Aperture Science Chronological Life Data Tracking System

I’ve never made it a secret that I’m not happy with my workplace. There’s a huge amount of stress, everything is just rushed, and it’s just really not a fun place to be any more, at least not in my department.

One of the things that I think helps contribute to this is a sense of separation from my coworkers. I always find myself thinking in terms of “them” and “me”, instead of “us”. I don’t feel like a member of any team, and they’re certanly not people I consider friends. Just… guys who work in the same building I do, and for the same boss. I don’t really hear rumors or news or anything like that, so I always find out things far behind the curve. An awesome example of this is when I found out one of the guys’ wife was pregnant just a few weeks before she gave birth. Everyone else knew but me. They’re also an entirely different generation than I am – I’m not the baby of the group but almost all of my coworkers are older than me with families of their own, and completely different interests from me.

It’s also extremely frustrating trying to get their assistance with things that I can’t do on my own, since they all have their own projects and tasks they have to work on. It very much conveys a feeling of “How cute, he’s trying to be an engineer”.

Now I feel like I should clarify that any feelings of separation that may exist are probably exacerbated by the fact that I am physically separated from my coworkers by a good distance. They all sit in an open cubicle area just near the bosses office, while my desk is down the hallway, far enough away that I usually don’t get any office chatter or anything. I don’t really consider this a bad thing though – I really like that I can be alone for most of the day, and also the fact that I have a door I can close to isolate myself if needed. Being able to play music helps too.

It’s kind of weird to stop and think about. I don’t like that I’m separated, and yet I value that separation. <scratches head>

Edit 8/5: Awesome. We’re having a department wide meeting, right? Guess whose name didn’t get included.

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So today’s creative activity wasn’t anything major – just plucking at the guitar a bit and brainstorming some RP ideas before a nice long nap snuck up on me. However, the RP ideas are starting to take root and I’m hoping to get some of them actually on paper (disk?) later this week, starting tomorrow!

So this morning I went to work.

Just an average day, really. Got in the office about 7 or so, plopped my laptop on the desk and wandered off to get some coffee. Coffee acquired, come back to the desk and log on to the computer. Don glasses, settle in chair, brush at an itch on my shoulder – time to work!

As I started working on my normal daily stuff I felt another little itch on my shoulder. Not even an itch, really, but more of a tickle. I felt it again a few minutes later on my chest underneath my shirt, and when I absently brushed at the spot it felt like nothing more than a wad of lint under my shirt.

I kinda loosely grabbed it through the shirt and pushed the fabric up so the lint would fall out of the neck. My plan worked perfectly except for one small detail… a spider the size of my fingertip plopped out of my shirt and onto my desk. Now I have nothing against spiders, and when I find them I usually escort them outside.

However. They do not belong in my clothes. Especially when said clothes are on me.

Luckily I didn’t really have to worry about his freedom anyway – when I’d grabbed him through the shirt it knocked more than a few of his legs off, and there wasn’t a whole lot of motion. I brushed him off my desk into the trash and tried not to imagine that every single itch and tickle I felt for the rest of the day was another spider. >.>

Anyway. After a long period of not blogging, I have been convinced to pick it back up. It’s not that anything hasn’t been happening… I just haven’t written about it. We’ll have to see what I can do to change that. With any luck I’ll introduce you guys to my cat in the next day or two – with photos!

Also I am really starting to dislike this blog theme. I gotta get that fixed.

Wow, has it really been a month since my last post? It really doesn’t seem like it’s been that long – in fact, this whole year feels like it’s just flying by.

I remember when I first started this blog that I told myself I’d post at least once a day, every day. Ahhhh well.

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I’m always used to being the person giving help and very seldomly asking for/receiving it, so it comes as a pleasant surprise that people keep asking (with genuine interest and concern) how things at work are going, and if the situation is improving at all. In all fairness, it’s not as bad as I made it out to be in my last post – that was definitely a venting time. However… nothing I said in there is an exaggeration, or untrue. It’s more of a Cliff’s Notes version of everything that’s happened so far this year.

My company is not necessarily a bad company to work for. For a financial instutition in today’s economic brouhaha we’re doing really well; they avoided all that sub-prime mortgage crap, and our business is showing steady gains. The problem lies moestly in the IT department.

The pay here is not competitive, and the company knows it. It’s not uncommon for someone to leave and get hired back at a higher pay. We also have about 2/3 of the IT staff that we really need, with most people being the sole person who knows a system. It’s stressful enough like that, more so when they leave.

We’re also constantly under audit, both from internal and external sources (including the OTS audit next week. Eeeeek!). It’s not so much that the audits are difficult, it’s that there’s so much gathering of proof and documentation that there’s less time for doing actual work. Again, more stress. Multiple audits at a time do not help.

I still say my boss has the attention span of a hyperactive monkey though. Part of that, I’m sure, is just the amount of work that she has to do and the amount of data that flows through her – information overload is very real. I’ve actually learned that it’s best to catch her in the hallway away from her desk; if you’re in the office talking to her and the phone/IM/email goes off, you might as well just get up and leave – she won’t notice.

It can be a very frustrating place to work.

• Meetings, meetings, meetings. Everything gets discussed to hell and back.
• Capslock should never, ever, ever be used in a corporate environment. NEVER.
• I don’t care how much you’d like it to happen, boss, technical support can not help me violate the laws of physics and technology.
• I am not an engineer. Why the hell do you have me working on servers? Pay me for it or go away.
• 6 am sucks as a start time.
• My boss currently has like 13,000 emails in her mailbox. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get her to reply to an email?
• I have three weeks of vacation that I haven’t been able to take because I’m “the only person who can do my job”.
• Did I mention I’m the lowest paid person under my boss? I’m the only one still hourly, too, because she’s too damn busy to remember that she said a year ago she would promote me.
• It’s impossible to work here without backstabbing or being backstabbed.
• STOP WITH THE MANAGERIAL LEET SPEAK. WE ARE PEOPLE, NOT RESOURCES. YOU DO NOT ‘ENGAGE A RESOURCE’, YOU ASK AN ENGINEER FOR HELP. IT’S NOT AN ‘ACTION ITEM’, IT’S A TO-DO LIST.
• Bosses, please don’t micromanage. If you ask me to do something, trust that I’ll get it done without calling me at 11pm.

I’m sure I’ll be adding more to this as the day progresses.

Dear jerks I work with,

If you expect me to drop everything to help you with something, then you better damn well be prepared to return the favor.

Die in a fire,
Me