Here it is, a retardedly long entry about my life. It's been a long time since I've written anything about what the hell is going on with me, but this is it (who's listening anyway?)
The Good News:
I got a job!
I started at Navigant Consulting as a temp back in August (or was it September?). Either way, my job was to sit around looking at images of different forms from doctors' offices and entering in names and dates of birth and insurance companies. Sometime after November or so, THREE OF MY OTHER TEMPmates and myself were moved up to being a "project employees". This meant a pay raise to double what we were getting before and a host of new, stupid responsibilities. Responsibilities like: Doing whatever 10 different bosses tell us to do, punching holes in paper and drinking coffee.
Sometime during December, an email circulated amongst the people in the health consulting department about the upcoming Health Training Conference in New Orleans. The four of us (those of us that were temps and were moved up to being project employees) all assumed that we weren't meant to go to the conference. Honestly, how much could they teach us about clicking the left mouse button twice and pressing Control+C? But that's not my responsibility.
None of us figured we were supposed to be involed and didn't respond to the email about the conference.
Two Months Later
So last Monday I get to work and one of the other project employees, whom we shall call... umm.. "Eunice"... asks me "Hey did Claudius* talk to you about going to the conference?"
"No," I said.
"Oh," said Eunice, "nevermind, then."
"What the hell are you talking about," responded Greg
"It's just that Claude told me to book my tickets and that I should go."
"Oh."
After realizing that one of the other four people that I had been promoted with would be attending the conference, I can't say that I didn't feel slighted. Other things had also been happening around the office to make me think that I was probably not "the best" out of those of us that had been moved up. Por Ejemplo: I was told back in October that I would be moved up to the "programming end" of the team. After hearing this news, I had been told a few things about database programming using SQL and then was left on my own to buy book on Amazon and learn what I could. Two months later Eunice was being instructed by one of the programmers on how to use SQL. She was given memos and told how to bill the time that she spent learning the program. I had felt slighted then as well, but thought that maybe I just kicked so much as at programming that everyone thought I didn't need any instruction. Eunice and another one of my bosses... um... Tula*... would go out for coffee all the time and gossip. That's ok, too. I don't want to go out and spend money on coffee when there's free shite at the office... but I still felt a bit slighted.
I feel like I've gone off on a tangent. Where did we leave off? Oh yeah:
So, Eunice told me that she had been told to schedule this conference. I spend the next three days figuring that I must have done something wrong that she didn't and that I'm going to get fired (or have my contract run out on June 30th and be left out to dry). Every time Claude walks by and says hello I imagine him thinking "He did something stupid and I'm going to fire that stupid-thing-doing guy."
Wednesday happens along and another one of my 10 bosses (um... Gemma*) calls a meeting for all four of us project employees. The four of us trade some instant messages about how we're going to get fired (though I know that Eunice is sure she's not going to get fired, but she plays along). The meeting comes and Gemma (after some other stuff) explains that Claude et. al. will be trying to get all of us to be able to go to the conference and will be talking to us on Friday.
"The thing is that we might not have enough money in the budget for you guys to go."
This is a huge weight off my shoulders. I realize that Eunice was just the first one of us to be talked to and that the rest of us will hear eventually. I also realize that they've told her already and that this means that she's more important to the company. Either way, I'm happy that they "want all of us to go."
Ten minutes after the meeting, Eunice tells me that she talked to Gemma and that the order of people who get to go (as explained to her) is Eunice, Me, Billy-Bob*, and Janice*.
I'm happy with this idea.... Especially when Claude calls me into his office on Friday at 5:30pm. I come in and he tells me that he wants me to go to the conference. Fuckin' right! He follows this up by telling me that "the team" has been impressed with my performance and that they'll be offering me to come on full-time as an "associate consultant." The reasoning for telling me about the conference and crap was that they wouldn't want me to get hired and have me miss the conference by two weeks (which means that I should get hired two weeks after April 16th... ridiculous how I have to figure out when I'm getting hired for myself).
For some reason, as Claude was telling me that I had a job, I didn't have an excited reaction. Actually, the reason is totally apparent to me and was quite tangible during our meeting. I don't want to work at this company. It's a job with ten bosses, stupid pressure, late nights and no knowledge gain. I just sat there twisting the top on my mechanical pencil and watching the lead grow like a time-lapse-photography bud.
I realize halfway through that I was being an ungrateful wretch and started in on saying how excited I was and how much I'd learned and what tasks appealed to me and blah, blah, blah. The meeting ended with a thank you (which I followed up with a thank you letter on Monday... Lord, how corporate).
On my way back to my desk I realized three things, which I shall now attempt to illustrate in list form:
Now that's good stuff. Nobody gets a job anymore. Bush promised to have 250,000 more jobs in Feb and managed to create 14,000 (12,000 of which were govt. jobs)
When I started as a temp in August, Billy-Bob had been there since April and Janice had been there since June. I started two months later and was getting promoted before them. Maybe I have some kind of warped sense about seniority, but I feel like they should have been promoted before me.
Eunice and I haven't told either of them that we've been invited to the conference, let alone that both of us have been offered and given positions at the company. I know that, like me, neither of them really want to work at Navigant, but it still feels like shit to get passed over.
fingers tired... more tomorrow
*All names changed for the sake of my silly job
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