P1 “I think his name is Thomas.”
P2 “Are you sure?”
P1 “I’ve been calling him Thomas and he hasn’t corrected me.”
Me “Doesn’t mean anything. Some people call me B and I just don’t give a fuck to correct them.”
P2 “That’s because your name is B.”
Me “You’re one of those people.”
Keep in mind, I’ve never interacted with this person outside of my cubicle. Where my name is prominently displayed.
So one of my coworkers is a gloomy dude. He’s just kinda always signing or yawning. Great guy, don’t get me wrong. Super helpful and nice. But he seems to be upset with so much of his life yet completely unwilling to do anything about any of it.
Job turnover in his department is insane because they run them like dogs and treat them like shit. So the job market here is huge, they just go elsewhere. But Eeyore has had worse so at least this isn’t as bad as that. He used to have a job he really liked but he got injured on the job and lost it. But he won’t try to find anything like that again because at least no one bugs him here. He’s got an injury from said work injury, and he complains about it daily if not hourly. He says the doctors swear there isn’t anything wrong. But he found this one specialist that recommended this band thing that was $400 but he couldn’t find it. So he gave up.
I asked if he’d been to physical therapy “well, I don’t know what they would do” was his response. I told him he should give it a try. Get a referral from his doctor. Oh well, he doesn’t have a doctor. He had one but they closed. Then went on to tell me about all the doctors he’s called. I suggested something else and got a “yeah maybe.” He moved into a great apartment, but hasn’t had time to move his stuff in. He just really likes to complain about how much his life sucks. But he never does anything to try and do anything about it.
I asked B about it (B is my new work buddy). She said he reminds her of Eeyore. Holy shit, he does. He’s Eeyore incarnate. Which I kinda didn’t want to accept because I adore Eeyore and Eeyore is just severely depressed, OK? And then I was like, holy shit, this guy need a therapist and pills. Like STAT. I’m over here on three different antidepressants. We have a cure, my man. But how do you tell someone they really need some fucking pills?
Also, on the topic of Eeyore — the character, not my coworker. What the fucking fuck? Everyone else had houses but Eeyore just had some sticks. Yall couldn’t build him a house? Or give him a tent or even a rainfly? Hell, bring him a blanket to throw over his sticks. Help your friend out! Pooh can’t raise some fund to get him a rainfly so he at least won’t get rained on. Good Lord.
So I’ve been offered the other position in my company. I am currently a software engineer (SW), but I have been offered a configuration management (CM) position. I was hoping the decision would be helped by salary, however, it would be a “lateral move” meaning no salary change. Damn. In SW I have a nice hybrid schedule that’s almost 100% from home. In CM I’d be almost 100% in closed labs. So damn.
Damn. damn. damn.
The thing is, I’ve lost all confidence in my SW abilities — at least at this company. It’s just not the type of SW role I’m used to. It involves a lot of hardware interfacing. I don’t do that. I know nothing about that. I didn’t go to school for that and none of my 17 years of experience has been in that. CM, on the other hand, I can rock out. It’s easier work. Which is why it’s usually paid less. Which leads to my second problem: Am I stagnating my pay by changing? I’m pretty happy with my current salary, but still, it’s to be considered. Though not over quality of life by any means.
Also, I don’t think my current company plans to keep people on hybrid schedules. I think they’re using “hybrid” as a way to ease people back in. If they called for everyone back immediately, a lot would quit. But I really do think they’ll move in that direction. The question is how long will that be? I hate to go on site full time when I could be rocking it at home rolling out of bed and straight the the computer – no getting ready, no commute, no nothing. Makes getting to work “on time” an ace in the hole.
That’s really the only thing I’m stuck on. The loss of the hybrid schedule. But would I lose it in SW anyway? There’s no guarantee I get to keep it. I could be moved to a program tomorrow that needs me in house. Anything is possible. I’ve been shifted around on a LOT of programs in my short time at this job. And I don’t see myself staying at this job long term honestly. This is the first time I’ve said that out loud I guess. Maybe I could make CM long term there though? Hmmm.
Wednesday, I have a meeting with management and HR to ask my questions. They got to ask theirs and had a resounding “yeah let’s hire her.” Now, it’s my turn. Damn, so much to think about.
Damn, damn, damn.
So I interviewed for the new position at my current company. New position would be easier and less open-ended, I feel. Which is great. However, it would also be 100% on site in a closed lab. I’ve gotten so used to working from home! Working from home is fucking sweet. At least give me the morning to roll out of bed and check my email.
So I haven’t been offered the job but I’m already hemming and hawing over it. Arrg.
I wish more people used their cameras in work meetings. I’d like a face to associate with a name. So I tend to turn my camera on a lot more than other people. I don’t get dressed — I’m still in a tank top and compression sleeves and a compression binder — but I throw on a cardigan and turn my camera on.
Today we were about to have a meeting with the customer so my manager wanted to play around with her settings. I decided to do the same. I finally found the blur background (I had never looked for it). I work in the spare room and so my background is actually a lovely piece of art I made myself that is covered in paper succulents and says “Relax.”
It’s perfect for when this was a guest room. However, it’s a little too on-the-nose to my work ethic for work purposes. So Now it’s blurred. Nice.
Now… I also found an option to “soften my appearance.” Now, I do hate the weighty standards and expectations that Photoshop and filters have brought to everyones body images. I, myself, hardly ever wear makeup and don’t touch up my photos (unless it’s going on a Christmas card and there was broccoli in my teeth). BUT. That said… this setting makes my camera not show every flaw in my 39-year-old, sun damaged, PCOS-affected, stressed-picked-at skin. I look younger. I look like I have makeup on. I look like I didn’t just roll out of bed and walk in here.
I cranked that shit to 75%
Sorry, not sorry.
I returned to work today. Well, work from home. Even then I couldn’t actually get back on the VPN until about 2:00, so not much of a work day. And yet I’m stressed.
I mentioned my boss quit. My new temporary boss is his boss. He called me to see if I was online. I wasn’t because my account was shut down while I was on leave. We have a meeting tomorrow to discuss what I’m working on. He also wants weekly status reports. UGH. This feels like a new job. Sure, I started in November. But when I started in November, this was all just temporary because I was gonna be out in December. So I didn’t really have to do anything. Now I have to work. Actual work, not just onboarding and training and paperwork.
I’m terrified I won’t cut it. I have no idea what I’ll be doing or what is expected of me. I’m freaking out.
So yeah. It might also be because my surgical drains hurt and belly button hurts and I started my period today. But still — freaking out.
I’m going to bed early.
I started my new job this week! First week down! Woot! I’ll be working mostly from home for now. Almost completely. Then eventually I’ll merge into a sort of hybrid of the two.
Now, I know working from home is an old hat to most people by now. However, as an essential worker, my ass has still been in a cubicle all year. So this is new for me. I wanted to give my thoughts on this whole thing. Well, initial thoughts. It’s only been one week.
MONDAY: Monday I went into the office for new hire orientation and to get badges and equipment and all that jazz. I found out I’d be working from home. This caused much anxiety. WHERE from home? Mr C works in the office! Where the fuck am I supposed to work? The dining room? My mind was racing. I also had a shit ton of training to do and no headphones so I left around three to nail this shit down. I decided to take one of the guest rooms and make it my office. I rotated the bed against the wall to make room. Mr C took my desk because his sucks, so I took an old card table and set it up in front of the window. Two computer monitors and a keyboard from my old computer set up and mostly there. I stole a reject office chair (Mr C has a sweet gaming chair for his setup). Then I headed to Office Depot for some monitor cable adapters and a mouse and boom! We have a work station. A few Harry Potter books for monitor raises and I have a comfortable two regular monitors plus my laptop set up.
TUESDAY: I rolled out of bed at 7:30 and logged in before giving the cat his meds and grabbing a drink. Fuck me, did I just get to work at 7:30 am? You’re damn right I did. This no commute thing has promise! Dude, I’m not even dressed! This is awesome. The cats curled up on the bed behind me. I like it. I like it too much. But I did end up grabbing a shirt because zoom meetings. Yay.
WEDNESDAY: I get called in for my upgrade badge. That was fast. I park it in my cube for a bit of training (so much training) and wait. When they bring me my badge, the girl next to me who started over a week ago asks about hers. Nope! Ha, I’m a high roller VIP, baby. Then once that was all done I ran three errands and picked up lunch for Mr C and I before getting back to work in my new office set up. So much training. I grabbed a foot stool from my bedroom nook and holy shit — this is what office work is missing. Foot stools. Why don’t we have foot stools? Between foot stool and the cat — I could get used to this WFH life.
THURSDAY: Fake Friday! Also after, literally, over twenty hours of training videos, I gotta get more comfy headphones. Shit. But I didn’t even get dressed today. Still got “in” before 8 AM. Got all my training finished up. Requested lots of role-specific stuff. Took an hour long nap for a lunch break. Talked to HR about December medical leave. Now I’m freaking out. I have to get paperwork and doctors notes and shit. But this is plastic surgery — can I do that? Guess we’ll find out tomorrow. I’m so freaking out now. Apparently you can’t just take unpaid leave like I could at my last job. SHOULD I HAVE STAYED AT THE LAST JOB? Fuck, I’m freaking out now. Gotta get this sorted tomorrow. Also need a white board command stripped to the closet too. Yep. Need space to hang stuff.
SUMMARY: I like it. For now. I don’t feel the satisfaction of finishing a good days work. I’m working more than ever because I can’t just jerk around because i’m “at” work technically. I have to show productivity. However, I don’t get to leave it behind. I feel like I should have done more. Like I should go back and do more. You don’t have that when work is across town.
Also, I need more chit chat in my day. I wanna talk to my coworkers. I wanna go out to lunch. This WFH thing may rock for a little while, but I can’t just never leave my house. How will I make friends? How will I get to know my team? I think ideally, I’d go in twice a week and work from home for the rest.
Those are my first impressions.
The end of this month is stacked! I hate having plans.
This past week was very stressful. I’ve been trying to get everything settled for the new job — and it is! I formally turned in my two-weeks notice on Friday. Mr C was supposed to travel so I took him to get a rental car on my way to work. They didn’t HAVE ANY and his reservation wasn’t for another two hours so he had to call me back to get him. Turns out his boss just waiting until the negative minute to tell him he no longer needed to go. Thanks, boss! My in-laws visited. It was moms first birthday after her death. And I had legal depositions.
Next week, Mr C really will be on travel — it’s a family vacation I opted out of. He leaves today. I’ve got two doctors appointments. One of those being with the plastic surgeon. And our 9 year anniversary is Wednesday. Then it’s Halloween weekend.
Mom’s birthday was pretty upsetting for most of the week. However, my sister-in-law and my brother met me halfway between our cities for lunch. We ate at an adorable cafe. And it was so funny that we all ended up getting hamburger steak. Funny because whenever Mr C was gone, shed cook me my favorite meals that Mr C doesn’t care for. Of course one of those was hamburger steak! So it was really great getting to see my brother and marking the day in remembrance of her. I was really worried about letting it just skirt by and having to entertain my in-laws. But lunch let us celebrate her and tie a bow on it so I could close out that part of the day and embrace the in-laws.
My legal deposition was Thursday. I had in office prep with the Lawyer on Monday, and again over the phone on Wednesday. It was extremely stressful. The defense is going to try to paint me as a person with mental illness faking a condition and trying to cash out. Not that the jury knows that even if I win the maximum we can sue for, I’ll only see, maybe 15k. For a cracked skull, losing a job, taking a huge set back in my career, missing months of work, and being stuck with fucking migraines I have two different medications for. Lord knows I need more medication. And lets not forget the family drama of missing the holidays for 2019 and 2020. After almost 3 hours, I felt like it went probably badly but they lawyer said I did great. Honestly, there were so many questions, I don’t even remember them.
So now the lawyer says it depends on my neurologist’s deposition this coming week. Will he paint me as someone with mental illness, or as someone with a real condition?
Cheers to my last two weeks on the job! New job start date is November 8th 🙂
I want to remember that I’m making a good decision. There will come times when I think I’ve made a bad one, but it’s a good one. I need to remember that after over a year on the job, DeBitch still rolls her eyes when I talk and talks about me behind my back. I need to remember how out of touch my boss is. I need to remember how toxic my lead was. And how even though my new lead is my fabulous friend – that our friendship probably can’t survive her being my lead too. I need to remember that my team thinks I’m lazy (I am, true) and would rather have someone else. I need to remember the gigantic pay cut I took with this job and how much of a financial loss it was staying underpaid for an entire year. I need to remember that the friend I stayed for already moved on. I need to remember companies aint loyal.
I need to remember that accepting this job is an excellent move.
Yep. Yesterday, I formally accepted a new position. I’ll be back up to my old salary and being Mr C’s sugar momma again. He’s very excited. I’ll be happier. I’ll have better boundaries with my new friend. I’ll have a new start. I’ll be on a program that actually pertains to my interests. And I’ll be rid of these toxic bitches I’ve put up with for way too long. No start date yet. Gotta get all the paperwork situated just right before that. But hoping for November 8th. Hoping to put in my two weeks ASAP. In fact, I’m about to go pee in a cup because that’s the very last thing I need to do.
Man, what a rollercoaster! Mondays, am I right? Like a shovel to the face.
My workday started out average. I’m actually finishing up one chunk of work and moving on to another. So, yay. Always good to close something out. Then I had a follow up job interview at 1:00. As in, a follow up to Friday’s interview. So great news, I’m getting offered the job! A verbal offer was made and a written one should be on the way. Nice. Nice. Day’s looking up! I told them I’d be out for December on medical leave so we settled on January as a possible start date. No official offer yet and no official acceptance yet. So riding high on that was nice.
Then a few hours later, I see that my boss called me to his office when I was doing the interview. Okay, whatever. So after a little juggling to find him when he’s actually in his office, I go see him. He wants to talk about team dynamics. So we talk about team dynamics. DeBitch hates my guts. He comments that I don’t speak much in meetings. Yeah well, DeBitch is gonna either shoot me down or talk about me behind my back so I’ve learned to just shut the fuck up. I really don’t like my job and it’s just a paycheck. I’ve been riding on waiting for the next contract since the job started.
He asks about the fact that our team had been seen as the most cohesive – which is bullshit, it NEVER was. So he asks if I came into it this way. Hell yes it was already broken before I got here. DeBitch hated E too and that’s one reason she wanted to bail – and she did bail. And T is apparently for Toxic. Everyone talks about everyone behind their backs. DeBitch hates a third of the team and all of the team hates T. T also happens to be the LEAD. There’s never any positive feedback or pats on the back. It just sucks. Sorry you’re so out of touch as management that you didn’t realize that. You’re part of the problem. Congrats!
Anyway, so then he wants to talk to me about what the team thinks of me. Apparently, I’m on my phone too much. That one is pretty weird. I do pop out to my phone during lunch because everyones crunching and I can’t take that noise, so I duck out to text Mr C and dink around. But it’s lunch, I should be able to do that. I also duck out a lot for medical-related calls or my lawyer. I work in a closed lab, so we have to leave the lab to use our phones. And unlike some other cubicle assholes, I don’t like to talk on the phone in the cube farm and disturb 20 people around me with my business. In fact, I never use my cube phone. Unlike DeBitch and Dwarf – both of which I know WAY TOO MUCH about thanks to their phone calls. WAY TOO MUCH.
So I don’t participate enough and I talk on my phone too much. Apparently, I’m also just an “average” worker. He wants to know if I’m ok with just being average. Fuck yeah I am. Listen, everyone doesn’t get to be above average – yall don’t know how fucking math works. Work is just a paycheck – it’s not my life. I’m not gonna bust my chops for a job I hate, where I’m hated, which pays 20k less than my last job. Average is excellent. He even asks if I see my job as “just a paycheck.” Isn’t that most jobs? Even all jobs for some of us? You think I’d be here if it weren’t for the paycheck? Fuck no I wouldn’t. I mostly kept calm and polite and quiet. Then I went to wash my lunch bowl out and ponder how pissed
I was about this conversation. So I went back and told him I’m not gonna speak up in a meeting when DeBitch is just gonna talk about me later. It aint that deep for me. And if the team doesn’t think I’m good enough, then feel free to put me on a new one. I like most of my team, but I won’t be upset if I’m traded. Trade my ass.
And I’d love to talk to K2 about this. But K2 is also my new lead and honestly, I can’t tell if anything we talk about inside or outside of work is as a friend or as a lead now. She knows I hate my job and am actively looking for a new one. But boss man says multiple team members had these opinions of me. So is she one of them? Should I tell her I got a new job coming? It really sucks because I adore her, but when she asks how I’m feeling is it because she cares or because I’m not working fast enough?
It sounds like I’m being extra because she’s my friend, right? Well, earlier in the year when I was falling apart over moms death she came to me to help me get along on my work. I thought she was just a sweetheart, but no – she was directed to by douchebag T who couldn’t talk to me himself.
I’m codependent, yall. I always think people only like me as long as they can get something out of me. And she did kind of desperately need a hand earlier and of course I offered because I adore her and would totally be best buddies. And we’re gym buddies, I guess, and we work together, so who’s to say it’s a real friendship at all and not just of convenience and colocation?
I need the new job now just so I can figure out my fucking friendships. Jesus, I’m so confused right now.
I live in “Office Space.” My boss literally asked me if I’m “okay with being average.” If you want me to wear more flair, Stan, raise the minimum flair!