[RANT] Discouraged, defiant, and just plain mad at work

Discouraged, defiant, and just plain mad at work
By SwoLy-D's alter ego, the employed guy

There's something I love: my job. There's another thing I truly love: earning money because of my job. Consequently, there's something else that ultimately happens because of all that: earning money from working at my job allows me to provide not only for myself, but for my family and to get me luxuries I wouldn't otherwise have by not working.

Don't get me wrong, I am thankful that, in these times of depreciation and a wounded economical state, layoffs, recessions, production reduction, etc., I have a job. Again, I love my job. I have been at the same place for fifteen years. There is nothing I enjoy more than to be a geek and work on a server that solves problems. I usually work on servers that offer information and are pretty low-maintenance and highly visible to the outside world. I love helping my coworkers, associates, and customers. Besides, it's the one job that allows me to reach ClutchFans.net on a daily basis.

So what is there to rant about?

It's easy. Working on stuff that I don't agree with or stuff that, due to some insignificant reason, someone has ordered me to do because "it's the new thing" or it's the "next upgrade" is really what bothers me and makes me get discouraged, defiant, and just plain mad.

I am currently installing and upgrading software on our servers that has been released only last month. Was there research done on the subject? Did we, the people who are actually more knowledgeable on the subject and are supposedly the ones with the expertise and experience, receive any type of notice that this would happen, or did the higher authority even attempt to ask if any of us had any input on the issue? A resounding "no" is the answer to those questions. It usually is "no."

While I know it happens in almost every place, it happens often at my place of work. We're the ones who end up having to fix problems others bring because of the lack of trust behind our work. If we do offer our expertise, it's because there aren't other people outside our work offering to do our work. Many a times, there have been "friends" or just "acquaintances" that say "Oh, at my company, we do Xyz solution for Abc problem... I don't see why you can't do it." Turns out, we don't have an Abc problem and our environment is totally different. We end up having to come in during the wee hours of the morning or having to fix Xyz solution because we had an Acb problem instead.

Other times, we do get the usual "hey, what do you think we should do about Such and Such problem?" and we offer our advice and recommendations, only to hear that the boss or supervisor peeps go out of their way to try to do something else other than what we have recommended. They seem to trust other peeps aside from us. That's fine and dandy... they can... but it also happens that when we recommend something, it's usually in a meeting, and it never gets annotated somewhere for future reference, and we get the "you never said that would happen... did you tell me in an email?" question. This is what makes me defiant and discouraged. Why contribute to a solution if you're not even going to be taken into consideration? It's funny how most things during meetings don't get recorded and then come back to bite us on our behinds. I have, since last year, begun to send my supervisor emails that say something similar to "in the meeting, please note that I said [insert my recommendations] and these recommendations were [shot down, ignored, etc.] and I just wanted to make sure you were aware of this", but in a professional manner. These have helped me tremendously recently.

Working for THE MAN will always have those kinds of nuisances, I know. I guess I am not THAT mad. I think that the only advantage or gain from this is that we hone our troubleshooting skills and get up-to-date stuff done, and we move forward, not back or neutral. I like a challenge but it rarely is a challenge that I've suggested or recommended. I want to do new things, but not because someone else just heard from their brother or former coworker that it's the "new thing."

Regardless of what my problem here is, I wanted to ask if there is something similar going with YOUR job or YOUR line of work, and how you deal with it. I know it was pretty long that's what she said.

Yes, it's a rant (I think the first one I write, ever), a whine, or however you might want to call it, for my 15,000th post. I know I wasted it on this WORK CRAP.

 

#(*$^#(*&^%%)(#*&%!!!!

Ten minutes after I post this stuff, I hear that one of my uncles got laid off. ARGH.

They laid off too many of us when FOX was elected. Unions moved in... less Chiclets were being produced...etc., etc.

That's the last time I let you mow my lawn, joto. Shoot, the way it is up in this here joint, the peeps sitting up on top will NEVER let me move up to nowheres, eh?

No, but seriously speaking, I don't want to become THAT a-hole that runs over peons the way you say top peeps do. Seriously, is that THE ONLY WAY to "do what you want"? If so, then that's really F'd up, yo.

 

I see no one takes ANYTHING seriously here.

I'm just kiddin'... I'm liking it!

No one's willing to admit it. It's catching on!!!