I Will NOT�

2002-09-11

I'm tired. Been a long frelling day. One of my bosses, I think I have a dozen, asked me to do a years' worth of work and then told me it shouldn't interfere with any of my ongoing work. This is the one flippin' boss that I trust. The one that I think is trying to do the best job that he can. The one that I've known for about a year and like better now than when I first met him. Trust more now than when I first met him. I can say that about maybe four people out of the six hundred I've met since I first got this job in 1996.

What do I do now? I don't want to tell him no. I don't want to tell him that this job can't be done. Of course it can be done. It just takes an enormous outlay of time.

They want to bring in a temp to help me. A temp could probably help me by faxing the stuff I need to fax and filing the stuff I need to file. Not this stuff. The only reason I can do this at all is because I've been with the company for seven years. I know our products. I know our customers. I know the way we do business. I know seven freakin' years of our company's history. I've been through five acquisitions from the position of lowest man on on the totem pole. Read this as lower than dirt.

I'm still lower than dirt. I've thought about going salaried. I would, except my boss would abuse it. I've seen what he does to his other salaried people. I don't want to be them. I'll take my overtime. That, and only that, makes them think twice about keeping me past my regular hours.

My regular hours consist of about 50 hours a week now. I like this company, though I might not like my current boss. It actually shows concern for it's employees. I've seen it, I've watched it for seven years. It's a good company to work for. I think they get their money's worth out of me. I try very hard to make sure that they do.

We made a deal, my company and I, when I first started working for them. I will do this for you and you will do that for me. That's the deal. As long as you're happy with the deal and I'm happy with the deal, that's great. If one or the other of us is unhappy with this deal, it is our responsibility to tell the other.

There have been two points where I was unhappy with the deal. One, very early in my career at this company where I couldn't deal with my boss.

Five years later, he left. For 'personal reasons'. I was his administrative asssistant. He had seven admins in sixteen months. It took them for freakin' ever to get rid of him, but they did.

The second point. I'd been with the company for three years. Working customer service for all but three months of that time. I was grateful to have had the opportunity to work where I worked. They didn't fire me when it would have been easy to do so, but they also didn't promote me. Or anyone else.

I looked. This was at the beginning of the time when it was possible to access the Internet from work. One of my co-workers reported that I had been looking. I don't think that she got the results that she was looking for. She was hoping they would fire me because I was looking for another job while I was at work.

They called me in and said that they had heard I was looking for another job. I said 'Yes, of course I am. You never promote anyone out of customer service.' I think I was lucky. I said the right thing. I could have acted like it was a guilty secret, but they were already getting more than their moneys worth out of me.

So I just gave them the truth. I'd tried for two technical jobs, both of which, while maybe not qualified for in terms of a college degree, I was certainly qualified for in terms of technical knowledge. The people I had to apply with directly wanted me to work with them.

They turned me down. They had good reasons. There were people already doing the job with the companies that we acquired. But that didn't matter to me, so I looked elsewhere.

Now I think it's happening again. The knowledge I have is valuable. Not to me. Not to anyone else. But to this company. I don't want to give up my life for this company. I'm not willing to have my evenings and weekends sucked up for no purpose except ego. My current boss would devour my life for no other reason except that he could.

I want to give this knowlegde to my company. I want my company to benefit from what it's given me. But I WILL NOT be eaten alive by corporate America. I will not subsume my life to the god of profit. If I can figure out how to stay where I am and give what I have, I will. But I WILL NOT sacrifice my life on the altar of Corporate America.

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