have decided to cultivate a reputation at work for being difficult

[burntcopper]

They told me recently I have to take some of my 14 days' worth of holiday leftover. Which I hadn't even thought of taking due to the conditions of overwork and there not actually being anyone at work etc etc. Usual head scrambled until you can't think of anything but work, crash, weekend. Where planning goes out the window. And I've been working myself into a state because I haven't had a break of more than a convention weekend since... oh, April? Earlier? (Convention weekends do not count as breaks since you get no sleep and spend it half-exhausted)

Everyone else? Took at least a week during summer. When I was told to take some holiday in august, I was told I couldn't take any of august due to new people, lack of people due to them leaving or being on holiday, etc. So I said that I'd take it in September.

Finally figured out with parents when the Falmouth flat (my old student flat, parents kept it on as extra getaway that friends and relatives also use) was free this September. So I handed my boss a holiday form for holiday starting monday. And then got a email a couple of hours later telling me I was booked in for a meeting about said holiday. Yes, alarm bells.

Meeting. I was told I couldn't have five consecutive days because that was for too much in a row. See me gape. Didn't think to point out that everyone else had had at least a week. And then they said 'it's too short notice to get a temp'. So I got annoyed. Didn't challenge this either, except how long does it take to phone up a temp agency? And then started filing my reasons : 'You said I couldn't have holiday in august because there weren't enough people and I was training people. They're trained now.' 'But this time?' 'I can't take it later because late September is booked up and works day is compulsory on the 21st.' (works day : lectures about the company and what it does. Utterly pointless. Have fallen asleep before.) 'But what about later?' 'I told boss sitting to my right I'd be taking it in September.' 'I...uh...what about if we let you have works day off?' :smiles sweetly: I can adjust so I do the friday to thursday before works day. Now I believe I need to go back to work.'

Have decided that I'm going to be difficult by being reasonable and throwing everything they say back in their faces. And work to the letter. I made a point when I started that I wouldn't do overtime unless it was making up hours I'd missed because if there's more work than your hired staff can cope with in their contracted hours, hire a damn temp in the short term and get more staff in the long term.


I just... seriously. I'm beginning to think they're trying to get me to quit what with all the utterly pointless behaviour meetings which take time away from actual work and then challenging me about being away from my desk because 'it looks bad' whereupon I pointed out that I need to deliver stuff to production, harangue production, answer questions from new people, and actually print and photocopy stuff that I can't do on my computer. Oh, and since my job is 100% computer aside from those trips to the printer and production, health and safety says I need 5 minutes out of every hour not staring at the screen. Also, remember the physio commandments from when I fucked up my shoulder? Wish I'd pointed out that time that they moved me from my very prominent position by the printer and thus gangway to the window because they didn't like me being on display. We're near-drowning in increased workload, I've been telling them for months we need new staff and they've only just started coming in in the last month, (I actually got told at one recent behaviour meeting that the lack of staff that I tell them about at every damn meeting and regular making cheerful 'we're actually drowning workload-wise, we need more staff' noises should've been submitted in writing) and they keep dragging me away from my damn job. Passive-aggressive? They honestly don't know the meaning of the word.

ETA : seriously, am I just being paranoid and is it the stress and so on talking?

Comments

[jamjar.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's incentive to find a new work? Especially since where your new job is might affect where you want to live, so it's probably good to look for work before you look for a place.

[davidcook.livejournal.com]

The standard advice applies - get as much as possible in writing (e-mail is ok, real paper is better). If you tell them something (e.g about needing more people, or your medical advice), file a dated copy. If they tell you something verbally relating to holidays or working conditions or whatever, ask for it in writing, file a dated copy somewhere.

If they're worried about something "looking bad" it probably means they don't actually know how much work is getting done and by who, and/or they're control-freak/micro-managers who don't trust anyone to do work "properly" anyway.
If you have time, for a day or two, note down every 15 minutes what you spent the last 15 minutes doing.

Oh, and brush up your resume, because it sounds as if they're either generally not very good managers, or trying to move you on for some reason (presumably thinking that they can somehow save money by finding someone cheaper, while maintaining the same productivity. That hasn't worked in any IT shop I've seen or heard of, and I don't imagine it would work well in yours either ... ).

(and finally, if you don't already read alt.sysadmin.recovery (through Google Groups, if you don't already have some other Usenet client), I can recommend it for cathartic tales of management incompetence, hardware blowups, and underappreciated workers who keep the ship afloat)