The Jobmageddon

Surprise! It’s a Saturday blog post! I haven’t done one of these since the very early days of my blog. I’m going to try to get back to my regular Tuesday/Friday schedule, but I thought I would pop in and update y’all on what has been going on lately…

I know I’ve been pretty vague lately about what’s going on in my life right now, which is very unlike me. My life is generally an open book, or open blog, so to speak.

However, there’s always the sensitive matter of the fact that I have a day job and that staying employed (and employable) is my number one priority. If I could make a living at writing, trust me, that would be the dream and I would do it! Alas…writing does not pay the bills. Working for THE MAN does.

So, I’m going to try explaining what has been going on in the vaguest terms possible but give you enough detail to understand. I’m not sure how that’s going to work out, but let’s find out together, shall we?

Fourteen month ago, I left Satan’s Butthole for a place we’ll call The Rebound Job. At first, it was really flexible and pretty chill as far as the atmosphere. The main thing for me was that we were treated like human beings and not like numbers, which is how it felt the last few years at Satan’s Butthole.

The first eight months or so were pretty uneventful. Then, the floor dropped out from under us. It started with some staff changes. People put in for promotions they didn’t get. People got moved into positions more out of who they knew rather than what they knew. Cliques formed and you had to choose which camp you were in, not really knowing whose camp was going to keep your job the safest.

Then the client started making demands and apparently (as I found out later), one camp was not on board with changes and was not communicating with the other camp so the other camp had no idea that changes weren’t being implemented. In the meantime, all that the rest of us knew was that the client was extremely dissatisfied with us and we were being told to “work more”. What that translated to was that as a salaried employee rather than hourly, I was expected to work seven days a week for the same pay as a forty hour work week.

Ummm…no thanks.

I’ll work MY ASS off for you and give you 110%, but you better compensate me or otherwise reward me for it. I’m too damned old to give a fuck about company loyalty. My loyalty to you goes as far as your loyalty to me.

In the midst of this, I put in for one of two Team Lead positions, which would be considered management positions within the company. The pay wasn’t that much better, but the bonuses (when they happened) were decent and the “prestige” within the company was better too.

Now, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while or you actually know me in real life, then you know I don’t give two shits about prestige. But prestige at Not Satan’s Butthole meant you were no longer a “grunt” and you were treated accordingly. Managers had their own offices. Managers didn’t have to deal with the public day in and day out, other in the case of escalation situations. I don’t recall ever getting invited to have an expensive dinner and cocktails with the owner of the company, but managers did.

It may seem like an insignificant thing, but when you have spent an eighteen year career being a worker bee, you want to get just a taste of not getting shit on all the time. After ten years of posting for positions at Satan’s Butthole only to see them go to other people, and worse, to people with less experience, I spent the last seven years there knowing I would never be anything but a grunt. I made my peace with it. I was never going to be one of “them”. I convinced myself I just wasn’t management material (or trainer material or analyst material or anything other than what I was doing material) and told myself I didn’t need nor want the responsibility.

Then I started at The Rebound Job and I suddenly felt an old spark rekindled. A fresh start might be just the thing to push me forward again, instead of feeling like I was going to die in my chair in my cubicle. Besides, I was being told what a great worker bee I was and how needed I was. I was even told that should a certain someone get a promotion, then they would most definitely promote this other person and I would be a shoe-in for this other person’s job.

Ummm….yeah…not so much. A certain someone didn’t get the promotion and none of us moved up and the whole event kicked off what I have now named Jobmageddon™.

The two camps I mentioned above began The Civil War of 2019. Except, there was nothing civil about it. I managed to fly under the radar for the most part. I’ve always been pretty good at that. I don’t burn bridges. Well…unless someone I despise is on it.

I’m just here to collect a paycheck, man.

As the War heated up, two Team Lead positions came open. I posted for them. There were no promises or guarantees, but by the power of deduction, I figured I was among a very small pool of candidates who would be qualified. We were told we wouldn’t hear anything until the end of the year as the positions were for a prospective new account.

Then shit Jobmageddon™ really hit the fan. Requirements for our jobs changed. Timelines and expectations and service level procedures were updated. People quit. People got let go. Positions shuffled. We were about to be completely short-handed and scrambling to train a group of newbies, but we couldn’t keep any newbies on the payroll because they’d show up for about two days and then decide it wasn’t for them.

That’s when one of the camps took a stand, and to continue using military references because I seem to be on a roll…we watched them walk our Captain and one of our Lieutenants out the door in a fifteen minute span.

Our last remaining lieutenant was voluntold promoted to the Captain’s position. That left two Team Lead positions open within my own account. I was passed over for both.

Not just passed over, either. Passed over and not given a heads-up about it. I found out when everybody else did. Would it have been so difficult to pull me aside and explain things to me first? People that I thought were friends were “in the know” about decisions before they were announced to everyone and they never told me.

When you ask someone a direct question and they lie to your face, you lose any loyalty you might have had. When you ask several people several direct questions over a period of time and they lie to your face, you lose any fucks you might have had.

I remember years ago my mother telling me about working for The Federal Reserve in the early 1960;s. In those days, women didn’t get management positions. She worked there for years and worked her way up from a switchboard operator to an auditor, but that was as far as she could go. Many were the times that she would train a new male employee only to see him ascend to a position of authority over her.

Let’s just say that I’ve had a very small taste of that now and I don’t like it.

Not. One. Bit.

That was the final nail in the coffin. It was a true shit show and things changed daily, sometimes hourly, but I was willing to hang in and help out until that happened.

I mean, there’s usually a two drink minimum before I let you fuck me.

So as you are reading this, I’m finishing up my first week at a new job. For those keeping score, that’s my second “new job” in fourteen months. I didn’t say anything on my personal Facebook page or here because I just wanted to get some space between me and The Rebound Job before I started talking about it.

I haven’t given a nickname to the new job yet. I will have to spend some time there before a moniker comes to me. It’s the same line of work I was in previously, just a much smaller company. I’m really getting in on the ground floor of something and I find that the possibilities are exciting, and that excitement has breathed new life into my old, jaded ass.

They’re interested in my previous Team Lead and management experience (which goes back way before Satan’s Butthole). They think I will fit in nicely with their plans to expand.

My cynical self is keeping a “wait and see” attitude. I’ve been “courted” before and we’ve seen how that all turned out. I’m not counting any chickens before they hatch.

But…

…there is that little part of me that can’t wait to see what happens next. Just when I think I’ve gone completely over the edge of total jaded oblivion, something will happen to give me a spark of hope.

Amazing what happens when you feel like a valued employee.

Stay weird, my friends. Normal is boring.