bryan knight doing stuff on the internets.

Effective Immediately….

When I worked at a previous consulting firm, first job out of college, back in the day... we all used outlook and exchange... so when you would be sitting there, at your desk, and an email would go out to all the people in the company, you would hear the 'new mail beep' chime out across the room, all at once.

When someone was fired/laid off (mostly almost always fired) an email would come across to everyone... the person's name would be the subject line, and the body would have the phrase "Effectively immediately is no longer employed by ABC Consulting". I swear he had that as a template saved and ready to rock.

Work related stuff

So I have been kind of quiet about work related stuff lately, and there are a few reasons for that. One reason is my boss has created this really weird work environment for me lately by sending me extremely rude emails. It is almost as if he is trying to make me quit. It is kind of insane. I am telling myself that it is a result of personal issues he is having and it is coming out in the wrong way. I have decided to not let them ruin my attitude though. I read them, and attempt to take whatever is in them that I can put to positive use and move on. Under all the anger that he appears to have in the emails, there is usually something that I can use and work on. It is just unfortunate that it is delivered in such a way. The most recent one did have a couple points that he clearly wants addressed, so I am doing my best to meet those requests, since that is how being an employee works.

One is being at work by 9am, which is fine. I started there as a consultant, so I had an off hour schedule. Eventually I became full time, and the start time was not an issue then, provided I worked 40 hours, which I always have, as I am not out to take advantage of anyone. But evidently the 9am thing is a larger issue now, so I have been coming in at 9am. It is kind of annoying, since that eliminates any time when I can do simple things like reboot the servers unless I stay late. We have a few people that come in really early (pre 8am) so I can't really beat them into the office. But it isn't the end of the world.

I am also trying to keep my work area organized better. While it wasn't in the boss's email, it is a good thing to do I guess. While personally, I can handle clutter and it is rare that I truly LOOSE something, it does at times make finding things I only need to use 1/year or something easier to find. It also makes my coworkers happy, so that is a plus.

At the same time, I have decided to not do work outside of work. I used to read the work email when I wasn't at work, go through the work SPAM filters to look for false-positives, check on the servers, etc. I have decided that runs dangerously close to ruining my time off (and at times, has). Thus I turn off those email accounts when I am not at work. Nothing is that important, and if something goes down, it will likely be email and thus, it won't be effective communication anyway.

So that is roughly what is up with work. It isn't nearly as awesome a job as it once was, but that could be the ebb and flow of work. Or it could be that I have changed, or the job has changed, or most likely a combination of the two. But is a good job, I like the people, and I don't mind the work. Is it as perfect as it once was? No, but that is ok. Work is work, and the most perfect job still has its work.