I haven’t written anything, really, since September. There’s lots of reasons for that, but I haven’t really felt like writing. For the most part, my life has been living hell, mainly because of work. The only thing that’s kept me from swallowing a shotgun is that I really have met the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. She’s wonderful in ways I can’t begin to describe. So, to catch up, I guess what I’m going to do is compartmentalize my life into three areas, and go into them sequentially — work, love, everything else.
So, let’s start with work…..I’m just going to use initials, instead of real names or pseudonyms. I have trouble keeping up with the latter, anyway. Excuse the stream-of-consciousness, but I can’t really help it.
I mentioned in my entry on 9/22 that the contract I’d been hired for got cancelled. To me, it wasn’t all that big a deal, because I was already working on these research projects we’d gotten contracts for. The guy (RB) who’d originally been hired to manage the research projects took over my slot on the other contract. No big deal, really, except that he, in essence, got promoted ahead of me, even though I’m more qualified, and is making more money than I am, even though I have just two years fewer experience, but I do have a degree, and he doesn’t.
Who it was a big deal to were the three people who were working on that contract, RB, WB, and BG. Because there were a lot of things to wrap up with the project, they had work until about the end of October. I, meanwhile, was up to my ears in work with the research projects, as well as writing proposals for new projects. In the span of six months, I wrote probably close to 300 pages of technical papers.
I guess that’s probably a good enough excuse for not writing here….
Anyway, things around the office at that time were pretty darn miserable. My boss, thankfully, was out on travel quite a bit, but, the company missed payroll repeatedly, and basic needs weren’t being met. I wrote about my trip to Phoenix back in September — I filed an expense claim for that trip, as well as another short trip, two days after I got back. I’d filed another claim a couple of weeks before I left, most of which was around $300 in priniting costs incurred on behalf of the company president, preparing presentations for a briefing they were going to do. All told, the company owed me close to $800.
After a month of not getting reimbursed, I started getting really pissy about it. I talked to RB about it several times, as well as the office assistant, MK. I kind of snapped at my boss one afternoon, and he called in RB to ask wtf was going on with me….why my attitude was so bad. RB told him about my expense checks….that I’d been working 60 hours a week, and struggling to make my bills, because the company hadn’t paid me. From that point on, my boss has been totally different to me. I really haven’t had a problem with him. Maybe he felt guilty about pukin’ in my car, but I don’t think that’s it, really. I’ve bailed the guy out on a lot of stuff, and I think he finally realizes that. Maybe I’m not the sunniest person around, but I do get the job done, and done well.
In October, too, I interviewed for two jobs. One I could have had, if I’d wanted to take it. The other I bombed the interview. The one I could have had, I ended up not taking for two reasons… One, it would have ended up being about a $10k paycut after I calculated in the costs of my benefits. The salary wasn’t too much different, really, only about $5k less, but they didn’t pay for a lot of things that are included in my current job. The other reason I didn’t take it is because I thought I wouldn’t like the work, and didn’t feel like I could commit to staying in the position for the long-term. One of my friends is part-owner of the company, so I just told him the truth about it. He actually had offered me a job, previously, but the radio station beat the offer. I really regret now, not taking the job. I stayed, partially, also, because I’d been promised a considerable end-of-year bonus from my current job. What I’d been told was that the previous year’s bonuses averaged $10k. I figured, hell, I can stay around through the end of the year, and get the bonus. It can’t be that bad….
But, actually, it is. MK quit the week before Thanksgiving, which really cramped what I was doing with the research papers. While she didn’t contribute a whole lot in the way of content, she was excellent at making sure that my writing explained the concepts, and was easily understandable. When she left, I was really on my own as far as the writing goes — the other people in the company can barely read, much less write.
One of the last things that she did with me was attend a meeting with a large defense contractor. Let’s just say that they’ve built spacecraft, and tons of aircraft. With us in this meeitng was a guy the company president had found who he was wooing to become “Vice President of Business Development.” After the meeting with Defenseco, this guy and I got into it the first time. He used a bullshit buzzword term when talking about our research projects, and when it came dribbling out of his peniswrinkle mouth, my boss visably cringed. (I say penis wrinkle, because this guy looks like a dick. Seriously.) My boss (who, at the time, was the only corporate VP), was also unimpressed. We recommended to the president that they not hire walkingdick. He got hired, anyway.
Walkingdick has proceeded to make lots of people in the companys’ lives hell, focusing on meaningless symbolism bullshit, while earning lots of money, and not actually winning any business. Oh, yes, but he’s “raised the profile of the company,” and “fostered important relationships.” Fuck all that. When your company is failing to make payroll, none of that shit matters. What matters is getting contracts and bringing in revenue.
And I’m stopping for now……more later….
