So THAT'S how it works...

...as in it doesn't. Nothing has changed. No one is any better at their job, in fact I'd hazard a guess to say I'm worse at my job. Tickets are still not being entered. Jobs are still being called done when they're not. And I'm still apologizing up and down when things go wrong.

No one has said a word about my meltdown., at least not to my face. My immediate supervisor appears to be none the wiser. I don't believe she's that good of an actress so I have no clue what if anything is happening, but my view says nothing is happening.

So I got a Sunday paper and marked up the classified's. Then I updated my resume. Then I sent the new resume out. But I'm not sure I really want another job where you submit a resume. Maybe I just want to wear the blue vest and say, "Thank you for shopping at you-know-where."

So How's This Work?

I have no idea how this spill your guts to HR thing works. I know HR said that it would take some time to address the issues raised. I spent Monday with a rictus of a smile on my face, barely communication with my co-workers. Who knows about my meltdown? Does management now consider me a liability? A loose cannon? Disgruntled? Expendable?

I've never had a situation that I ended up taking to HR. If it wasn't something I could work out with my co-workers myself, I just made it a learning experience and moved on. What's different now? Why do I give a rat's ass what happens to this company? Why don't I just quit? It's just a job and I can get a job anywhere. Do I care so much because until recently it was the most fun I've ever had working?

I have no illusion that I'm irreplaceable. No one is. I will say that I'll be hard to replace. When I segued from my career in film to being a stay at home mom, I definitely got great satisfaction out of the fact that they had to hire three people to replace me. One to handle the database administration, one to handle the network administration, and one to do everything else I did. But it was also sort of sad to think that I worked that hard. I missed out on a lot of family time by doing that and working so much turned me into a lunatic alcoholic. But I can feel myself turning into the lunatic again and I sure don't want to go back to drinking so I guess I have to trust that whatever is going to happen will happen and it's in God's hands now.

Meltdown

So Friday afternoon I had a meltdown in the HR Director's office. After spending my morning fixing a machine that was deployed to do a specific job without the critical piece of hardware needed to do that specific job and discovering that a co-worker was using out-dated procedures to complete tasks, I'd reached the breaking point. I even took a nice extra-long lunch to try and adjust my attitude, but there was no turning back the clock. That camel's back done broke.

And I didn't even go to HR to discuss it right then and there. I just wanted to make sure that HR could find time in their schedule for me the following Monday, once I'd had time to calm down, reflect, organize my concerns and even possibly offer some solutions rather than just blathering on about all the things that are wrong with my department. Well that was not to be. The Director took one look at my face, closed the door and told me that I looked like I needed to talk, let's do it now.

I flitted over all the issues in my usual rambling, incoherent, couldn't ad-lib if my life depended on it fashion. I know I got my points across and I managed to do it without mascara running down my face like an over-heated Elvira on crack. But I didn't get to offer solutions like I wanted. I've lots of ideas to get the department back on track but since I've spent the last six months complaining about things that never got changed I figured that maybe the problem in the department is me, not my supervisor, not my co-workers. All those wonderful ideas are covered with dust in the back of my head.

So I took HR's advice to have a relaxing weekend and try not to think about it. Some of the issues I raised they're aware of , others they were not. I really do like the people I work with, and I'm not looking to get anyone in trouble but really, if they don't want to do a better job then they need to quit dragging the rest of us down with them. Or at least the company needs to stop punishing the whole department for the actions of a few. It's worse than grade school!

I did spend a little time this weekend putting together a list of suggestions for improvements. Perhaps I'll even get to share them with the company...if my supervisor doesn't fire me for being a rat-fink.

It's a good thing I don't drink...

...but the only way to stay sober, at least for me, is to take an active part in my recovery by attending meetings of alcoholics anonymous, keeping in touch with my sponsor, living the 12 steps, and practicing the principles I've been taught there. So last night I attended a speaker meeting. Because I do these things, there are people that are alive today. Specifically my supervisor.

Yes, I'm going to break the cardinal rule of blogging. The commandment that says Thou Shalt Not Blog About Work. Why? Because I don't give a fuck. I know my job, I do my job and I do it well. I am an anal-retentive-detail-freak and that makes my work as close to perfect as you can get. And that's why when you look at the performance statistics for my department, a department of four, fully 40% of the work completed by my department is done by me. Why? Because after dealing with the nimrods, I mean my co-workers, in my department, people have learned that if they want something done right the first time, your best bet is to call me.

Why do I arrogantly make this claim? Because it's come to my attention that I've been denied a promotion and accompanying raise due to the inaction of my supervisor. And since there isn't much I can do about it, I've decided I don't give a fuck who reads this and who gets offended by it.

Let me make it clear that as far as people go, I really like my co-workers. I've reached an age where I can separate "I like you" from "Hey asshole, your failure to follow procedure is making more work for me." The one has nothing to do with the other. If I like you and I work with you, I can ream you a new asshole over the fact that you have the head of customer service crawling up my ass looking for polyps at 2:00 pm and still buy you a beer at 6:00 pm. Working with you and socializing with you are two different things.

Let me make it clear that as a person I like my supervisor. She's a really nice person. But nice doesn't get the job done. She is completely ineffective when it comes to lobbying the board room for the things my department needs to function to the best of it's ability. She's so busy being nice and polite and trying to be liked that she's become a doormat for the vendor that supplies some equipment to us. She is completely ineffective at getting my co-workers to do the job to the best of their ability. Seriously, with all my complaints about the same issues over and over, if this is the best of their ability then they need to quit their day job and find another gig.

The job is not that hard. We have detailed written procedures for almost everything that have been fine tuned over time, complete with troubleshooting tips. We have an easily searchable helpdesk with detailed notes on service calls and there's not too many new issues that crop up that haven't been covered before so when an end-user has a problem that has already been solved somewhere else, it's just not that difficult to check out the trouble tickets and see what worked before.

She's either incredibly smart or incredibly stupid and frankly I'm leaning towards the stupid. She asked me to act in a supervisory capacity and mentor my co-workers, which I did without benefit of title or pay increase, for the last quarter of 2006. But friendly coaching didn't seem to have any effect on their behavior and I got fed up with that and told her so back in January. She then asked me to keep her in the loop when I ran across things that weren't being done in the proscribed manner. I did this by forwarding her the helpdesk tickets where procedures were not followed, issues were not resolved due to a lack of research into the issue /interest in the issue on the part of the technician handling the call, and where I thought user's behavior was creating the problems we were having to fix.

For six months I've been "keeping her in the loop" in this fashion and nothing's changed. I figured she either thought I was being picky or just didn't give a damn. I come to find out, she didn't know what the "forwarded ticket" emails were so she never bothered to click the link and read the ticket to see what was going on.

Finally last month, an overworked and over-burdened me sent my co-workers an email pointing out two instances where I had just spent hours apologizing to department heads about something that was done incorrectly because of a failure to follow procedure. I blind copied my supervisor on the email...and she replied-to-all.

Then during the course of my annual review she had the balls to tell me that because the department went to hell in a handbasket in January I did not get a promotion and raise. Because of her failure to address the problems that I had clearly pointed out to her, I got screwed. And I'm not OK with that. Not OK in the least. I don't give a shit if I get fired over this. I can have any job I want any time I want and if I lose my job because I pointed out that my supervisor didn't do her job, so be it. But when I walk out that door, everyone will know that the problems in the department are not a result of my action or in-action, but hers. I hope HR has a fire suit for my exit interview...

Take it easy...

I thought I would share with you what Vampyra did to my hand. You can't even see a bruise on the other hand, the one that actually got a successful IV insertion.

But enough about the damage. The good thing is that my gallbladder was in bad shape for a long, long time and I didn't even know it. Since the surgery I've eaten all the things I normally eat with no problem. I've even eaten some things I don't eat all that often, like lobster. We had a lobster feast Saturday night, just two days after surgery!

I enjoyed lazing around for a few days without any obligation to do anything at all. It was sort of weird, but really nice.

I had planned to return to work Monday morning, but when I got in my car and tried to operate the gas and brake pedals, my abdominals objected. I tried again later in the day. You know how you always feel better as the day goes on? So I went out to my Monday night AA meeting and did just fine. I did better than just fine. I stopped at the grocer's on the way home for some must have items like toilet paper and milk. When I went to start my car it was dead. Deader than it's ever been. I've just replaced the alternator in the past year and I didn't notice that the amp meter was not registering so I'm thinking battery. I got four years out of a two year battery so I'm happy with that. Fortunately the grocery store was just down the street from Wally World and the tow truck was able to get me there before closing so I put another two year battery in it. Needless to say I was exhausted when I got home.

Vampyra

So let me tell you about my friend Katie, aka Vampyra. Katie is a nurse at unnamed surgical center. She took me back to the cubicle that was my surgical prep area. This is the area where I change into the wonderful hospital gown they love to make you wear, give you pre-op drugs, ask those last minute questions and make you sign the waiver (right after you've packed your eye glasses in the bag of personal items) absolving the medical team of all liability should things go dreadfully south when they're performing the procedure. Oh, it's also where they hook up your IV.

Katie became affectionately known as Vampyra after two failed attempts to hit a vein when hooking up my IV. I have bruises on the back of my left hand and on my left wrist that might go away before 2010. She was persistent. She dug and dug in each of the piercings in a vain (pun intended) attempt to hit the mother lode. Now I have huge veins. You'd have to be blind to miss them. If I wasn't so squeamish about needles I could easily be a heroin addict. Granted, I may have jinxed her by mentioning my fear of needles, but still, she's a fucking nurse. What is this, her first day out of school?

I had, at this point, decided that if she failed on the third attempt, I would put my clothes back on and reschedule this for her next day off. Three dry holes was gonna be my sign from God that today was not gonna be my day. Katie, sensing that she was very close to death, decided that cowardice was the better part of valor and passed the task of starting my IV off to another nurse. A nurse named Red. I took that as a good sign.

It''s All a Blur...

So Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were all spent getting ready for Thursday. I had to be at the surgical center at the butt-crack of dawn. The surgery went fine. It took a little longer than expected because my gall bladder was a little more fracked up than they expected. Turns out it's been in bad shape for quite some time and is probably the cause of much of the upper back pain I've experienced over the past few years.

I'm sort of angry about a couple of things right now.

One, I think that the medical community should have connected my back pain with my gall bladder a long time ago. One of my back issues is a classic sign of gall bladder trouble and since nothing else they did to relieve that issue resolved it, you'd think they'd dig a little deeper for the cause.

Two, my partner is totally worthless when it comes to having my back in a hospital setting. I know she doesn't like hospitals and doctors and all that shit. Probably because she likes to ignore when something is wrong with herself in the hope that it will just go away. Well fine, that's you and your shit. But don't tell me you're going to be there for me when you aren't capable of being there for me. We were talking yesterday evening when the anesthesia had finally worn off and I was mentioning something or another that I'd told her before. She said no, she didn't remember what I'd told her. She'd tuned it out because it was yucky and she didn't do yucky. Excuse me? So when I was still in out like a light recovery and my doctor came and talked to you about what went on in the operating room, you just tuned him out? And you call that being there for me? When I had the nerve to be upset about this revelation she got pissed...at me. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to handle this one. Personally, I think it's a deal breaker.

Return from the 3rd World

So the Missus made it back from India. She was amazed at the poverty. But the most amazing thing to her, was how happy these people are. These people with nothing. They are the happiest people on earth. They don't know they have nothing. Let me clarify that, they have nothing if you compare their daily lives to the daily life of the average American. They are grateful for the little they have. This may have been a life changing experience. Everyone should send their cranky, spoiled-rotten, Nike wearing, cell phone toting teenager to a rural area of India for two weeks.

Naturally her internal clock is fracked up. She got in about 11 a.m. and after bringing me up to speed in the whole trip (her cell phone didn't work there and internet access was almost non-existent) she slept for about 4 hours and then I woke her up for a few hours in the process of getting her back on Kansas time. She went to bed again at about 6 p.m. and slept through until about 10 a.m. this morning at which point I caught her up on all the news she missed while she was away from CNN.