Relatively light personal things after the jump.
There is a draft of a negative (toward myself) personal post that I have composed and edited dozens of times over the past months. I’m not going to post it, but I’m going to include some quotes from it. It has to do with my work situation, which has finally started to turn up.
“I’m telling you this because I always post about my neat cars and wonderful family or comment on your neat cars and wonderful families. I am also a flawed human being with some struggles that I do my very best not to talk about.”
When I see personal posts from Oppos. I empathize, I really do. I’m an overly sensitive person, sometimes I’ll hear about something shitty that happened to one of you and I think about it for days/weeks sometimes.
“I have been actively looking for 3 years, but I never post about it/mention it because I don’t want to (superstitiously) hurt my chances of finding a new position. When I see other Oppos posts about needing/wanting/searching for a new job I fuckin’ HOPE for you guys so hard! First of all because we’re all internet pals and I want everyone to do well and be happy. Secondly and again (superstitiously and selfishly) hoping that someone might to the same for ya boy.”
I got politely loud with the right people (Our CEO, HR, My Boss). Annnnnnnnd.. I’m being promoted, they’re allocating me funds for a help desk person, and I’ve been moved to a big new office on the opposite site of our building. I can even see outside through someone else’s office! Here I thought for certain I was going to have to leave, and am still in the process with one company.
Step one was the office move. I was stuck in what I like to call “The Negativity Corner.” You know the typical sort of people (in every office ever) that have done the same job for 30 years in accounts payable or some shit? They bicker, they gossip, and they are the poster children for the “this is the way we have always done it, so this is the way we do it” mentality. Well, I was stuck in the middle of 3 of them! I don’t care how positive you are, if you have to hear negative people be negative all day every day, it wears and wears until I’m miserable by default.
It’s an interesting time at my company. We’re in a “growth at all costs” period and the company is becoming divided between the progressive types, and the “this is the way we have always done it” types. I hate having to jump into the office politics game, but I did it, stuck up for myself and now I am reaping the benefits.
To give you a little clarity. I started my job almost 6 years ago as the IT Manager. We had less than 30 employees in one office with one little Comcast business class router... Now we’re rolling 5 offices across the US more than 80 employees and IT infrastructure to support it. It was just my boss and I, but after a year he was promoted...So as we more than doubled in size we lost one IT person. If you did the math...it’s just me. I know this isn’t uncommon, but it’s dumb. I’m not able to do anything strategic because I’m dealing with help desk issues until 3pm.
Our companies founders just took off for a vacation together, and our CEO sent me a super nice text from the airport. It felt great! I have hustled so fuckin’ hard for this company since my first day, even when I was pissed, even when I was sad, even when I cried through a few of my lunchtime runs because I felt completely trapped between a job I hate and a family I adore.
This is just the first step, but I already feel a lot better!
Happy Monday!