Cafe Hitch-hike

2024-04-02

Don’t want to eat the sausage

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that someone is hired for my temporary / former boss’s position. There’s things I’ve enjoyed about this gig, but I don’t enjoy that I feel it’s a drain on my energy (and an overall joy in life).

There’s things I’m so glad about learning, then things I uncovered. It didn’t occur to me that I’ve been grieving over a lot, and didn’t know there were things to grieve about until I saw stark differences between the past and the now. Even my boss said it was ok to take time aside to grieve and process those things.

Then, there’s the boss. I sure hope I don’t get on their bad side. They have been my cheerleader since I took on the job and have mostly been good to me. A part of me wonders if the semi-authority I have is all because of them. I also fear its loss once I step down from this gig. *Sigh*. I sure hope my colleagues won’t cannibalize me once I return to that level. People tell me not to worry about that, but sometimes I still do.

I talked about all of this with a friend outside of the building. We concluded I wouldn’t had minded having my former boss’s job if things weren’t so fucked up all the time. They remarked, “now that you know how it’s made, you don’t want to eat the sausage!” For sure!

I was in awe about the way people talked about those who interviewed for my former boss’s position. I said to someone privy to the hiring decision that it was a shame we had to hire the person with skills like a Navy SEAL. People said some very cutting things about them, and then if they’re hired, they manage the most dysfunctional subdivisions in the building.

I’m no longer surprised it hasn’t been easy for me to get hired anywhere. I’m way too easy of a target. But gee, if I give the Navy SEAL vibe, then I’m unapproachable and intimidating. I just can’t win.

I walked away from watching the try-outs thinking, “fuck, what does it matter to try to make an impression? Just fucking show up and do whatever.” God knows I’ve spent a lifetime twisting and turning to fit into something or somewhere. Perhaps this is a great time to also tell all of that to fuck off.

I’ve been tired from this job. I wonder if there’s a long German or Scandinavian word for mental and emotional malaise from a demanding, chaotic place. We are losing one of our specialists at the end of the month, and I heard their supervisor is also actively looking for work. I had to ask their supervisor how the departing specialist’s job would be divided until their replacement was hired cos I foresaw those getting dumped onto my division without warning. We will have, what, 5 or 6 specialist vacancies? I lost count and only God knows if and when we’ll be able to attempt to hire for those.

The big boss wants to hire another specialist, to paraphrase a Bible parable, on a foundation made of sand. I don’t know if I’m the only one who sees it. I only remember sitting and thinking WTF? while this was discussed in a meeting.

I could barely speak because I only had clouds of interpretation and meaning without words. I wasn’t sure they had merit. Once I had the space for the thoughts to become words, I could had asked questions like:

…where is this person’s office? (Answer: unknown)
…where is the technology and building property supposed to go? (Answer: unknown)
…isn’t the place where you want to put this person currently being renovated and many fiefdoms are clawing to get pieces of it?(True)
…who is going to assist with getting all the technology and property into this space while we have our lowest number of employees ever? (Answer: unknown)
(asked in a whisper)…this one job sounds like it is for 2 people rather than 1.

And so on. Maybe my brain was protecting me.

Anyhow…. I’m counting the days until my contract expires and when a new middle pubah will replace my ass.

And then I got notified that a colleague’s twin sibling committed suicide. They were 52 years old.

downwind | upstream