Aftershocks and Compression
The aftershocks of the massive layoffs are still being felt. Certainly by me. Today I took over another project from a really nice guy that is moving to another division of the Bank. He didn't want to go and I didn't want to see him go, but that's what management wanted to happen, and that's all they really care about.
Now I'm doing my regular job as well as this guy's - plus the new web page development because they aren't fast enough, and then next week I'll be taking over another guy's project. Of course, my manager says that people know that the service level is going to be lower, but I had to remind him today that his requests of me needed to be put on the list due to all the work I have now. That doesn't bode well for him explaining this to any of the users.
I have to take tomorrow off for a lot of reasons. Liza wanted to get some Christmas shopping done and my Mom is going to come up and sit with the kids while we get that done - but most importantly, I could not be there tomorrow for the entire day knowing that it's Pete's last day here. I'm just not that strong these days.
So today was the last day for me, and it's just enough different that I didn't loose it too much, but I still had enough times today where I had to stop thinking about the state of affairs and dry my eyes. It's just that sad to me.
Next week will be even harder as my friend Matt will be moving on. That's going to be really really tough. But I'll have to find a way to get through it. And because life goes on, I guess I will, but it's not like I'm looking forward to it - that's for sure.
It looks like what I have to look forward to these next months is a lot more work, a lot less understanding, a lot less time to get things done, and the expectation from management that I should be cheerful because I'm still One of The Team. Yeah RIGHT!
I'm going to have to do a lot of expectation management myself. I'm going to have to let the management know that I'm not a machine. That I'm not going to work like they think I should, but like a real human being works. If that's not fast enough, then maybe they shouldn't have let so many folks go. But I'm sure that's not even possibly concerned them. They saw a number they needed to hit, and hit it. The consequences of that mark never even occurred to them.
I'm not enjoying this any more.