a failure of sorts

[rone]

I almost got fired today.  I begged for my job back and i got it.  Now i'm on double-secret probation.  I don't know if i want to stay here anyway, because my boss is a cranky old fuck who denigrated my work.  My co-sysadmin has my back and i greatly appreciate it.

I feel humiliated because i begged for my job, because i felt i had to beg for it.  I busted my ass today working like i haven't in years.  My boss thinks "being on call" means "being no farther than five minutes from a computer".  He found my playing soccer and seeing friends for brunch in SF somehow indulgent and irresponsible.

I've had bouts all day where i suddenly scrunch up my face and rub my brow and eyes, like some primal part of me wants to cry but isn't connecting to all the necessary parts.  Until recently, my head was filled with garbage impulses about what to do next.  Right now, i'm only thinking about it so i can write this down.

My boss said that he thought my effort so far was negligible and that his workload wouldn't change if he fired me and replaced me with someone off the street.  I think i earned some of this with a less than assertive work ethic, but he better think again if he thinks i'm going to let him do that to me again.

Comments

[lusercop.livejournal.com]

This seems to me to be a question of value and worth. These days (now that I put almost all of my spare time into juggling), I value my spare time very highly. I almost always take a full hour lunch break (as it is in my contract, and in my case, under the European Working Time Directive), and I try not to stay too late as I go juggling 3 nights a week (during the weekdays). My bosses have tried to get us in at short notice at weekends, and let's just say that in general, the carrot has to be pretty large.

I've heard of various degrees of on-callness before. Most of them stop you drinking, which, must, by its nature have a value - it's something you enjoy and therefore your employer must compensate you for that (during the day, they compensate you for that in the course of your normal wages, by buying your time from you). For our on-call sysadmins, there is a company-owned laptop and 3G/GPRS data card, which might be something you could ask for for those times you're on-call, and then you can go to brunch, having the laptop in your bag (get them to get something small), and at worst, you can excuse yourself for 5 mins while you log in and see what the problem is.

Basically, though, you're not a failure - and it sounds like your boss doesn't understand the value you put on your free time, in which case, you have to make this clear to him, and isn't supplying you properly with the tools you need to do your job.

Good luck with it getting better - I'm sure that he'll realise the real value of a ronebofh soon enough!

[ltempt.livejournal.com]

(Or there is the option of drinking on call, and turning up to the machine room waving a bottle of scotch).

We had examples of that at the colo facility at Netaxs

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

Guy was the closest hand-on person the organization had -- and that was because he was down the street at the stripper bar, I presume. Or at least a bar.

I had a boss, in another business, who didn't believe I needed to do anything other than work for him -- weekends, nights. He even wondered why I did my laundry on the night we put the paper to bed (because I was in town and theoretically had between 5 and 8 off and did't have a washing machine or indoor plumbing at home). I quit when he said he was considering giving me a raise or firing me if his son wanted my job. Another reporter ended up being told that he couldn't work for the guy and keep his health. The guy ended up going bust, sold the paper back to the guy who'd owned it before. Last time I saw him, about ten years later, my former boss was distributing newspapers for another paper (i.e., a paper boy).

The idea that anyone is supposed to be always working tends to really be corrosive.

Re: We had examples of that at the colo facility at Netaxs

[ltempt.livejournal.com]

Ha, I've turned up to machine rooms quite sozzled a number of times. It usually involves being not on call but the only one who can fix the problem. I remember turning up and opening my backpack and the beer glasses we'd pinched from the bar we just left rolled out. Aah, good times.