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change in schedule Maybe a month or so ago, word was handed down from above that management was making some scheduling changes in our department. Some people would be changing responsibilities and shifts, while others such as myself would be unaffected. None of this came as a surprise to the staff since rumors had milling about for weeks before this sensitive announcement was made public. Now in a very anti-climatic way, this week was the first week where those changes went into effect and so far everything seems to be about the same. For the longest time work has been a non-issue for me and I hope that it stays that way for the coming year. About the most interesting thing that has happened to me at work was my review that took place a few weeks ago. Here are some of the comments made by my boss about me and my responses to them. I feel the need to clarify the fact that I did not verbalize these feelings to him in our meeting since that probably would have caused some tension between us and that is not a goal of mine. Initiative: Eric seems to lay back and wait for things to come to him. Need to develop higher sense of urgency. My response: I can see why he would make that statement since I don't join in when the people in my department start what I call the Chicken Little The Sky is Falling Routine that I despise so much whenever a major outage takes place. In my opinion having a group of people running in circles doesn't solve things very quickly and I prefer to keep my stress level down. Plus some if not most of the major problems that happen at work are in fact beyond my control and there is little that I can do except wait until it become something that I can fix. I also refuse to badger people on what they are doing to fix something. Telling someone to hurry when they are fixing a flat tire does not make them move faster. Innovativeness: Can be creative, but haven't seen a lot of ideas over past year. My response: First of all I have my doubts about the word innovativeness being a real word. It doesn't sound right to me. Plus whenever I do offer a suggestion it seems to be ignored and I am not alone in that feeling. Most of my fellow employees in the department say the same thing on a daily basis. We are told to vocalize our thoughts and concerns, but they never seem to be heard or they are quickly dismissed. Communications: Communicates when he needs to. My response: I don't feel the need to spew at the mouth and sometimes less is more as can be seen by my writing here. More often than not there is very little at work that makes me want to speak. Most of what we do is so mechanized that there isn't any need to talk about it. Talking about it wouldn't be worth my time. I do my work without dwelling too long on it, because there are other more interesting things to discuss. Cooperation / Team Work: Somewhat cryptic at times. Especially when e-mailing. Works well with coworkers. My response: Sigh. As I have already said most of the ideas that I suggest have been ignored and I feel the need to censor what I say so as not to offend my boss and others in higher management. Plus as can be seen by the above statement, my boss is the one who sees me as being cryptic yet I can get along just fine with the rest of the people in the department. Everyone but him seems to be able to understand me. As a postscript to this review, I should mention that the past five years at my current job have made me realize that I am not happy in that kind of work environment and if all goes well I should be free of the place in a year or less. Any attempt made at trying to change my current work environment would take time away from my true future plans. Why should I over exert myself over a mechanized job that makes me feel like a tool, when I hope to be living abroad sometime in the near future? |