You know, after the weekend I just had I shouldn’t be surprised that Work completely crapped all over me today. Co-workers crashing cars, a raise denied, taking shit for following policy, and perverse inanity. Plus a death on campus, not mine. Kill me now, please.
So I wake up this morning after getting 10 hours of sleep (and it still not being enough to recover), haul my ass in to work. I’m the only one there. Get a call from the assistant to one of the VPs. Apparently the VP had her password changed by us last friday. When we change a password, the user gets a 2-day temporary one, and they have to go pick their own password. If they don’t, it locks them out after 2 days for security reasons. Guess who didn’t change her password, despite the fact that our system automatically e-mailed her and told her what would happen….
And so I get the phone call from the assistant saying the VP can’t get her e-mail. I go to grant another temporary password, but we have a challenge question-response system in place to help prevent anyone from being able to call up and get someone else’s password changed. When the account is created, the user of the account has to put in a question and an answer that only they know. Then when they do call up, we ask the question, and they give us the answer. Some days you see the pathetic ones, like ‘what is my last name?’, or ‘where do I work?’. Other days you get really funny ones, or arcane ones that people occasionally forget the answers to. Today it was ‘What is the name of your oldest friend?’. Simple, straight forward. the VP didn’t know the answer. Say What? She entered the question and answer herself, so she must ahve known at one point, and how the hell do you forget the answer to a straightforward question like that? Wonder what that says about her ability to make and keep friends….
Anyhow, our policy is that the only other way to get the password reset is to come in with a form of ID, so we can verify that you are who you say you are.
Unless of course, you’re the VP. Then you call the CIO, and shit gets dumped on the poor lonely tech who was only following policy.
Speaking of poor. Last summer I was told that my raise would be delayed, due to some concerns and allegations of my work performance. Not that the rest of the staff I worked with had any concerns, no, apparently these were outside pressures. At the time I was told the money was set aside for it, so it wouldn’t be an issue. 6 months later, last december, we went through a nominal reevaluation so I could be formally ‘cleared’ for the raise. I expected to see it come January 1, so when, by the middle of February, I didn’t see it, I sent an e-mail off to my manager. turns out he’d skipped off on vacation that week. He came back last week, and didn’t bother to address the e-mail until today. Today he tells me that because we cut our budget in february in preparation of having 300,000 taken out of next years budget that I am denied the raise. Fucking denied a raise that was promised to me, and hte money was set aside. That’s a piss poor way to save money. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to find out who or where in Human Resources I should file a complaint to.
I’ve been here for almost three years, and every time there’s a change, I get the short stick. When I originally signed up for the job, I had a competing offer that was almost 25% more. I managed to talk Brandeis into a higher salary, but I still took the job at almost 20% less than the other job. I did that because I like Brandeis, and I thought the job would be a better one, particularly in terms of my own sanity. When I started I was second tier suppport, I was fairly close to middle and upper management in the hierarchy, I had my own cubicle in a space around the corner from the first tier support, I was in a position to make some decisions and I had some responsibilities.
Since then every change in service, reorganization, new plan, or other change beyond the inconsequential has landed me further and further away. First they moved all the offices, and I had to move into a cubicle in the same space as the first tier support. Then they took away the cubicle altogether. Then they reorganized, and not only did I end up further from management, theymade me first tier again, put me under a position that I was original on par with (or actually slightly above in the structure), and redefined my job duties.
Of course, if you ask HR, none of that is true, as I still have my old title and old job description.
Furthermore, every time they centralize anything, or standardize anything, they take away more of my authority and independent responsibility. Now I’m doing the same job as guys who have got to be earning substantially less than me. And that scares me. moreso because my new immediate manager has a personal crusade to get rid of macs on campus. This doesn’t just offend my sensibilities, it bothers me because Macintosh computers are my field of expertise, and without tthem, they might as well fire me and hire some PC weenie who will do the same job for half the pay. Not to mention that they’re going to try to replace my G4 Cube with an eMac, and in a few weeks when we get new desks they’re going to try to bump me out of the back corner and up towards the servoce counter.
Plus all day long I’ve been running around because stupid a$$es don’t like having to follow the normal chain of things, so they call the CIO and I end up getting the shit.
