You're Great, Now Go Away
Okay, so it's not a good idea to write about work online for fear of getting fired. But I don't think that what I have to say is in any way inappropriate or justification for punitive action.
Frankly, I'm burning out. I do the same thing over and over and over, all day every day. I thought the fact that each book would be different would provide enough variety that the tasks involved would never really get boring. But they do, and they have. Even the hourly staff who do the relatively unskilled support work for us by entering basic cataloguing data get to have other responsibilities to break up their day. But not us. Any extra work tasks we take on, like writing book reviews or creating lists of recommended titles for librarians to refer to, are supposed to be counted as extra time over and above our 40 hours of regular work.
As if I ever get to work ONLY a 40 hour week anymore! I have a shitload of personal problems interfering with my work life, but boredom and burnout are major contributors to the fact that it is taking me longer and longer to get less and less done. I don't work a 40 hour week anymore, because I can't get my minimum amount of books profiled in 40 hours. For a little while I was allowed to help with the work from another department, and on the days when I could do that for a few hours my productivity for my regular work skyrocketed. But they need my numbers, so I can't be spared to do any other types of work.
And that's what pisses me off about the meeting we had today and them telling my manager that the problems we have identified are not a company priority. I've been waiting for over a year now for the opportunity to branch out and work on a couple of projects related to what I do but different. My pet project has to do with problem solving and cleaning up clutter, essentially. But at the top levels, it's all about moving forward with no substantial concern for fixing the ramshackle mess that is our computer system. I'm trying to be vague, and it's hard to explain while being vague. The part of our internal company-wide program which we use to profile books for customer plans is a mishmash of about 15 years worth of throwing stuff on a pile with very little consideration for how things could be better organized and handled for more efficiency and less irritation for the people who actually have to use the damn thing all day, every day.
I understand and agree that we have to keep moving forward. But it can't be all forward without any consideration for re-evaluating, reorganizing and cleaning up the parts that were slapped together over years of company development and growth. If you're still driving the car, you better keep the mechanical parts tuned up or else all the diamond-encrusted hubcaps, remote starters, iPod jacks, and voice-activated GPS systems you add are going nowhere.
My impression is that, while certain people in our company like to show my department off as being a valuable feature offering a valuable service to our customers, almost no one within our own company really understands what we do, and more importantly they don't much care. They want one of us to do a little dance and make visitors ooh and aah over what we can do, and then they want us to sit down, shut up, and get back to doing whatever it is that we do. Many of our salespeople, who are out there selling the very service we provide, don't actually understand what we do and how we make things work. And that's flat-out stupid. It's not doing anyone any favors, it makes my job more difficult and more frustrating, and quite frankly I think it is a discourtesy to my unit.
It would still irritate the crap out of me that the right hand doesn't understand what the left hand is doing, but at least I would have some job satisfaction if there were some opportunity for me to have multiple responsibilities, to do some of that problem solving and clean-up work. Or to have the flexibility to do part of my work at home. Or to start doing more work with ebooks. Or to add certain, select new responsibilities to our regular work like investigating details that we currently claim we don't care about. None of those would be enough change to last forever, but each one would be a step in a better direction. I want to go all out and go as far as we can (in no more than 40 hours per week most of the time) if we're going to do it at all. But all I get is trouble because I'm so frustrated. And adding work burnout to depression and health concerns (including both legitimate concerns and what I am beginning to suspect is some degree of hypochondria) is not really a good combination.
In some ways, I don't want to ever have to leave this job; and it is probably because I care so much that it tears me up inside that I have to put up with so much crap without being able to make anything better. I feel completely trapped and I hate it. And I hate hating work and I hate hating what it does to me and my mind and my life. And that's a lot of hate with nowhere to go, boiling inside me somewhere all the time, causing part of my stress, depression, eating problems, physical problems. Even when it's quiet and hiding, it's eating away at my soul. How much soul do I have left? I rebuild little bits when I'm at home with my cats and my hubby. But I'm pretty sure my soul is disintegrating faster than it is being rebuilt, and I feel an increasing urgency to tackle all this and start healing the mess which is me.
Of course, I tend to feel most like tackling the mess at 9 at night when I need to be in bed or during the day when I'm bored shitless by my work. So, I just keep walking the tightrope and trying not to fall.
Frankly, I'm burning out. I do the same thing over and over and over, all day every day. I thought the fact that each book would be different would provide enough variety that the tasks involved would never really get boring. But they do, and they have. Even the hourly staff who do the relatively unskilled support work for us by entering basic cataloguing data get to have other responsibilities to break up their day. But not us. Any extra work tasks we take on, like writing book reviews or creating lists of recommended titles for librarians to refer to, are supposed to be counted as extra time over and above our 40 hours of regular work.
As if I ever get to work ONLY a 40 hour week anymore! I have a shitload of personal problems interfering with my work life, but boredom and burnout are major contributors to the fact that it is taking me longer and longer to get less and less done. I don't work a 40 hour week anymore, because I can't get my minimum amount of books profiled in 40 hours. For a little while I was allowed to help with the work from another department, and on the days when I could do that for a few hours my productivity for my regular work skyrocketed. But they need my numbers, so I can't be spared to do any other types of work.
And that's what pisses me off about the meeting we had today and them telling my manager that the problems we have identified are not a company priority. I've been waiting for over a year now for the opportunity to branch out and work on a couple of projects related to what I do but different. My pet project has to do with problem solving and cleaning up clutter, essentially. But at the top levels, it's all about moving forward with no substantial concern for fixing the ramshackle mess that is our computer system. I'm trying to be vague, and it's hard to explain while being vague. The part of our internal company-wide program which we use to profile books for customer plans is a mishmash of about 15 years worth of throwing stuff on a pile with very little consideration for how things could be better organized and handled for more efficiency and less irritation for the people who actually have to use the damn thing all day, every day.
I understand and agree that we have to keep moving forward. But it can't be all forward without any consideration for re-evaluating, reorganizing and cleaning up the parts that were slapped together over years of company development and growth. If you're still driving the car, you better keep the mechanical parts tuned up or else all the diamond-encrusted hubcaps, remote starters, iPod jacks, and voice-activated GPS systems you add are going nowhere.
My impression is that, while certain people in our company like to show my department off as being a valuable feature offering a valuable service to our customers, almost no one within our own company really understands what we do, and more importantly they don't much care. They want one of us to do a little dance and make visitors ooh and aah over what we can do, and then they want us to sit down, shut up, and get back to doing whatever it is that we do. Many of our salespeople, who are out there selling the very service we provide, don't actually understand what we do and how we make things work. And that's flat-out stupid. It's not doing anyone any favors, it makes my job more difficult and more frustrating, and quite frankly I think it is a discourtesy to my unit.
It would still irritate the crap out of me that the right hand doesn't understand what the left hand is doing, but at least I would have some job satisfaction if there were some opportunity for me to have multiple responsibilities, to do some of that problem solving and clean-up work. Or to have the flexibility to do part of my work at home. Or to start doing more work with ebooks. Or to add certain, select new responsibilities to our regular work like investigating details that we currently claim we don't care about. None of those would be enough change to last forever, but each one would be a step in a better direction. I want to go all out and go as far as we can (in no more than 40 hours per week most of the time) if we're going to do it at all. But all I get is trouble because I'm so frustrated. And adding work burnout to depression and health concerns (including both legitimate concerns and what I am beginning to suspect is some degree of hypochondria) is not really a good combination.
In some ways, I don't want to ever have to leave this job; and it is probably because I care so much that it tears me up inside that I have to put up with so much crap without being able to make anything better. I feel completely trapped and I hate it. And I hate hating work and I hate hating what it does to me and my mind and my life. And that's a lot of hate with nowhere to go, boiling inside me somewhere all the time, causing part of my stress, depression, eating problems, physical problems. Even when it's quiet and hiding, it's eating away at my soul. How much soul do I have left? I rebuild little bits when I'm at home with my cats and my hubby. But I'm pretty sure my soul is disintegrating faster than it is being rebuilt, and I feel an increasing urgency to tackle all this and start healing the mess which is me.
Of course, I tend to feel most like tackling the mess at 9 at night when I need to be in bed or during the day when I'm bored shitless by my work. So, I just keep walking the tightrope and trying not to fall.