Coal's Notes

I have a new job. I love this new job a lot - it's stressful and fast-paced and gives me plenty of opportunity to gripe good-naturedly about the nature of humanity (you should only worry if I'm not griping, really, because that means I'm fetal in the corner, whimpering at the horribleness of it all). I was so thrilled at being offered it that I took a substantial pay cut. Like more than half. My old job paid well, but it was familiar enough that there was no challenge and the only promotion path would have taken me places I wasn't interested in going. I had no emotional investment in it - my passion was all channelled elsewhere, more recently to things like SL and the theatre.

My old job was also full time. The new job is part time. :( You know I had to have really been interested in the position to be willing to give up a full time position for this. I'm in my thirties and have a mortgage and other adult-type responsibilities. And it's embarrassing to have to admit to folks that I work a part-time hourly position. But I have no regrets on giving up the old job, and I wouldn't trade the job for the world.

You'd think that fewer hours spent on the job would mean more time for goofing off in SL, but...

Most of the folks I work directly with are as into their jobs as I am. Many of us to the point where we spend a lot of our off-duty time doing things that... well, okay, basically working for no pay. Not exactly the smartest thing to do, since our employer benefits from this free overtime - which probably puts some of us at full-time hours - without actually having to pay us for those full-time hours. Not a great bargaining position, but... did I mention I love the job?

So I'm in this bind: I really love my job, so I don't want to rock the boat, but I'd really like a steady salary (benefits wouldn't suck as well). "You don't get unless you ask," you say. I have. And I know a couple of my coworkers have. It's not that the requests are denied... it's that they're ignored. It's like the request never even happened, it's been sucked into some alternate space-time continuum where everyone gets made VP on their third day of work. And I don't want to harp on it, because (a) that's annoying and (b) see above, re: love the job. I don't want to lose even the part-time position. It's like sex; even when it's bad, it's pretty damn good.

Which is only part of what's so frustrating (the job, not sex).

It'd be convenient if I could throw up my hands and say, "Argh! Management!" and storm off to grumble in a corner and plot their overthrow. But I like the management. Most of their decisions are essentially sound and seem pretty well thought-out. They seem pretty pro-active as far as offering nice benefits (for the salaried employees). They're nice people; I enjoy spending time with them. Why don't they seem to see that they're making me feel like what I do isn't valued? I suspect it's some sort of blind spot. Most will agree that there aren't enough of us part-time folks to do the job right (Argh! Why won't you make us full-time then?!?) and they have plans to change that through a combination of reorganization and hiring more staff (see above, re: Argh!).

But the plans seem vague and there's no real deadline, nor any mention of whether we'll all still be scrounging to make ends meet when the damn thing is implemented. It'd be one thing if we were being kept part-time because none of us had skills that were needed in a full-time capacity... but it became rapidly apparent during my first week on the job, that twice the current staff would be able to stay busy with no real effort. And hiring new folks is a laborious task - all the paperwork hoops to jump through, wouldn't it make more sense to just expand the hours (and even maybe the duties?) of the existing staff?

Part of it may be that I'm not working out of the office, but from my house. I'm not there, in their faces, going "Hellloooo?" I'm not seeing the 40 million things that I know keep my salaried comrades-in-arms hopping all day. I'm not hanging at the water cooler, picking up on the gossip, taking the general emotional temperature of the company. The entire firm could be on the verge of collapse due to internal politicking, and I'd never know.

Dammit. I'd be a good salaried employee! Okay, so you folks that are reading this don't know that, but look at how much time I'm devoting to the company as a part-time person - enough that my time spent flaked out in SL hasn't gone up, it's dropped. :P Enough that I'm ranting in my goddamn Second Life blog about it, where it really has no relevance.

*sigh* I feel better now. Venting is so cathartic. Time to go back to work...