Work

You know what sucks: People not doing their job and you getting blamed for it. Lately, at work it’s as if my department is the only one that pulls their weight. The company has been working on a massive project that all the departments are collaborating on. We usually do four every year, this year we’re doing six. No big deal, we’re a good company; however, one of the bosses (the one who is the big motivator and also my mentor) is taking an extended vacation. He’ll be gone this quarter. Lucky us. To pick up the slack, the company hired a guy part time. He’s doing a great job, but he uses different terminology and isn’t a big motivator. He is very qualified in one area of his job, but not another. Here’s the thing. Some people don’t like the new guy so they’re (possibly unconsciously) undermining his instructions by working more slowly.

I am heading my department on this project. It’s a good experience, and I’m enjoying most of the process. However, since this is a highly collaborative project, I am at the mercy of the slacking departments. My work is literally the last thing that comes in. We can’t even start until two other departments have finished most of their work. Unfortunately, that also means that we are the last to know about any changes that occur. And when we’re on a tight deadline, people slacking off and then changing key elements and not informing me or anyone on my department of this makes our job that much more difficult. Especially when they decide to change something major two nights before our deadline, after my department had already finished everything, and causes us to have to rework half of it, and when the best people from my department keep getting moved to others. And guess who gets blamed for not having things done on time. Me.

My job is dangerous. At any point someone could get hurt or even die. We take many precautions against this but with our experienced workers being reassigned to other locations leaving only the young and inexperienced, we’ve have a higher risk of things going wrong. Within the last week, we’ve had three near fires. There was the potential for the whole building to go up in flames.

Sometimes, I really really really hate my job.