So you get in to work after an okay if not amazing weekend and start rabbiting away with the shuffling of email and checking up on reports and the managing of log files and whatever else it is you do to start getting into the work groove. Then you get a phone call from your boss who wants to talk with you about what her peer has to say about working with your staff. I’ll give you a second to trace that out on the mental org chart…
One the one, you’ve got the most awesomest new hire in recent memory. On the two you’ve got a history of bad blood and seeming personal vendetta. Two staff members, one quasi-boss, two wildly divergent reviews. So what do you do?
Well, what can you do? You don’t hear anything about the one so you assume everything is hunky dory. You didn’t get all panty-wadded when the one didn’t show up for work because (a) the one called you to say the icy weather made travel from the one’s neighborhood unsafe and (b) no one else in their right friggin’ mind would be traveling to a library or otherwise unless they were under some sort of professional responsibility to do so. That the quasi-boss hadn’t had one of my staff on hand three times this semester might be somewhat revelatory given sufficient introspection. While the other two might brook some level of consternation, with every other institution in the area closed or running on an afternoon-only schedule, I feel this latest episode was completely justified. After all, upon learning of my staff’s impending non-arrival I made the attempt myself. Living on the edge of the edge of town means that I don’t get ice/gravel applied until well after the rest of the city is sufficiently cared for however. With half an inch of ice on the pavement I elected to not sally forth myself…
What really grinds my gears though is that this is then rolled into any number of other complaints that are never voiced to me but for which I am crucified nonetheless. I especially savor the “if we can’t keep one desk staffed before the renovation, what makes us think that we’ll be able to staff two desks?” Because, you know, if you don’t hire unqualified help you have to wait for the qualified ones to show up. But if you wait for the qualified help to show up you take flack for not staffing the desk. This, despite the fact that the desk was staffed whenever there wasn’t someone of my quasi-boss’s ilk around to staff the desk. Not to mention that these hours are before 8 am or after 9 pm. Students just queuing up around the block to take these wonderful hours…
Anyway, the rant is getting progressively more scattershot which is unsurprising given the way in which all this information was more or less dumped on me this morning. I’d love to just collect all the imagined slights over the past four months and dump them on my co-workers without fear of retribution given my position in the institution. Seriously, though, the crap isn’t worth it. The pay is suck ass. The only benefit to the position being the theoretical lack of product release deadlines and reasonable hours. Take one of those away and add in the political crap and I think I’ll go back to programming for cash.
So how was your Monday?