It has been a crazy week at work and admist all the stress and hair-tearing I've had a series of conversations this week that have made me start thinking.
The first what a coworker over text. We were discussing our frusturations and she posed a question to me" if I had known work (coming back from being laid off) was going to be like this would I have come back?
I'm not sure I have an answer to that. In some ways work is better, but at the same time it's just as frusturating as it used to be if not worse.
In theory my work load is lighter because there are 5 of us now instead of 3, but I'm training the two new girls, completing my daily assignments most of which have been increased because of the new systems put in place at work, and things are changing on us constantly. A perfect example is this: on the daily task of proofing ONE error was made by an in-house artist, because of this error the new man in charge decided to revamp the ENTIRE way we proof the in-house artists work - because of one error, not the 50+ that were done correctly. This revamping systems is being done on a daily basis.
Add to that the lovely double talk we keep getting. We have been repeatedly told to not use "special treatment" with our customers, and to lay the line down for what we do and what they do. When we try to enforce this with our customers we get beaten down by the customers and the people in charge. This is nothing turly new, just something that has become more annoying because the new man in charge was so insistant on us being able to put our foot down and go to him for support. At least the old way we knew we had to do it and would get no support, there was no dissapointment in that process just annoyance.
Finally, there are the meetings.
My department survived with sporadic meetings in the year plus since I've been there. When we needed to know something we were told, we were trained and it worked because we sought it out. Now because they laid me off, the department got MUCH worse than it already was, and the new man in charge is a micro-manager we have two meetings A DAY. It is not uncommon for these meetings to last around an hour each. Do the math. That means I have only 6 hours of my day to do my job - except wait - I'm also training people, and on the phone with clients which eats about 3-4 hours of my day, so at best I have 3 actual hours of the day to do my job.
The thing is I can't answer if I would have come back if I knew all this before hand. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I needed a pay check and I wasn't getting interviews. It seems pretty obvious that God wanted me back here.
Who am I to argue with God? It'll all turn out for God's will not mine.
There are just levels of geekdom that get hit and there is no going back. This is one of them.
