Us against Them

As the days go on it becomes more and more clear that I have zero control and most of my work largely goes unseen by everyone but users and my Boss. So many decisions about control have been made without even a single hint at asking myself or Boss what we think. I kind of expect to be out of the loop, I'm only a minion, but my Boss has been shoved out of the loop.

Decisions are being made without us being told. Restrictions are being decided without us being told. Everything is being taken out of our hands without us being told. But in the aftermath of all of these decisions, we are expected to pick up the pieces without any information. How do you fix something when you haven't been told what's been done to it in the first place?

Guess work and banding together. That's what me and Boss are reduced to. Network Admin and IT Director have taken the reigns but not bothered to tell us anything. Its us against them.

So we've both made a decision to start doing some serious job hunting. We want out. Our morale is at an all time low and we can't handle it anymore. There are greener pastures in a McDonalds somehwere that would make us feel better than we do here.

I've forgiven Boss for conviently taking off sick during the biggest part of the crisis. I'm unsure he would have been much help anyhow. He paniced when he was faced with something he knew nothing about. Its over. We've banded together.

Just as an aside, I found out yesterday who got the Support Person of the year award. It was Network Admin. Not that he does any support. Currently he has 2 whole offices pissed off at him. Oddly enough those 2 same offices have told me that they voted for me and thought I should have gotten it. I personally think it was rigged. Boss does more support than him and Network Admin barely ever talks to users. I can't see the majority choosing him.

They broke it

As is obvious from previous posts, we use Citrix here at work. Well at least we used to. We've been working to get things ready to change from using Citrix, to using a normal WAN. Let me make it clear that I knew this was going to hapen, just not when it was going to happen.

So a couple weeks ago I had 5 days off, three of them working day. Had to use up the rest of my holiday before the end of the year. No big deal right. I really needed the break before my head broke.

Well unbeknownst to me, that is the weekend that the almighty IT Director and my coworkers decided to switch the network around from using Citrix. Not a big deal. An IT Director who has supposedly gone through this before should know what he's doing. If there are problems then they should be minor cause he has a nice plan of action and this shouldn't be a problem. You'd think that, but no.

So I return to work last Tuesday to my phone ringing off the hook, my cowrokers nowhere in sight and our old servers sitting under a desk next to me. Answer phone to find out that the network isn't working. No surprise there. Try to call boss, no answer. Try to call coworker, no answer. Answer phone a million more times and get an idea of what the heck is going on. They changed the whole network over and didn't tell anyone how to do anything. Lovely.

Call boss yet again, he answers. Claims to be stupid, not really a lie. Call cowrker, finally get him on the phone and find out what the heck is going on. As I suspected, the network has been swapped. Okay time to start sorting through the mess and get people working.

Que that day being a mess and me working with my nose to the grindstone getting people sorted out. Duplicate for this for the rest of the week and the following monday too. But for Wednesday, add in that my whiny boss leaves around 2pm cause he's got a sore throat and is icky. Man Flu. So this continues and I manage to fix most of the bigger problems and things begin to slowly calm down.

It's Wednesday again and the boss finally decided to come back. Not that he's needed much now. Only smallish things left to fix. I've got most of it under control now. Have gotten a few accolades from managers in the other offices, which is nice.

I'm looking for a new job. I need outta this place. The mmess above is the straw that broke the camel's back.