Brian's World

Life at Work

Currently I am very frustrated at work; things just aren’t going right. The breaking point was today at 5:07, when I got to the post office and it was closed. I had an Amazon.com Marketplace Order I really wanted to get out as fast as possible, but the post office closes at 5:00pm.

This morning I arrived at 8:30, like I had done yesterday, I was escorted to my cubicle (I still only have a guest badge) and hung out. My boss stopped by and showed us where the supply cabinet was and told us that there would hopefully be work today, things would be less busy, etc. I had a mini project from yesterday hanging around so I started work on that, it kept me busy until around 10:00. Then my boss dropped off another project and dashed off to a meeting, of course we didn’t have the appropriate access codes to work on the project, so more hanging around it was. I stapled some presentations together, and ate my lunch. PB&J, water, and a Kudos bar. Yum?

Yea, it turns out my internet is heavily filtered as well, which I hate. I can’t check my email until I do some work and the websense filter turns off. Wow, who filters gmail.. and that was actually a problem, I had some important stuff in my gmail I needed to reference.

At 2:00 we got the codes and started on the work, a very large copy and paste job. I looked into automating it, but copying and pasting was faster, and I don’t know anyone who is very technical there I could ask questions or anything like that. The HP 3000 system is too old to be well documented online I’ve decided. The copy and paste took about 2 hours and then we headed out.

So I left at 4:00, died getting onto 91 between 2 buses, and then rushed to Big Y to buy an envelope and mail the book off, 5:07 and the post office was closed.

Grr. There are a few things I don’t like so much at work.

1. The hours, the hours are kinda long for me right now, and don’t leave much time for anything else. They say its “flexible”, and it is, but as a lowly intern I don’t know when downtime starts or when they truly can flex. If I knew what was going on I might be able to better accomodate things. Currently the hours don’t leave very much time for anything else, I’d like to be able to see Katie and possible a friend or two at some point this summer. I only have 5-6 hours a night that I can do things with, and thats not enough time for me to do all the things I want to do. The projects don’t go away, I’d like to see Katie and the occasional friend or two, but theres no way I can do all of those things. People are mad I can’t see them at good times, I’m mad I can’t do anything I want to do. Yes, I guess I could work on other things during my downtime at work but the systems are so locked down I really don’t think its very possible. Installing firefox was a hassle, nevermind ftp and a php editor.

2. The work environment, while I’m not used to such a corporate environment and adjusting might play a factor.. sitting in my cubical for 7 hours isn’t fun. My boss tells us to get out of our cubes and go for a walk, but I don’t have anywhere to walk to, and people give me strange looks when they see me. People seem to like to talk about doing things, but the actually doing must go on somewhere else hidden, or maybe there are just so many steps people have to go through doing things takes too long. It shouldn’t take 2 days to get an ID badge and access to the systems, I already waited a week for my background check.

3. The work, the work I did today related to the actual project they hired me for was pretty nasty. Copying and pasting out of a telnet prompt, where the telnet program didn’t regcognize ctrl-v.. instead it was ctrl-insert. We got everything we knew how to out of the old system, and all we have to do is merge our excel files and we’re done with that step.

I think those are the reasons I came up with, but let me run you though what I see happening. 7:00 wakeup. 7:30-8:00 Depart house. 8:00 – 8:30 Arrive at work. 8:30 – 4:00/4:30 Work. 4:30 – 5:00 Get home. 5:00-6:00 change pants, unpack. 6:00-6:30 eat. 7:00-10:00 Be with Katie or a friend or something 10:00-11:00 Work on other projects if I have energy. 11:00 go to sleep, repeat again. Now that I’ve blocked that out, I can see how much I don’t like the whole 4 hours of me time I currently have. Yes, I need to streamline the 5:00-7:00 time chunk, but its hard. And then Katie is frustrated I’ve been working all day, which is very justified, as I have been working all day, so then I have to try and make it up to her which I tend to fail at because I’m exhausted from doing the little that I do all day.

To make everything better I think I’m dying, or secretly getting radiation or poison, recently all the new hairs that have grown on me have been blond. I just combed my hair and noticed my sideburns have these lil blond hairs under the brown. Ahh. Whats wrong with me? My only logic says I don’t have enough energy to color the hair. Hrm.

I don’t know what to do; Yes I make good money, buts its not about money for me. Sure, I’m learning a few things, but I don’t think learning a 1980’s system is a skill I will list on my resume, and I really don’t plan on going into the business world in a business sense. I can run a database, but I don’t care about financial statuses or how to make a report you can show to another businessperson or client, I’d like to do something thats a little more useful, like make a webpage, run a server, or work on ideas.

They also have a pretty crazy technology policy their, they have a special “Outlook Tech Support” department, you can only connect using a “certified” PDA, wireless is a no-no, and everything is filtered and logged. Sure, its a way to control a business, buts its not the way to make tech-friendly people happy.

I have to get going, I only have 4 hours left tonight.

Thoughts?