The New Org Chart

I haven’t been unemployed since the middle of 2001, and even that period was a relative blip in the scheme of things, a five-month interruption in what would otherwise be unbroken gainful employment stretching back to approximately November of 1996. And the vast, vast majority of that stretch has been spent in largely indistinguishable cube farms in The Big Gray, working the 9-to-5, five-workdays-a-week standard. My point is this: I am no stranger to the sensation of going back to work on Monday morning. The contrast between a weekend of downtime and the beginning of yet another clock-punching week should have long since faded into the sensory background like the subtle texture of a demure wallpaper pattern. And yet. I suspect an inordinate number of my blog posts that end up being about work get written on Mondays. If there’s a reason for it, it’s that work is just so much more noticeable coming on the heels of Sunday, even after all this time.

There was actually quite a stir at work last week, in the form of a sudden an unexpected announcement of reorganization. A bigwig was reassigned to a special task force and everyone who reported to that bigwig was shuffled around to now report to new bigwigs. Ordinarily something like this would have virtually no impact on me, because I’m a contractor and I just keep my head down and do the work that’s assigned to me and give little thought to its point of origin up the food chain. However, in this case, the bigwig in question who was reassigned was the same bigwig who decided, seemingly on a whim when I was introduced to him and he found out I design web-interface databases, to draft me into developing a brand new system for a project he had been rolling around in the back of his head. Since he was leaving, I had no idea if the project would evaporate as well. (If it did, it was kind of a good news/bad news situation; good because I’d be off the hook, bad because I’d be back to having very little to do for the foreseeable future.) I proceeded in my own head-slappingly stupid way to try to ask about this in an e-mail to both my contracting supervisor and the government liaison who coordinates our weekly status reports right after the bigwig told us he was leaving – my contracting supervisor was quick to point out that since the announcement wasn’t official yet I shouldn’t be making reference to it in departmental e-mails and I was quick to feel like a twit who should really know better. Luckily it was no harm, no foul, and the next day the announcement was made officially and a new org chart was provided at the announcement meeting.

Later that same day, the bigwig I had been re-organized to report to (who happens to be that same lady who coordinates weekly status reports) called me into her office to explain to me why I had been left off the org chart. The re-organization had happened fast and several people who hadn’t been in the office long, myself included, were inadvertently omitted, but an even-newer org chart was forthcoming. Nevertheless, I shouldn’t worry about my position. Also, she wanted me to continue working on the departing bigwig’s project, since she’ll be able to make the same use of it that he was planning on. So back on the hook, but with something to fill the hours, at least.

For the record, I had never bothered looking at the new org chart so I had never realized I wasn’t on it. I played it off to my new superior as something that hadn’t fazed me because I assumed things were done under extraordinary time constraints, and I thanked her for letting me know she was aware of the oversight. The truth is I’m glad it all worked out that way because I haven’t had much to do lately (even the old bigwig’s project has been stuck in neutral because I am still waiting for some software acquisition) and when periods of inactivity at work stretch out I admit I get a little paranoid that someone’s going to snap their fingers and eliminate me as unnecessary overhead. So it was nice to have my newly-installed superior personally assure me that I still have a role in the organization.

Meanwhile I’ve spent most of Thursday, Friday and today trying, both vainly and despairingly, to get the new hosts for my server migration project to do their fucking jobs. They e-mail me and ask if everything is working. I e-mail them that it’s really not, explain in excruciating detail what’s not working, give them the means to test it for themselves, and ask them to repair. Then they either e-mail me back to say that they don’t know what’s causing the errors (it’s not like I’m holding out information on them, so what they hope to gain by admitting this to me is a mystery) or to say that everything is fixed and I should test again. Which I do, only to get the same old errors. And round and round we go. The thing is I’ve been in the troubleshooter’s seat before and if there was one rule drilled into my head it was this: you do not say something is fixed until you’ve not only made the repairs but actually tested the product to see that the repairs took in the way you thought they would. And it is painfully obvious these guys do not follow that dictum, because otherwise they’d see immediately that their fixes are nothing of the sort. The other thing that is driving me bananas is that I keep getting passed from one technician to the next. Moe helps me for a while and then punts me over to Larry, and we go back and forth until he foists me off on Curly, and by the time Shemp starts getting cc’ed on the e-mails and I am explaining the exact same thing again for the fourth or fifth time I’m about ready to explode and take a few stooges down with me.


But the so-what-of-it-all is that I am trying to buy a lovely new house and I need this job, so I will continue to show up five days a week and take whatever comes my way. I will also spend some of those days envisioning ways to unsuspiciously get my foot run over by a forklift and settle out of court for a few hundred thousand dollars. That’s all I need, really. I’m not greedy.