh and at the time couldn't traverse a Unix file system to save her life let alone write a bash script.

Any who, after my review I started looking for a job and when I found one I put in my two weeks notice. That was probably one of the best days in my life as after that day she kept trying to get me to finish up some projects that I was working on and my response was always "I'll look into it" then just continue surfing Oppo.

Yeah don't tell me I'm lazy, because I'll show you how lazy I can be. Granted I burned that bridge but one of my friends was also a manager there (left before me because he saw the writing on the wall, that place is a sinking ship) so he's my reference. Ran into her a couple months back, she's still there because she is to useless to be able to work in a real IT department and the company is circling the drain.

This could be you, I know it's hard but you can do it Nicky! You could be happy and not stressed out anymore!