ok, so in a post a few days ago i let everyone know that i work in IT. so, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to the meat of this; WORK.

i hate work. i don’t think i’m alone in this feeling. i would hazard a guess that about 98% of all people do not like their jobs. so, when you find yourself in a situation where your job really bothers you, what do you do? that’s the question i’ve been asking myself for awhile now.

for some insight into me, i like to feel safe in general. i like to have a job so that i can have money. i like the field i’m in, just not too happy about the actual place i work. basically my workplace is a complete and utter clusterfuck. the management is shitty (what management isn’t?), the ordering process is messed up and slow (which, in my profession, you always need stuff right now and if the ordering dept takes too long, it’s my ass that gets chewed out), the hiring process is a joke (we’ve been trying to hire another person for our department for about 4 months now… the job posting is actually going up this week so they say, although i’ve heard that every week for the past 4 or 5 weeks now, so i’ll believe it when i see it), and the actual infrastructure (left to me by my previous boss) is a mess.

anyway, as i was saying, i like to feel safe; meaning i can’t (or won’t) leave one job until i have something else lined up. this causes some problems for me though…

1. i have to hide any kind of job searching from my current employer
2. i have to find a job that is similar to my current one, and my current salary (shouldn’t be too hard) before i can really take it seriously
3. i have an affinity for some of the people here, and i’d rather not leave them in a lurch. which leads to…
4. i can still learn things and grow at my current job if i can handle the freakin stress of everything here

so, where does that leave me? basically i’m stuck somewhere that has great professional growth opportunities for me. i have the ability to get my hands into anything i want here. network security? we got it. network design and maintenance? got that too. email? sure, both ms exchange AND some linux stuff. general windows networking and administration? yep, tons of that. SQL server admin? yep, can do that too. pay for training and testing/certification? they’ll do it.

BUT, there is a down side to all of this variety. if you look at any corporate model for IT, you’ll find that they tend to compartmentalize and specialize people in their IT groups. what does that mean? well, basically, they have one guy that is their email master. they have another guy who is their networking guru, and another for security. here they have…. me. i do all that and more (desktop support anyone?) the problem with this is that i cannot possibly get fluent in one thing well enough to get myself into a job somewhere else.

now i’m stuck, basically hating almost every minute i’m here, hoping and waiting for them to get another person in to our department so that i can finally get enough time (say even just one entire day without interruptions) to learn new things and try to fix the stuff that is actually in my job description.

i’ll keep looking though, just in case…

so i work in IT. it’s basically a thankless, shit filled job. one thing i’ve come to notice is the way in which people relate to you as the “computer guy.” for one, people are always afraid of doing the wrong thing in front of me… afraid that i will somehow destroy their jobs by making their computer impossible to work with… or that i will turn them in for some crazy security related rule that they don’t know about. it makes it hard to be friendly with the people around me when they see me as somehow being above them or something.

haha little do they know that i could give two shits about what they do all day, or really what they do with their computers. as long as they aren’t fucking up my shit (i.e. infecting the whole place with virii — which is actually really hard to do since we lock their shit down tighter than a baby’s asshole at a priest convention) then they can feel free to do pretty much whatever.

but of course, this job induced distance between myself and my co-workers isn’t all that bad. i’m one to subscribe to the philosophy of “don’t shit in your own nest” i.e. making friends at work is bad b/c then they want to be friends when you go home too.

and who the hell can relax at home if they have people from work there? i sure fuckin can’t…