Category Archives: the ongoing saga of my job

the ongoing saga of my job 1 Comment

So Long, Rob…

Well, it had to happen someday. Rob, of RCC Special Projects fame, finally got another job. Now he’ll get to drive up to Corporate in Toledo every weekday morning, wearing a shirt and tie, and do something fancy with government lending.

In tribute, I made sure the following photos were circulated around work today:


Clockwise, from upper left: Rob playing hookey on St. Paddy’s Day 2006; Rob wearing his Long John Silver’s hat, January 2005; Rob with hockey great Steve Yzerman, Oct/Nov 2005; and Rob eating a piece of shortcake in one bite, July 2005.

I’m not knocking the remaining members of my department… but it’s going to be a lot less festive without Rob there. There are a very few people I feel I can really be myself around — the REAL me, not the fake chatty work me — and he’s one of those few. Honestly, I don’t understand why REAL chicks (read: intelligent, witty, cool, non-fluffs) aren’t beating down his door. Except for maybe his over-the-top cheesy phone voice. 😉

We had a going-away potluck today, and I insisted on taking more pictures of Rob than he would have liked. So, to share with the entire internets:


Rob ended up bequeathing me one of his umbrellas (because I always borrow it when I walk over lunch) and his Long John Silver’s hat (presumably because he already has two at home, but mainly because of the above photo from 2005). Note that the hat not only looks stylish on me, but also now has a hallowed spot on my cubicle wall.

Without getting all mushy and shit… damn, work is really starting to suck on the interpersonal front. If James and Heather quit, that’ll do it for me. I’ll fucking quit and have a kid and do freelance work or something from home.

the ongoing saga of my job 1 Comment

Rambly Job Rant

The story thus far: James and I have been developing and administering Access databases for Loan Servicing for about six months now. Over a month ago, we had thought our “promotion” was finalized — a step up from Associate Operations II to Senior Operations Associate, with a very slim chance of a pay increase. Still nothing.

Tomorrow, Loan Corrections is having a pizza party / potluck for three members of our department who are moving to different jobs. After already having one person move to Cleveland and having one currently on maternity leave, this shorts our manpower by an insane amount. So, James and I have been instructed by management to take on normal Loan Corrections tasks effective Monday and continuing through September, until the department is fully staffed again. We’re literally in the middle of implementing one department’s database, and are having to leave it half-finished as we go back to completing loan changes and double-checking others’ work for four weeks.

We’re willing to Take One For The Team. We can’t say we’re happy about it, but we’ll do it.

We’ve made it clear to our new supervisor that we want to stay with Sky long-term, but that we currently feel as if management is coming close to taking undue advantage of our “value-added” to the department. I can appreciate management wanting to use the resources at their disposal (namely, James and myself), but there comes a point when using becomes USING. According to my online research, as a database admin — or even as an entry-level programmer — I should be making literally TWICE the amount I currently pull in. At least.

James needs the cash more than I do. I don’t really need the cash. We’re not hurting for money, although it can never hurt to save for future expenses (mainly kid-related… or travel-related). And I’m sure that, once we have kids, our expenses will skyrocket OMG.

I’m kind of torn about how I feel about getting slighted on this. I mean, I enjoy what I’m doing. I’m getting awesome experience. I’m using my brain. I’m applying my new coding knowledge to other aspects of my life, like the Lakeshoremen website. But…

I don’t know what it is that would make me satisfied. I’m getting to do what I want, for the most part. Now I want to get paid properly for what I do. Once I get paid more, am I going to think I deserve an actual office (shared with James, of course)? Our own department? A third database helper? And why will I never be satisfied with the fact that I managed to get a decent gig from just coasting along at my stupid bank job and crossing paths with an awesome opportunity, rather than seeking out an opportunity on my own? Is this a problem of self-worth and self-confidence, or just me continually bitching?

Sometimes I think I’m just wired for low self-esteem. I don’t understand why I can’t let myself be a kickass [insert hobby/job here], and just leave it at that.

the ongoing saga of my job 1 Comment

The Latest From Work

At the risk of getting Dooced, let me say this:

Two departments in my building got new supervisors today. One new supervisor introduced herself to all her employees, shook their hands, learned their names, and was generally cordial by all accounts. The other supervisor spent the day moving into her new office, sitting alone in said office, and being unresponsive to e-mails.

Guess which one was mine.

She’s had a busy day, so I’m willing to cut her a little slack. If she doesn’t a.) hold a department-wide meeting or b.) at least reply to my pleasant “welcome to the department can we have a meeting about the database at your convenience” e-mail, only then will I start to become truly hesitant about this new supervisor.

the ongoing saga of my job

Back To Work

Been back from vacation for a day and a half now. Having trouble concentrating this morning. Good excuse to blog.

Lots of weirdness happened at work while I was gone. Our supervisor had already told us that he was leaving the department, so that was no surprise. His replacement was announced in my absence, though, and was met with lukewarm enthusiasm at best. His successor is a supervisor from another department, which left that department with a supervisory vacancy. In turn, yet another supervisor from another department — the department for which James and I are currently developing a new tracking database — is moving to fill *that* vacancy. Which leaves the department with which we’ve been working currently in limbo. So, the supervisors are having a nice little Chinese Fire Drill, people are leaving their respective departments like rats from a sinking ship, and James and I are a bit dazed.

The timing of the announcement was impeccable, too, being that I was on vacation last week and James is on vacation this week. So, he was pretty much flying solo last week, apart from us trading a few update emails, and I’m flying solo this week. These two weeks are enough to confirm our suspicion that this job really does require two people. It could be that we’ve just grown used to bouncing ideas off of one another, or it could be a function of my struggling confidence level, but I hesitate to make any drastic changes or embark on any new projects without confirming with James first.

That said, I should probably try to focus and make some headway on something.

geekspeak, the ongoing saga of my job

Geekery, Continued

Everything just seemed to fall into place.

We had talked to our department’s trainer, and asked him if he thought we should train everyone on what we had of the database so far, or whether we should wait until the database is complete — god only knows when that will be. The trainer agreed that we should train our department ASAP, and fill them in on any additional updates as necessary.

We worked on borrowing a projector and a laptop, and making sure one of the nearby conference rooms had network access. Then, a supervisor from an IT-based department upstairs said that we could just use their training room, already equipped with a projector and laptop and room for eight people — exactly big enough to train half of our department at a crack. We booked the room for a week and a half in the future.

We continued to work on getting reports and statistics-gathering forms functional in the development copy (aka the test database). We met with our supervisor after he returned from vacation earlier this week, and got his reactions to the database and the reports we’d created for him. He gave us some suggestions for tweaking the reports, but said that we could go ahead with implementing the statistics-gathering from team members. Month-end is tomorrow, so the new method of gathering stats in the database would be implemented effective Monday. Just in time for training.

Everything was ready to import into the live database yesterday afternoon, and we did our update at 4:30pm yesterday. The import had only one minor glitch in one report, due to some previously-entered data that invalidated the referential integrity we’d set up between tables. We came in early this morning to fix the problem, rather than staying late yesterday. After correcting the data in the main log table, everything was fine. The database was essentially complete. Again, just in time for training.

Our first training session was at 9:30am today. I stood at the front and did the public speaking, while James sat at the laptop and did the demonstrating. Other supervisors in the loan area were invited to attend one of the two sessions, so that they might be able to see whether an Access database might benefit their department. One supervisor was in attendance for the first training session, and our own supervisor popped in for the first half of that session, making a full house.

The first session took just over an hour, including questions. That was a little longer than we’d counted on, as we’d scheduled the second session to start at 10:30am.

The second session actually ended up starting at 10:45am, and one more supervisor was in attendance, in addition to the supervisor of all Loan Servicing departments. (No pressure.) Our supervisor came in for the second part of the session this time. This session took almost exactly an hour.

Overall, we did well on our two scheduled training sessions… but we weren’t done yet. Two team members who process payoff checks had asked if they could wait until 3:30pm to train, since the end of the month is a busy time for them. We agreed, and ended up having four people in an afternoon session: the two payoff ladies, one supervisor from yet another department, and one team member who had gotten caught in a 45-minute phone call during the 10:30 session and hadn’t been able to attend. That session was a little awkward, being that there was such a small but diverse audience, but it seemed to be well-received nonetheless.

We didn’t get much actual work done on the database today — combined a couple reports into one (thank jebus for union queries) and started working on calculations for another report — but, overall, considering all the training we did, I think we had a productive day.

The next potentially stressful issue? How to tell our supervisor that we want a change in job description before we work on databases for other departments. Neither myself nor James are terribly good at standing up for ourselves… but we need to stand firm. It would be easy for The Man to take advantage of our apparently rare and valuable skills. If they had to hire new people to replace us, though, any self-respecting Access database programmer or administrator would scoff at our current wage.

I hate being a self-serving jerk. Our boss is cool, though, so I think we should be able to get our point across in a non-threatening and un-jerk-like manner. We’ll see.

Even if I do remain a mere Operations Associate… I love being able to do what I enjoy at work. This is why I went to college. I’m glad I wasn’t just chasing rainbows.