Obnoxious Bitch

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

It’s been lovely but I have to scream now!

I actually cried a few times at work today.  Tears of frustration, of rage, of being totally fucking overwhelmed by multiple instances of work left undone and therefore personal failures.  I beat myself up when I fail; it’s a bad habit, and one I hope one day to break completely.

I’m filling in for someone on vacation, and had a site update to do that I’ve never seen before in my life, and worse yet, involves some tricky Flash crap that means fuck-all to a hack like me.  Fortunately, the poor guru I begged for help after a few hours of struggling on my own took pity on my ignorant ass and not only fixed the problems but educated me a bit in the process.  Kritzia you’re my hero!

So that took up nearly my whole day, which put me much farther behind in another humongous project I stayed late to at least finish enough to satisfy my own sense of obligation… as well as destroying any chance of my catching up the logging of all my project hours for May, which the Suits and beancounters appear to feel we should prioritize above the actual work we’re expected to diligently document—or so it seems to a hack in the trenches like me.

At least I have the comfort of knowing that I have expressed all along my concerns about my ability, even my qualifications, to handle some of the work I’m asked to do.  I sincerely try my damnedest to do anything they throw my way… but there are limitations to how much I can fake or just wing.  I’m not a Flash designer, I’m not a Software Engineer, or Analyst, or whatever-the-hell I’m called this year. I’m not even a friggin’ college graduate.  I’m a scrappy bitch of above average intelligence who can do damned near anything given enough training.  At the moment, however, I’ve been assigned to have my fingers in so many projects with varying degrees of complexity that I’m spread so thin I’m starting tear in a few places.

To be fair, I’m not the only person in my department (or my company) to be stretched to the max.  Nearly everyone who’s spending their days glued to their workstation bringing the clients’ visions to life is showing signs of the strain… though I notice the people who are promising the clients the moon with a fence around it, disregarding entirely the inavailability of resources to fulfill such a promise, are leaving promptly at 6 PM… and smiling!  Damn them to hell.

And where the heck are Hub and the Princess?