Okay, not midnight. It's not midnight. But it's late enough that if I start this post now, I won't be finished with it til well after bedtime, which was now ten minutes ago.
This is illustrative of my life. The things I want to do are invariably in conflict with my rut. (To quote Mary Mitchell--and I think I shall quote this often, as it expresses something I've wanted to express for a while:
"...a rut does not have to be a place of squalor. It can be exquisitely furnished and still be a rut."
I wouldn't go quite far enough to call this rut "exquisitely furnished", but it's comfortable--and it's quite definitely a rut. I have to get out of this job or I'm going to burn out completely.
Today's indignities: I walk in the door and immediately Noreen needs me to do something for her--she has a temp starting, and she wants to set him up on Joshua's machine. So I do it.
While I'm setting up the guest account--which she ended up not using--Beverly walks in. "Good morning, Beverly," I say.
"Did you get my message?" Note--Not "Good morning, Gladys," or "How was your weekend?" Just "Did you get my message?"
Now, as it happens, I did--but not when she sent it. The battery on my phone went down, and I didn't charge it til last night. I finally got her message, which was that several students in our program have managed to get their personal computers infected with the latest virus. I figured there was nothing I could do about it, short of looking up the virus on the 'net, and since it was late in the evening, I didn't call her back, figuring I'd see her first thing in the morning.
I tell her this. "Well, you're on call," she says (since when?, I don't say) "so you need to keep your phone charged." I tell her I'm waiting to hear from Stan, the IT guy, who isn't in the office yet. She tells me I need to call the main help desk. I tell her the truth--which is that I haven't yet gotten a correct answer from the main help desk people. She huffs off up the stairs.
A few minutes later, I go upstairs and she snags me into her office. "You know," she says, "you don't inspire confidence in me that you're on top of these things." She goes on about how it's always "excuses" with me--"my phone wasn't charged" apparently is an excuse now. I explain to her that--had she given me a chance to tell her this--I would have told her the steps I had taken, which was to research the virus and try to find out what our options were. The options I found led me to conclude that I needed Stan's advice, but since he wasn't in the office yet, I couldn't get that advice.
Of course, since she's right and I'm wrong, she doesn't want to hear anything that could suggest that I'm trying to do what she wants. But that's all I've got for her, so she switches the subject. "I mean, I hear from Amy that you haven't given her your list for WEEKS now..." (Does anyone remember that I was ON VACATION, for god's sake? We've BEEN through this...) "...and then the whole thing with the cords, and the thing with the printers..."
I attempt--oh, foolish girl--to defend myself. I tell her that I was told to put the computers and the cords into room 103 (which I was) but that the lab was actually in 123 and so the items in 103 had been moved by the main office people. She doesn't want to hear that; she tells me the lab was NEVER in 103. I know that NOW, I tell her--but when I was moving the tech stuff out of the storage room, I was told that it WAS in 103...
"By whom?" she says.
"By RuthAnne," I tell her.
"Oh, Gladys, that is bullshit. RuthAnne never told you it was in 103--I talked to her about this, and she said..."
"OK, Beverly? The only thing I can tell you is, and I'm going to phrase this as neutrally as possible: I have had conversations with RuthAnne where, after the conversation is over, the facts have been changed. I know this has always been attributed to MY mistakes, misunderstandings, poor memory, whatever--but see, here's the thing: I don't HAVE this problem with anyone else. I don't HAVE this problem in any other part of my life. I have a very GOOD memory--I always have--and so it's really highly unlikely that I'm "forgetting" so many things, all of which have been said to me by one person?? I don't really think that's possible."
Again--faced with a fact she can't argue--she changes tack. "Well, all I know is that I hear from Joanie that you're in her office CRYING..."
"Yeah, you know WHY I was crying?" I say.
"Because you couldn't find the cords!" she snaps.
"Yeah, but why would that upset me so much?? How about because of the amount of yelling that was being done..."
"Oh, WHO was yelling?" she sneers.
"You were!"
"Oh, I was NOT yelling," she yells.
"Beverly, you SO were," I tell her. "You know, you tell me I have to work on how people perceive my words and my actions..."
"Yeah, well, this is getting to be a wide perception that you're not taking responsibility, that it's always 'someone else' who's at fault."
"Okay," I tell her. "But you have to understand how I perceive YOUR reactions to me--Every time you talk to me, I feel like the puppy that crapped on the carpet! You're focusing on the cords, on the printer--those were the only two things that went wrong, and they were all fixable--but what about all the things I did RIGHT? What about getting everything set up on time? What about keeping on top of all that?? That's what I was doing--that's why Amy didn't have my list, because I was WORKING and I wasn't even at my DESK!"
"Yeah, well--I mean, Amy tells me that she has to remind you constantly about that list..."
"Okay, you know what? Let's talk about that for a minute--You have to understand my perception of that list. To me, that list comes off like...like I'm being babysat, like you guys are demanding an accounting of my time because you expect me to slack! And yet I'm NOT slacking--I'm WORKING, I'm getting things done--but that's not acknowledged."
"Okay, first of all: That list is because you've had trouble tracking long-term projects and prioritizing. That's the purpose of the list. Secondly--When I went over to the other building, RuthAnne complimented you about the labs, and I passed that along to you."
The conversation as a whole is getting a -teeny- bit calmer at this point.
"And I appreciate that you passed that along," I tell her. "But I'm talking about YOU, about what YOU see and what YOU focus on. Summer program is a perfect example. There are so many things that go into getting that program up and running, and only two things, out of ALL of it, went wrong--but THOSE are the things I hear about. I KNOW I do things wrong--but what about the things I do RIGHT? It's like, 90 percent of our conversations are about what I do wrong--but I'd say I do 90 percent of things RIGHT! I do a lot here, Beverly--I make a lot of contributions--but I never hear about those from you!"
The conversation ended a bit more peacefully--she agreed to try to focus more on the positives, and I agreed to try to inspire a little more confidence--but I shouldn't have to periodically engage in a yelling match with my boss in order to get my contributions recognized. And honestly, this job has evolved into something way beyond what I was originally hired for. That's fine--I don't really have a problem with that--but if they expect me to be "on call", they need to pay me more than I'm making. I think--I'm not sure--but I THINK that the whole "on call" thing might take me up to another salary level.
And there's the rub: Right now, I am in no financial position to be making a career change of any kind. Mortgage, car payment, loan payment, the evil fucking gas bill--those four right there eat up 70% of my net--to say nothing of the other bills, and the dentist, and the stuff I have to fix in the house. I can't even afford to order the distance-learning modules for home inspection. I make good money--I know I do--and I wish that was enough to make me want to stay in this job. But the corporate culture I'm living with is so dysfunctional (I still hate that word, but it's still the most apt word I can find) and so stifling to me. I am not a 9-to-5 person, but somehow I've got myself into a position where I need 9-to-5 money.
At moments like this, I have to admit, I wish LJ was more of a go-getter...but then again, if he was, he wouldn't be the guy I was in love with anymore. One of the things I love about LJ is that he IS a thug, that he can do what I can't--refuse to work a "real" job, support himself on what he makes hustling. (If I was more cynical, or more like my mother, I would say "of COURSE he can support himself without a job--he's got a girlfriend who makes $XX grand a year and is more than willing to pay all the household expenses!!" To me, this is quibbling; the expenses would be principally the same whether LJ was here or not. Do I wish he was in a position to go halfsies with me on the expenses? Of course. Do I wish it enough that I would want him to change his life to suit my wishes? Absolutely not.)
I miss my freedom, is the long and short of it. I miss not being pinned down to a job, being able to stay up late and sleep in, and still support myself. I'm not prepared to compromise my standard of living, so I need to find some way to make enough money to support myself and still have my freedom and autonomy.
Now, if I could just figure out how...
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