Whupped at Work

[Keer]

I have always felt good tackling a nice chunk of work. I have always liked looking back on a day, week, and year thinking "Damn, I really knocked that out!" But lately, after gladly accepting a promotion at work, I have had my ass drop-kicked, judo flipped, and detonated by work.

While it's far from making me want to give up, I just don't ever remember being this tasked in my life, six years in the military included. In my retirement, I know that I'll be thankful that I went through this, and probably even before then. But right now, at this moment I'm typing, I feel like there are even Drone Ants on the hill saying, "Oh, hell naw! That's just ignorant! They're flamenco dancing on his Adam's Apple!"

I have no regrets about taking on more responsibilty. Let me get that straight. Not looking for sympathy either. I'm just saying it's gritty for a mofo right about now. Looking for a cathartic comparison here.

Anyone else out there having "Career Encounters of the Crotch Kneeing Kind"?

Is Captain America doing Final Justice on your forehead too?

[Seret Sajet]

No Final Justice but ole Cap'n has done a few Stars N' Stripes (possibly Keer and I may be the only ones who get our references)

I don't want to rant so I'll just sum up my job for you.

I'm an underpaid Graphic Designer who commutes 3 hours every day to do mind-numbing work in a growing corporation while I have no chance of advancement and no college degree to help me find a new job.

If you're laughing at me right now it is justified. If you pity me, get a puppy from the animal shelter instad.

[Glacial]

ROFL A little different, but worth the comparison. I quit.

I was doing engineering work, not over-worked or under-paid, but no progress toward my life goals. I've since moved on to go back to school at 22 credits a semester for 2 years in order to take a nearly 50% paycut. I don't have the word wisdom you fellas have to describe it, but hopefully my actions speak for the undesirable nature of my previous circumstances.

I hope you find yourself to be a hardier soul than I, and can look back at the Drone Ants, ponder for a second, then tell the contractor to break ground on your retirement cabin on top of their dirt pile.

/salute to the workin' man and woman (or depressed housewives if necessary)

[Jabe Adaks]

Well currently at this moment, I work for a pathetic salary that offers no compensation for overtime. I work about 60 hours in a week. I am in currently in charge of developing dispatch systems that are going to be used for 911 dispatch in a number of south suburban Chicago municipals. I am also in charge of converting all the records for these departments in to a new version of the records management software we have written. If I screw up, someone's records (a murderer for example) might get wiped. No pressure there.

I am doing this by myself. No, no development team to help - its all me. To top it off most of my friends who skipped college and went blue collar all make a good 30% more than me. So not only am I piled on with work, I don't have much to show for it. I could have skipped college and become a garbage man for more money and much less debt.

Jabe

[X'an Shin]

I feel your pain, Keer.

When I heard about a new game at work that was starting up, I realized it was going to be my ONE chance at working on my dream project. Now, there's a lot of people who know me who are rolling their eyes, because I've had a lot of cool jobs, and worked on a lot of cool-ish projects, but this would be pretty much a completion of a life's dream type opportunity, and I knew I'd hate life if this project was being made without my input.

I asked if I could switch teams to it, because I let them know that there was NO way that this game could be made without me. So they agreed, but there was only one problem, my old team manager didn't want to give me up.

So now I'm managing the animation for BOTH teams, only there's no animators on the new team, and only one animator on the old team. While the old team's work is ahead of schedule, I'm starting to feel like a piece of Laffy Taffy, because both team's managers feel like I should be spending the majority of my time on their project, and the central art management team isn't really handling this very well (managing my managers, basically).

Everything fell apart last month when I got the go-ahead to move my desk to the new team's area, and well, someone spoke too soon, because the old team's manager didn't like that so much. Before the day was over, the COO got called at home 3 times. Because I moved my desk.

Sometimes I feel like the stress isn't worth it (and believe me, I'm stressin'; a medical condition that finally went away last year is now back, and if I can't control it again I'll need frickin' surgery), that I should just give up and say "fuck it" and not help the new project out, but I know that if, say, in 2006 this project becomes a "game of the year" contender and I didn't work on it, or if it *could* have been a "game of the year" conteder and it fell short because I didn't help it, I'd wish I were dead.

[Skarr]

everybody's jobs suck for some reason...

I'll chime in...

lowest paid full-time job person on this board I'd wager, operating the most advanced/expensive piece of equipment w/ 74 people lives on the line

my timeline for advancement keeps getting pushed back to where I can upgrade my salary is going to take 5-6 years minimum

I live in some random hotel room 4 days a week away from my family and swg (ahhh the horror!)

practically anal-probed in security every day (okay some of you might enjoy this ) because I am a threat, riiiight

if anything happens to that piece of equipment and something bad happens, it's your fault

your whole industry is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy...an increase of 1 penny to the cost of a barrel of oil adds $30 million to your budget for the year

oh yeah, terrorists are still trying to find ways to kill me, and I have nothing to protect myself (yet)

but it's what I've always wanted to do, so you just gotta hope for better days

[Illbleed]

I'm certainly not in any of your shoes, but I can tell you the job situation is grim. I work in a call center for a technology company(one of the largest in the country) where I'm expected to field customer service calls, provide logistics, transfer calls, sell products, research products, outbound call prospective clients and accept returns. Now, granted this is not life threatening or anything but it is quite stressful. I don't get paid enough to do it and the transit is at least an hour to and from work. The interstate is like the autobahn. I can only blame myself guess. What really sucks is that I have an engineer's knowledge but no degree to back it up(working on it) which makes it extremely difficult to find employment in IT. I have work pushed off on me because "I know how to do it" and apparently everyone else is inept. I'm working on some things though that will help..

[Shadowpaw]

While school may not be like living in the real world like the rest of you, it's all relative... and for me, it's damn tough right now...

I'm only in class 21 hours a week, but the work that has come with it this semester comes up to about 30 hours a week...

No, it's not a lot, but it's the first time in my life that I've had this much responsibility for myself. I have to feed myself (groceries and such), pay my bills, go to class, study, attempt to find a shitty job around campus somewhere...

For a 20 year old kid who has been very fortunate that his parents help him like mine do, I still have a lotta crap to do on my own, and this being the first time ever, it gets kinda stressful...

But what I do know is that, just like you guys, I'm gonna get to that light at the end of the dark tunnel, and the grass will be oh so much greener when I get there, because I will have the knowledge that I didn't give up when the shit hit the fan... I just wiped it off my face (and puked a bit out) and kept on truckin'

Keep on fightin' the good fight brother man!
Hang tough!