mudpuppy
Member
Hi all. I always feel kinda dumb doing these intros. Like I'm standing up in a crowded room hollering, "Look at me! Look at me!" :facepalm:
Anyway....
I'm going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment. Work is going all pear-shaped, my friends are either turning away or are too integrally involved in work to talk to, and my boyfriend's having troubles of his own, so isn't really in a position to handle much more right now. To add to the joy, I was rejected from another support forum yesterday without explanation. That's a real boost to the ol' ego, yeah howdy!
I guess I'm mostly looking for a way to get out of my own head to try to gain some perspective on everything. I know that, according to the saying, when a door closes a window opens, but at the moment there's an overwhelming number of slamming doors and not much appearing in the way of windows. This is my attempt to get a little outside light into the situation.
I know that's not much, but things are so convoluted that I'm not quite sure where to begin. Work was a wonderful place until about 6 months ago when they hired a new person (let's call him NP) with known issues, including being the cause of a precedent-setting privacy violation against an employee about 6 years ago. Since then, for some completely unknown reason, he's been given increasing amounts of responsibility to the point where it seems the entire office is working to his whim. He has control of the majority of important projects, and when our network analyst left he was given access to, and control of, all our servers and employee files. For now I'm safe because I'm the only person working off-site, but suddenly there's a huge push to get me moved to the central office, in spite of a number of work-based reasons to the contrary. Needless to say, I do NOT want to be under the control of this fella. Also since NP started, the CEO has become increasingly distant. Prior to 6 months ago, he would ask our advice, and listen to what we had to say. Since then he refuses to listen to anything that contradicts what NP says. Metaphorically speaking, there have been situations where 5 of us, with supporting documentation, have told the CEO that the sky's blue, while NP has said that in his opinion the sky's green; the CEO immediately goes to the window to admire the pretty green sky. Of course it's much more complicated and technogeeky than that, but you get the idea.
I can't discuss any of this with my friends. One works closely with NP and appears to be as much under his sway as the CEO. When I tried to talk to another, who knows the people involved, her response was to resort to platitudes ("don't jump off any bridges" and "spray yourself with opti-mist") which often made little sense in that context. Since I initially voiced my concerns to her a few months ago she's made herself almost entirely unavailable. Unless, of course, she wants me to do something for her, then I hear from her immediately, but she never actually has time to do more than explain what she wants before she has to run off. So very very busy, dontcha know! It's discouraging, especially because she does know the people involved, so now there's the added worry that she's telling them what I said back when I thought of her as a close friend.
My boyfriend has been having an awful time finding work over the last two years, and is currently doing a job that he enjoys, but that's far below what he's capable of, both in skill and earnings. He's living his lifelong nightmare of being unemployed or underemployed at 50. He's deeply worried that he'll never again find work above the menial, and he's a person who equates his job with his self-image, so he's not doing as well as he might at the moment. Because I work in the same field that he has just given up on in disgust, I can't say much before he gets angry (justifiably so) at the fact that someone like NP can get as prestigious a job as he has, while the BF can barely even get an interview. Add to that the fact that he moved here to be near me, and is feeling a bit trapped by not being as free to get up and move elsewhere as he has been in the past. I'm almost expecting to hear any day that he's accepted a job in another province, and will be starting in a week.
So, there it is. My life in a nutshell, or at least the highlights (lowlights?) of it. Thank you for listening.
Anyway....
I'm going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment. Work is going all pear-shaped, my friends are either turning away or are too integrally involved in work to talk to, and my boyfriend's having troubles of his own, so isn't really in a position to handle much more right now. To add to the joy, I was rejected from another support forum yesterday without explanation. That's a real boost to the ol' ego, yeah howdy!
I guess I'm mostly looking for a way to get out of my own head to try to gain some perspective on everything. I know that, according to the saying, when a door closes a window opens, but at the moment there's an overwhelming number of slamming doors and not much appearing in the way of windows. This is my attempt to get a little outside light into the situation.
I know that's not much, but things are so convoluted that I'm not quite sure where to begin. Work was a wonderful place until about 6 months ago when they hired a new person (let's call him NP) with known issues, including being the cause of a precedent-setting privacy violation against an employee about 6 years ago. Since then, for some completely unknown reason, he's been given increasing amounts of responsibility to the point where it seems the entire office is working to his whim. He has control of the majority of important projects, and when our network analyst left he was given access to, and control of, all our servers and employee files. For now I'm safe because I'm the only person working off-site, but suddenly there's a huge push to get me moved to the central office, in spite of a number of work-based reasons to the contrary. Needless to say, I do NOT want to be under the control of this fella. Also since NP started, the CEO has become increasingly distant. Prior to 6 months ago, he would ask our advice, and listen to what we had to say. Since then he refuses to listen to anything that contradicts what NP says. Metaphorically speaking, there have been situations where 5 of us, with supporting documentation, have told the CEO that the sky's blue, while NP has said that in his opinion the sky's green; the CEO immediately goes to the window to admire the pretty green sky. Of course it's much more complicated and technogeeky than that, but you get the idea.
I can't discuss any of this with my friends. One works closely with NP and appears to be as much under his sway as the CEO. When I tried to talk to another, who knows the people involved, her response was to resort to platitudes ("don't jump off any bridges" and "spray yourself with opti-mist") which often made little sense in that context. Since I initially voiced my concerns to her a few months ago she's made herself almost entirely unavailable. Unless, of course, she wants me to do something for her, then I hear from her immediately, but she never actually has time to do more than explain what she wants before she has to run off. So very very busy, dontcha know! It's discouraging, especially because she does know the people involved, so now there's the added worry that she's telling them what I said back when I thought of her as a close friend.
My boyfriend has been having an awful time finding work over the last two years, and is currently doing a job that he enjoys, but that's far below what he's capable of, both in skill and earnings. He's living his lifelong nightmare of being unemployed or underemployed at 50. He's deeply worried that he'll never again find work above the menial, and he's a person who equates his job with his self-image, so he's not doing as well as he might at the moment. Because I work in the same field that he has just given up on in disgust, I can't say much before he gets angry (justifiably so) at the fact that someone like NP can get as prestigious a job as he has, while the BF can barely even get an interview. Add to that the fact that he moved here to be near me, and is feeling a bit trapped by not being as free to get up and move elsewhere as he has been in the past. I'm almost expecting to hear any day that he's accepted a job in another province, and will be starting in a week.
So, there it is. My life in a nutshell, or at least the highlights (lowlights?) of it. Thank you for listening.
