I Don’t Wanna Work I Just Wanna Bang On the Drum All Day
So this isn’t directly about WoW. But it’s sorta related. In my mind.
When I relocated to Tucson from Boston, I was getting away from an extreme psychologically toxic work environment at MIT. This was an environment that drove out a former Wall Street worker who ended up relocating to Phoenix, and another staff member also left that department and ended up in Tucson. That’s the kind of place it was. 2600 miles should be far enough. It was cutthroat. You couldn’t trust a soul because any sign of weakness and you would be eaten for breakfast and shit out by 5pm. When the department started downsizing and we had to fill out questionnaires justifying the existence of our positions, that’s when it became hell on earth. Everyone was out to sell me down the river to make themselves look good.
The most educated people would start working there and leave feeling that they lacked the competence to tie their shoes. So I moved 2600 miles to get away from it with the combined confidence and self esteem of Billy Cundiff and Bill Buckner.
(yay sports references!)
My current job at the University of Arizona started out great. The $18k/year pay cut I took was the cost of sanity and I paid it gladly. The people were great. After 6 years of hearing how incompetent I was and how I couldn’t do anything right, I came to a place where people actually turn to me for expertise. I was enjoying it here, but at the same time after a year and a half, it’s gotten pretty lonely. I haven’t made many friends – just work acquaintances, and the boys of Tucson have serious defects.
And it’s already started to happen here. Out of the blue came layoff # 1. There’s rumors of there being a couple more. My area was completely reorganized, so that my role changed from interacting with people and processing their paperwork to straight up processing. That’s right. Staring at lists all day. Fun times. To make matters worse, they’re kicking me out of my office and moving me to a cubicle. How demoralizing is that? To make it even worse? On top of the 2nd largest case load, they’re giving me another group of very high strung students. If someone in my area gets laid off, that’s more work for the survivors. Something’s gotta give.
I’m not happy. I can’t afford to work here as it is. That $18k pay cut really hurt. Someone with a Master’s Degree and my experience should not be making what I’m making. I was an optimist a year and a half ago. Now I’m a realist. While a bad day here beats any good day working at MIT, that doesn’t mean I have to put up with it. I’m not as tied to Tucson as I was to Boston. In a way, I’m truly free to pursue whatever I want.
*LIKE*
Aly, you can always volunteer to be the next one laid off and you can just go collect unemployment for a year 🙂 Then travel with Gene and still have a small income 🙂 But you to have to make a stop in Burlington, NC so you two can hang out with Crix and me!!! =D
LOL the problem is they would never in a million years lay me off. They need me too much. My supervisor has said more than once that she will cry if I ever leave.
I don’t know if NC is on any of the routes 🙂
You’d have to poke the driver about that lol.
Poking the driver is your job 😉
And seeing as you manager has already told you that, you should be able to walk into her office and say, “I want to stay in my office, not be doing just paperwork all day, and I want a F***ING RAISE!!” 😀
Oh I already asked for all that. They said no to the office, and offered me $4k more a year which is still about $9k too low. Blah.
*double like*