Excellent rant Weisshaupt!
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Editorial note: No one needs to read further since it's all sillyness
I guess I was sorta encouraging exactly your kind of response with my "end of days" portion of the thread title.
I find myself vacillating back~n~forth between not GAS so bad that I don't go to work for days on end to being so outraged that they would screw up a sweet-deal scenario whereupon someone could take a few days off without anyone noticing. Some days I literally don't know if I don't care anymore or care too much. I should just appreciate the ride that they gave me.
So you're one of
those guys who turns in their TPS reports without the cover sheet, eh Weisshaupt? I knew that there was something I liked about you ;-)
I routinely offer my employers an opportunity to observe Bentham's calculus (measuring the value of ones work by rationalizing it in terms of the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain). On the one hand I'm old. I'm cranky. And I'm politically incorrect as the day is long (most folks put some sort of smarmy or pithy tagline on their emails - the tagline on all my official correspondence reads: "Political Correctness is tyranny with manners"). On the other hand I out-perform every other member of my "team". I'm not necessarily smarter than they are but I have vastly better instincts and can reason my way through a problem (instead of blindly taking a stab or two and then throwing up my hands like they do). I make things happen. I get things done.
No one EVER has to go back and correct my work.So there's the conundrum - what to do with Surly Soup?
For the four years since Random passed they've been squeamish about saying anything to me (it's all about feelings doncha know) so they did the opposite - they let me off-leash and allowed me to define my own job. Because burying oneself in ones job is better accomplished when one actually works, my definition was an ambitious one that included being the escalation point for the issues that no one else could solve. Having free reign and little in the way of imposed restraint (by virtue of being immune to PC) I've solved a lot of problems that couldn't have otherwise been accomplished.
Throughout my "career" (at one point I bet a buddy that I had been fired from more jobs than he had ever worked. He named 7 jobs and I recited the names of 13 places where I had been fired - out of nearly 3 dozen that I've worked) I've encountered many guys who were intimidated to speak to "management" much less the big dogs. As a game (and since I am not afraid of anyone) I've developed first-name basis relationships with almost all the directors, and upper executives. I've found that this frightens the crap outta my supervisor. He keeps intimating that I will embarrass the team by saying something un-PC in the presence of a VIP when in actuality that exact thing has happened when his more PC drones.
The stresses of Øbamanomics and the natural consequences of ineptitude have taken their toll on my supervisor and he took a step down in order to reduce his personal risks. The new guy appears to be a micro-manager who favors style over substance. I foresee collisions ahead (we've already had a few). He thinks that he can "handle" me all the while that I'm getting him to dance a jig. I recognize that he is smart enough to catch on (eventually) but there's a part of me that doesn't GAF.
So yea, I do the job. My heart isn't in it anymore and have to watch myself to keep from snickering at what those people consider crises. I was initially miffed when my (old) boss instituted a virtual team meeting since the staff meetings represented the only face time with many of them, but I have since rethought it and see it as a good thing. Now I can dial in, put the phone on mute, and play on the Internet while they drone on about absolutely nothing. If I feel inclined I'll offer some esoteric jargon-laced BS report about my current activities. and then I sign off for another week.
And they wonder why they're losing money hand over fist.