The wurster, the better

When you wake up each day, you have a conscious choice to be happy or sad or frustrated or any other emotional state you want to be in. Most of us, just go with the flow and don’t think. We stay in whatever mood we are in. I was re-looking at some books I have on the Fish philosophy because of some things that came up at work this week. We were talking about benefits, or lack thereof, that we get at work. There is this Fun Committee that is supposed to help us all work well together, but I question it’s viability and success.

You would think that a company would put some resources behind such a committee, but it doesn’t. They try to organize things that we the employees have to pay for. I would think that some subsidy would help. I can remember our company (FAL) before we were acquired and the little things we got that made us feel appreciated. With a big company, they would rather have the money go to the CEO and other big shots within the company via stock options and other benefits they get. Do they really need millions and millions of dollars they get each year as a bonus? Why don’t they share the wealth?

Anyway, I digress. We decided to do some things at work that will help us. We came up with dress up day, greeters day, give a gift day. We’ll contribute to this (whoever wants to) and make it nice. We’ll send gifts to the account reps. We talked about sending Tastykakes or Philly pretzels or gift cards. They challenge us each day with the questions they get from out clients. They do a lot and probably feel unappreciated, too. So, we just need to do some little things to make us all feel appreciated and happy.

Well, Sunday was pretty pleasant, although I worked about 5-6 hours as I did on Saturday. One of our clients (at work) was upgrading their software over the weekend. It was/is my responsibility to take care of a 3rd party software package called Safari-UDMS. This client was more troublesome because he has over 20 databases. Each one had to be upgraded and validated.

I don’t mind working weekends and after hours, but I certainly would like to be compensated for the time. I had a discussion with my manager a month ago about these upgrades and the time I would need to put in. I had assumed that I would get comp time. “I will,” he said, “but it is not a one-for-one hour formula.” There is no formula. It’s his disgression how and when I can take some time off.

I told him that stunk. At least when I was on 24×7 support, I got paid. But now with this, who knows. And I volunteered to do this support in order to help our clients. That’s what happens when you volunteer. My manager wants to know how to do what I do so we can avoid this issues in the future. So, I am working on a document which explains the process.

Dates are due,
Dates are due.
Why, are the due dates true?
Do they make you blue?
Why can’t they be true?
If you get one and it’s due,
What, oh what, are you to do?
If you do your best
And still don’t get it done,
Is that okay or should you run?
Run to the initiator of the request
And have him change
The blasted due date to one that’s sane.
Why do this, you may ask?
Because if you don’t, you’ll be taken to task
At the next review because you didn’t know what to do.
So, let experience be father to us all.
Heed not this call and
You’ll be tacked to the wall.

Well, I had my review and it didn’t go all that well. Apparently, I still have communications problems with groups within our company. Unfortunately for my, I was really surprised in the meeting to read about it for the first time. It shocked me because I felt that I had improved and was on a good road to success.

As part of my review last year, we agreed to tell me when a complaint comes in so that we can work on resolving the complaint at that time. It’s really unnerving to go along for months with no one telling you about issues others have with you. Then it’s thrown in your face. I told my manager that he didn’t fulfill his part of what we had agreed to. I told him I was upset. I told him how can I fix a problem that I don’t know about?

I also noted that I bet this affects my opportunity for a raise. He denied that and said that I am a valued employee and do tremendous work. We will see in a couple of weeks what happens.

On Thursday, I will have my performance review. I feel confident that I have improved significantly since last year. However, we shall see if my manager agrees.