Work Struggles
So, as many of you know, I work in an office doing web design/support. I've
been here in this incarnation for about a year and a half. It's a very
flexible job, and I've been able to make room for a lot of other great
things in my life.
However, in the last, oh, six months or so, I've honestly been pretty
superfluous. Last summer/fall I had a big project (designing and migrating
our intranet to a new system) with two other people working with/under me.
We accomplished a lot, and generally had a good, productive time. Since
that's wound down, though, I spend most of my time sitting at the computer,
waiting for someone to e-mail me a little 5 minute job or two. Sometimes,
if I'm lucky, it'll be a half-hour or so task. But, basically, I'm a chair
warmer.
A few times I've mentioned to my boss that I had a bit of an empty plate,
and I'd be happy to take on some more work. At that point one of two things
happen:
Honestly, I've been cutting back my hours (I am hourly) in recent months
because I feel guilty about collecting a full-time paycheck for what is
basically a 6 hour a week job. And, I'm affraid that if I do collect 40
hours a week, they'll be expecting an output that matches that, but without
getting tasks to do, that's never going to happen. A bit of a Catch-22.
So, I've scaled back both to ease my own conscience as well as to not be
sticking out as a costly appendage that needs to be cut.
So, I found out last week through a co-worker that our department has just
hired another full-time staffer. I had been under the impression that my
temp position was a stop-gap measure until we budgeted for a full-time
position. So, it seemed that the writing was on the wall, and it was doubly
odd because neither of my two bosses had mentioned anything about the
position being offered, filled, or about the future of my position.
We have two offices, one near my house (which I work at most of the time;
the desks are all catch-as-catch-can), and one about an hour away, where I
have my 'real' desk, which I had to clean up today, as that's going to be
the desk for the new employee. 'You'll have to work at the other office for
a while,' says my boss.
It's all very strange. My position seems to be being replaced, and yet no
one has said anything about me having to leave. I'm not going to stir the
pot, but I'm sure that my days here are quite numbered. It's just a very
weird feeling. I'll keep showing up until they tell me not to, but being
the office after-thought is a pretty unstable place to be. The new person
starts in the beginning of June; I'm on vacation all of July, and I'd be
very surprised if I still have a job here in August.
been here in this incarnation for about a year and a half. It's a very
flexible job, and I've been able to make room for a lot of other great
things in my life.
However, in the last, oh, six months or so, I've honestly been pretty
superfluous. Last summer/fall I had a big project (designing and migrating
our intranet to a new system) with two other people working with/under me.
We accomplished a lot, and generally had a good, productive time. Since
that's wound down, though, I spend most of my time sitting at the computer,
waiting for someone to e-mail me a little 5 minute job or two. Sometimes,
if I'm lucky, it'll be a half-hour or so task. But, basically, I'm a chair
warmer.
A few times I've mentioned to my boss that I had a bit of an empty plate,
and I'd be happy to take on some more work. At that point one of two things
happen:
- I get one or two of those 1/2 hour projects at once, thereby filling
my 10-11AM hour, or - I get a mention of some vague mental exercise such as, "think about how
you might change the navigation on the intranet to make it make more sense
and easier to find things." Since a) this is just a throw-away though with
no support or direction, and b) I designed the navigation a year ago after
quite a bit of research and buy-in from many people, I'm not about to change
it just because one person had to struggle a bit to find something. That's
not a business case for changing the site navigation. So, maybe I'll add
some better keywords to the page(s) in question. Another 15 minutes
killed.
Honestly, I've been cutting back my hours (I am hourly) in recent months
because I feel guilty about collecting a full-time paycheck for what is
basically a 6 hour a week job. And, I'm affraid that if I do collect 40
hours a week, they'll be expecting an output that matches that, but without
getting tasks to do, that's never going to happen. A bit of a Catch-22.
So, I've scaled back both to ease my own conscience as well as to not be
sticking out as a costly appendage that needs to be cut.
So, I found out last week through a co-worker that our department has just
hired another full-time staffer. I had been under the impression that my
temp position was a stop-gap measure until we budgeted for a full-time
position. So, it seemed that the writing was on the wall, and it was doubly
odd because neither of my two bosses had mentioned anything about the
position being offered, filled, or about the future of my position.
We have two offices, one near my house (which I work at most of the time;
the desks are all catch-as-catch-can), and one about an hour away, where I
have my 'real' desk, which I had to clean up today, as that's going to be
the desk for the new employee. 'You'll have to work at the other office for
a while,' says my boss.
It's all very strange. My position seems to be being replaced, and yet no
one has said anything about me having to leave. I'm not going to stir the
pot, but I'm sure that my days here are quite numbered. It's just a very
weird feeling. I'll keep showing up until they tell me not to, but being
the office after-thought is a pretty unstable place to be. The new person
starts in the beginning of June; I'm on vacation all of July, and I'd be
very surprised if I still have a job here in August.