Office Space

So…in April the technology company sent a truck crew to pick up our old photocopier and deliver our new photocopier because our old lease was ending.

The financing company – which is completely separate from the technology company – keeps insisting they never received the old photocopier and that we still owe them for the monthly lease even though the technology company is the one who “lost” the photocopier.

Just how am I supposed to prove I don’t have a photocopier I don’t have?

God my head hurts.

Oh, and as an extra, special, added thing in my day, I gave the four other staff members who are in today a half-day off…and no one has bothered to say thank you.

So I just interviewed for a job at an Association…a job I could definitely do, that they would pay me a very decent salary for doing (OK, so it’s in a kind of barren part of town but it’s not as horrible as the job I had two years ago (a 60 minute commute door to door [shudder] that included a 30 minute walk in a town where you can get pretty much anywhere from anywhere else by public transpo in 30-40 minutes)) for a Membership that, while moderately conservative (business for profit), isn’t completely skanky working for someone who seems to have her head screwed on right and seems to have a similar professional background to mine. And I’ll probably get invited back for a second round interview to “meet the team.”

So why am I terrified?

And why can’t the Thoughts that Come Unbidden ever be about tanned, toned young things in togas serving cold, fruity drinks in a relaxing, spa-like setting?

About a month ago I, on a lark, applied for a job for which I am utterly and completely qualified, a job which had I seen it advertised in the local paper I would have passed by without a second thought. Why, then, did I apply for this job? Because a boss that I like works at this organization.

D. has a grasp of what I consider high-drama in the work-place; after all, he was my boss when I worked for The Tree-Huggers. He knows from stress and being overloaded and having no resources (though given that our department budget there was more than the entire organizational budget at the place from which I just resigned, maybe he really doesn’t). He is big, though, on leaving on time and not taking his work home with him, which he assures me he has been doing regularly for the year and a half, or so, he’s been working for these folks.

So even though he wouldn’t be my direct supervisor, I applied for the job. He talked me up and down, five ways from Sunday, and I got invited for an interview. And apparently I didn’t do so badly at that because they invited me back for a second interview.

Now, my mama raised me right: of course I sent thank you notes. But I walked out of the second interview with the woman who would be my boss’ boss (at least until they’ve hired someone to replace the guy they forced out of the head Information Services position) pretty much convinced that I didn’t want the job. Why, you may ask? For a lot of reasons not the least of which is that I’m always more than moderately suspicious when someone with the title Senior Vice President tries to sell me on the idea that an organization has flexible work hours (sure, lady, maybe for you, but what about us grunts?) and wants the employees to maintain a reasonable work/life balance but then turns around and replies to my thank you note at 9:45pm on a Tuesday when I know for a fact she was in her office at 1pm (let’s see 1+8=9…yeah, a 8hr 45 minute work day sounds “balanced” to me).

Mostly, though, I decided I didn’t want the job because the woman was arrogant (yes, I did get the message about business casual; yes, I picked this outfit for a reason: if you won’t hire me dressed like this you don’t want me working here dressed like this) and just plain wrong about something I consider to be vital to the stability of modern society: the proper use of the apostrophe.

My cover letter included the following sentence: “In addition to nearly seven years’ experience with web site design and maintenance, I am supported by extensive and award winning writing experience, by a Master’s in Film, by considerable customer service experience, and by significant experience managing outside vendors and contractors.” Ms. Senior Vice President told me in no uncertain terms that if she had read my cover letter first, blind, without a recommendation from my former boss, she would have tossed it in the trash on the basis of this one sentence. Why? Because it’s “not seven years experience possessive” nor is it “Masters degree possessive.”

I think I did quite well controlling the mythical fist of death. I merely nodded and smiled politely and in my thank you note replied with this:

I also appreciate your comments regarding the construction of my cover letter. I will definitely be looking for a citable authority regarding the best way in which to refer to my Master of Arts degree. I will, however, be continuing with “seven years’ experience…” It seems a logical form given that “two weeks’ notice…” for resignation from an employment, for example, or “thirty days’ notice…” for the severing of a contract are both grammatically correct. I offer the citation from Lynne Truss’s excellent book Eats, Shoots and Leaves: A Zero Tolerance Approach To Punctuation

Everywhere one looks, there are signs of ignorance and indifference. What about that film Two Weeks Notice? Guaranteed to give sticklers a very nasty turn, that was – its posters slung along the sides of buses in letters four feet tall, with no apostrophe in sight. I remember, at the start of the Two Weeks Notice publicity campaign in the spring of 2003, emerging cheerfully from Victoria Station (was I whistling?) and stopping dead in my tracks with my fingers in my mouth. Where was the apostrophe? Surely there should be an apostrophe on that bus? If it were “one month’s notice” there would be an apostrophe (I reasoned); yes, and if it were “one week’s notice” there would be an apostrophe. Therefore “two weeks’ notice” requires an apostrophe! Buses that I should have caught (the 73; two 38s) sailed off up Buckingham Palace Road while I communed thus at length with my inner stickler, unable to move or, indeed, regain any sense of perspective.

– Truss, Lynne. “Introduction – The Seventh Sense”. Eats, Shoots and Leaves: A Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Suffolk, UK: Profile Books, 2003: 2-3.

My references, of course, proved up (who would be so stupid as to give a reference that would not speak of her in glowing, laudatory terms?) and, as my luck would have it, they’ve offered me the job…at $9,000 a year more than I’m making in the job from which I just resigned.

I most definitely hear dice.

Well…I think I quit my job today. I’m not really sure.

Six months since I took a hybrid communications/administration job, some out of necessity some out of opportunity, with my current employer. Let’s just say it’s not a good fit.

Nor, am I finding, that the organization is a good fit after 18 months or so. The insecurity about making payroll from month to month added on to the fact that I’ve got absolutely no peer group (no one with whom to eat lunch; no one who “gets” my sense of humor) leads me to believe it is time to go.

And, naturally, my boss doesn’t want me to leave. Mostly, I think, because I’m damn good at what I do and he knows what a bargain he’s getting; some because he genuinely likes me (as I do him).

He’s going to sit on what I told him for a couple of days, but I don’t see reconfiguring my job making me happy (after all, are they going to hire anyone as snarky as me at an organization that prays at staff meetings?), and I certainly don’t see our funding problem going away any time soon.

Which leaves me with managing my money really, really carefully and trying to be smart about what jobs I apply for while I run on the psychological equivalent of fumes.

But hey, good news: the minimum wage in DC is now up to $7/hour

I may have said it before here but even if I have it bears repeating: in some ways I am very, very lucky when it comes to my work life.

I know what my dream job would be.

I would love to be able to stay at home, make about $40,000 a year, and do nothing but slice up comps (front end designs created in Photoshop or some other program and presented to a client), and create CSS and XHTML for templates for web sites. I’d need about another five to seven thousand dollars a year to come into the office to do the same thing (it depends on the dress code and the holidays and the distance traveled; I get to show up in jeans and tennis shoes, $3,000 to $5,000; I have to dress like a grown up, I want $7,000).

Despite this self knowledge said job is, sadly not available. But thinking about this has led me to some conclusions about my work life, and one of them is that the Peter Principle is incomplete.

Posited by Dr. Laurence J. Peter in 1969, The Peter Principle states that “successful members of a hierarchical organization are eventually promoted to their highest level of competence, after which further promotion raises them to a level at which they are not competent.”

Such promotion is often a result of an employee showing superb skill at the job in which she is in and, thereby, showing “potential” for rising to the challenge of a position at a level above in the organization’s hierarchy. Often the incompetence shown by thusly promoted workers isn’t because the workers are actually incapable but is merely a result of them being asked to do things that call on abilities outside the ones they used to excel in their previous positions.

The Principle goes on to discuss how successful companies don’t promote to higher levels, ones that require different skill sets, until a worker has shown that she already has the additional skills needed for the higher level job. What the Principle fails to discuss, or at least what is not mentioned in the Wikipedia article nor held in “common knowledge” among business types, is worker satisfaction.

I was promoted in January to a job that I’m totally and utterly capable of doing, and doing quite well. With the exception of a few minor mistakes, which are a result of working with a human being instead of with a machine, my performance in my job as been pretty good. Some things are falling by the wayside because I have too much work; some things are falling by the wayside because there aren’t enough resources in my organization to accomplish them.

But even though I’m doing my job pretty well, I’m totally and utterly miserable. I leave work angry or sick to my stomach every single day. I can’t stand the sight of some of my coworkers because I know that the only time they’ll speak to me is when they want me to do something. And even though I have a huge number of responsibilities, with some of my work goals attainable only if I have blocks of uninterrupted time in which to do my work, I’m constantly interrupted (5 times in 20 minutes on Friday; that was a record).

Given all that, and given the realization I’ve come to about what I’d prefer to be doing, I think I’m going to quit and take a little piece of my retirement early.

I’ve got enough in the bank to take a month or two off before I start to worry about money. There are a couple of jobs out there that are right in line with the kind of thing I want to be doing with my skill set.

Not exactly conventional, but who said waiting until we were old to retire and “enjoy life” was the smartest path? After all, there’s no guarantee we will get old enough to retire, is there?

How’re those for thoughts that come unbidden and slam you awake at 3am?