Holy Shit
I’m going to punch every person in this building in the face, at the same time. I want… I need… to quit this fucking job. I cannot handle the amount of stress I’m under, and my co-workers only make it worse. Allow me to explain.
In my department, there are several groups… development, hardware, network… those are the ones that matter in this story. We have a network with about 2000+ machines in it. Our network team is adequately staffed, and they do a fine job. The hardware team (my team, that I supervise without officially being the supervisor) has three people in it. Three. Of the three, I’m the only one who works on PCs. The other two work on other equipment. The development team… has more people than the rest of the department combined, and a lighter workload than any of us. I continue to beg for staff and get denied, but the development team adds one or two new full-timers every month. And the network team is getting a ridiculously high-paying position that they don’t even want.
So.
My team is tasked in performing miracles, and sometimes it’s fucking impossible. Other times, like today, are especially frustrating. The head of our development team promised a batch of netbooks to another department on campus… didn’t tell me there was a deadline, just handed me them a few weeks ago and said she needed them for another department. Fine. But I’ve got other shit to do. I have an entire division of campus to keep running with only three full-timers to do it with. She bothers me daily for updates on these fucking EeePC’s. Today, she complains that it’s been too long… I explain, again, our staffing situation… what does she do? She goes to the boss, complains (or sucks him off, as is the popular theory in this place about her), he orders me to have it all done today. Today, where I’m already working on a priority call for our HR director, and where I’m supervising/taking part in a deployment for the entirety of my afternoon.
And none of that even fucking matters.
What matters is this woman making promises about other people’s staff, and not even having the courtesy to tell the people involved. What matters is the brass balls on this woman to complain to management about my job performance, when it’s common knowledge that this place would be utterly FUCKED without me. What matters is that the supervisor she complained to immediately bent to her will, as do all of our supervisors with her, and changed my schedule. My schedule which, by the way, isn’t just mine. I’ve made appointments with people. I have scheduled downtime for the department I’m deploying to. I don’t even have time to prep the deployment and hand it off to someone else now. At this point, it just can’t happen.
And this kind of shit happens to me weekly. This is not normal, not even in IT.
I have an offer from another company… they have a user base of about 350 people, and want to pay me more than this place does. I plan to take it, and I plan to enjoy the day where I hand in my two-weeks here. I don’t think there’s anything they could do to keep me at this point.
Because…
… at this point…
… I’d take a pay cut to leave.
I would do anything to not feel this way, every day of my life. I’m going to die early, and if it keeps up like this, it’s gonna be by my hand. People were not designed to work this way. I found police work less stressful than this. I found retail work less stressful than this. I found my divorce to be less stressful than this. This job that I have… is literally the only thing to ever make me feel this way so regularly.
I have one thing that makes it any better.
When I go home from work, she’s there. I see her smile, I feel her embrace… everything changes. She puts me back in my place, you might say. Puts things into perspective, just by being there, just by loving me. I am infinitely appreciative and thankful for her. I always will be. Even thinking about her, now… it calms this storm enough for me think a little more clearly.
Love is strangely powerful, I think. It is, by very definition, irrational. As rational and logical a person as I might try to be, I find that this completely illogical and irrational thing brings be the most joy. As tough as it is to let go of rationality for that, I think I’m coming to terms with the fact that that’s what it takes. I think I’m fine with that, now.
I love her infinitely… and she has had a greater impact on my life, I think, than either of us could have ever anticipated.
I want to go home.
