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January 9, 2001 |
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It's back to work today. It's always strange coming back to work from
vacation. My mouse and keyboard feel a bit strange. I do have a notebook
computer, and I do travel with it, afterall why else
would you have a notebook computer. However, typically when I travel, my
notebook consists of one screen, one keyboard, and one mouse. That's not
the way it is normally is… At home, I have three other computers, in
addition to my notebook. They each serve their purpose, and I just don't
have the heart to get rid of my older computers. At work, I have five
computers in my office. Did I mention that I'm in the software business?
About half of my computers are configured with left-handed mice; it's
really a bit of a long story if you want to
read it. If you're wondering, I'm normally right-handed for most things.
So
for the first couple of days, my hands felt a bit awkward. I'm not sure if
it's entirely a matter of your fingers experiencing atrophy. I mean, my
mind is also not quite focused on being at work the first day back. As
much as I like Florida there's something I miss about getting back into a
routine, or in my case, the closest thing to it. Oh, and incidentally I
came to work in the morning…
[Shudder…] That's right folks, I'm doing mornings now…
It all started back back on my last day of work before vacation. Now, I'll leave out some details for the sake of privacy and I'll omit some (most?) names. The upshot of it was that after nearly ten years of work with my company, I seem to have fallen out of grace with my current group. It seems as though my level of work has been unsatisfactory. They put me on probation.
During the meeting, the day before vacation, phrases like "justify your continuing employment" were uttered. Needless to say, I'm not feeling the warm and fuzzies. ["Oh, and have a nice vacation…"] I've had a lot of time to think about it. It has been almost three weeks now.
I suppose the one good thing, if you can call it that, is that I've always been one to thrive under pressure. I remember instances where I was able to decipher long proofs of mathematical induction during a test which I was not able to comprehend during the lecture. As deadlines come closer, I seem to do more efficient work. I'm not sure why it is that the pressure seems to catapult me.
This is particularly true when I feel that someone is expecting me to fail. I have a naturally rebellious personality, maybe it's a part of being multicultural. This happened a lot in high school, I was a cut up in high school during my freshman year. I skipped many classes and even failed one class. Many people wrote me off, saying I would not graduate. I had straighted up after that never getting under a 4.0 GPA nor ever missing more than one day each year. Don't bet against me, I'll do everything in my power to prove you wrong.
The rest of the meeting were just outlining the terms of my probation. One of them was getting to work during more accessible hours. If you know me, I was routinely getting to work at 1pm or 2pm. No more. I was to be at work consistently from 10am to 4pm, and could only have one hour for lunch. There was part of me who was wondering if they were going to track the frequency and duration of my restroom visits, though I thought it might seem a bit hostile and antagonistic for me to ask. Don't you agree?
Other stipulations meeting certain productivity quotas, which most of us know is a bit of a farce, since this depends entirely on the product cycle as well as being micro-managed.
Now, I've been very careful about not trying to assign blame, since you're only listening to one side, me. And the remaining parties are not here to defend themselves, not that I care about them that much, mind you. What are the chances that they would be reading my journal anyway? However, I have always prided myself on being rational and logical and I'm not going to throw that away just because management is being irrational and refuse to listen to reason. It seems as though this was a mandate from upper management, and my immediate supervisor does not agree; it seems like he too was railroaded.
Admittedly, I have been feeling a bit tired lately. My company in particular has been known to burn people out, I have outlasted many folks and am considered an "old timer" with just under ten years. I have outlasted many of the friends I started working with including Len. For instance, a few months ago we were coming up on milestones for three products, all which were important but were converging on the same date. They (management) elected not to move any of them. There were many people who worked on more than one who had to have their focus among them, but still they did not move the date. This is the equivalent of a small hotel housing three conventions simultenously. The problem is that it has been this way for years, and they're not about to change it. It is more cost effective to drive the people until they get fed up and leave and then hire a new person and train them. It's a sad reality; we lose many good people that way.
This new surge of energy from the anger and frustration is enough to fuel me for a while. It was enough to fuel me through three years of high school. As for the probation, it will last until the next review cycle, which is about six months away. It's six months of purgatory. I don't mind being driven like a dog. Mornings? They are going to hurt.
January 9, 2001