The stresses at my “main” (full-time) job have gotten to me. At the end of September, my coworker (who was a rockstar) left the company to make real ching elsewhere. In the mean time, I have been doing my job + her job + the job of at least one DBA. Oh, and in my copious amounts of free time, I have taken on managerial responsibilities of training another person, and doing all the hiring duties for the open back fill spot.
So I get my annual performance review last Tuesday. Holy fucking shit. ”Meets expectations.” Not being thrilled with this rating, I send an email to my boss, outlining the aforementioned ADDITIONAL responsibilities that I’m doing. I wrap up this email in a big red bow that ends with;
“If all this only merits a “meets expectations” rating, then I offer my most sincere apologies because I do not know how I am going to be successful in this role.“
(a.k.a. a big double-middle-finger using corporate psycho-babble verbiage.)
Mere moments after sending my boss that email, I forward an email that I sent to my boss on 11/12/2011 to the COO. I told the COO that I “didn’t expect any action to be taken at this point, but would like to at least have an acknowledgement that he read the damned email.” (Again, a big double-middle-finger… the corporate version of “Fuck you, you mother-fuck, you!”)
Then I do an emergency deployment on Thursday afternoon. And I see that our vendors supplied faulty configuration files. But I didn’t correct it — on purpose — to make a point to people the next day that our vendors need to get a grip and start supplying us with solid files to deploy. (Perhaps an ill-advised move.)
It’s Friday. (The next day.) My iPhone was downstairs, so my alarm clock’s effectiveness was rendered nil. I wake up, and see that it’s SOLID daylight outside, thinking, “oh shit.” I walk past the office on my way down the stairs, ask my wife what time it is, and she says: “It’s 10:00am.” Holy fucking shit.
I speed downstairs to see I have several voice messages from work. Lots of missed calls. I pick up my work blackberry, and see the order of 27 new emails. Shit. I shower, get dressed, and tell Wifey: “FYI, I might be coming home with one fewer jobs.”
I slept through a meeting with my boss and team leads/supervisors regarding a hiring decision. I slept through a meeting my boss had set up to discuss my performance review. My boss sends me another email asking me if/when I’ll be in. At this point, I am expecting to go in, be given a talk, and be escorted out.
So I get to work, go and shake hands with the 4 people in the building who I respect (because they actually work and they’re competent). I quickly tell them I might have a very limited future with the company, pending the outcome of my meeting with my boss.
Go to my boss’ office, and he says he has another meeting, and to come back in 20 minutes. I go get coffee at the break room. Then I go to my boss’ office. Ninety minutes later, I leave. Some highlights from this meeting:
- I tell boss that the DBA’s are incompetent assholes, cite concrete examples that they’re clueless, and detail how they have zero sense of urgency.
- I tell boss that I’m doing shit-tons of work, and taking on everything, and that a “meets expectations” performance review is horse shit. And that I can’t live with it. (He, of course, being a manager, finagles and says all the extra stuff I’ve been doing is since October 1, and that the performance review only goes through the end of September.)
- Fine. Asshole. I can play then. I proceed to tell him how last month (beginning of November), when the DBA’s shit the bed, how I applied to another job; was asked to interview that day and did so; and then was offered a job making 22% more than he pays me and that I turned it down because I thought the issues were fixed here but they haven’t been fixed yet. (Is this a resume-generating event? Probably. Who the hell knows or cares.)
Two hours later, the office executive assistant sends me an instant message with the COO’s cell phone number, telling me to call him ASAP. I do so, and discuss my frustrations. He says he will talk to my boss on Monday about the stuff. He also says “please don’t leave the company! You are too valuable to our technology team.” (Yes, because you fuckers didn’t ante up and pay my former coworker what she was worth.) Interestingly, I never told him of my interview. I suppose he spoke with my boss before having me call him.
Three hours later, an issue I had been warning people about ALL damned week continued down the path of destruction. On Saturday, I send an email to people saying, “This shit is going to break next Monday. I warned EVERYONE last Monday, but nobody would show any initiative to get it done.” I then forward that email to my boss and the COO, and ask them: “No one cares. Can we please fix this?”
My boss calls me a few hours later, saying he talked with the COO, and they know I’m not to blame. He tells me to go enjoy my time off work. Right, because I have such great things to look forward to when I get back…!!!
