A few years back, I bought this card that said �Some days it doesn�t pay to take the cat off of your face� and it shows a picture of a guy lying in bed with a cat curled up on his face. This accurately describes how my day is going so far, and it�s only 7:10 AM. First of all, I woke up in a bad mood. I know some of the reasons involve situations here at work, but part of it is I didn�t really sleep all that well since I was taking the cat off of my face all night long! I don�t know why she has to sleep on my face.
As I was getting dressed, I found myself ruminating on a situation here at work. My annual review date is March 1st. I�m supposed to have certain goals to work towards during the year and they become part of my review. Last year, my boss didn�t set my goals with me until November. Now she also knew that I would be going out on leave for the surgery in February. So I had 3 months to meet my goals instead of a year. What she told me at the time was that she doesn�t expect me to meet my goals because of the short time frame and that she would just roll them over until the next year. So, I did what I could but didn�t stress about them too much, and when I left on leave, I got permission to put them on hold until after I returned. I returned March 24th, and didn�t get my review until sometime in April. Here�s what pissed me off, and I should have said something at the time, but I knew it wasn�t the reason why I got a piddly little raise. On two of my goals, goals that I had gotten permission to put on hold, I was marked as �needs improvement�. Now how can I need improvement when you told me I wasn�t expected to meet the goals? And when I asked what I need to do to get a promotion, I was basically told that I would be promoted when I could do what she asks before she asks� What?!? So I have to be a mind-reader in order to get promoted? I didn�t really bring any of this up at the review, because I knew there were other factors affecting my performance. The year before had been horrible with a slew of illnesses, physical problems (a very bad car accident), and personal problems (see the entry on my marriage for details, as well as my mom was fighting breast cancer). I knew that those areas of my life would improve as I began to lose weight and my health improved. So I just decided to let it go. Obviously, I never really let it go.
I noticed in June, right before I left for my second surgery, that I never got my raise. When I spoke with my boss, she said she had submitted it and didn�t know why it never got processed. So that had to be resubmitted, then I got paid retroactively back to March 24th. When I got my review in April, we were supposed to set goals for the next year. She stated that she was going to set goals with me later, that she wanted to meet with the head of training (I am a trainer and though I report to a manager in my department, my salary actually comes from our training department), and then she would meet with me to set my goals. Well, she never did. I recently transitioned to a new boss and I realized that my old boss had never set my goals. It�s now almost October, and my review is March 1st. So I have 6 months. So I asked my old boss about it, then I told her that I wanted to be sure that I didn�t get penalized for goals that I can�t meet like I was last year. So we got in a big discussion about what happened last year, and she understood my frustration, but also wondered why I didn�t bring it up� well, I just had too much else going on at the time to get all in an uproar over it. So I just wanted to make sure that when my goals were set this year that there was either a clear expectation that they wouldn�t be met by the deadline of March 1st, or that we selected goals that I could meet in 6 months. So that was all okay and she said she would do that. But then when she set the goals, in order to sufficiently meet one of the goals (designing a training manual for our department) I have to meet another goal (set up our department website) but the second goal is not listed as one of my goals. So I have 5 goals with an additional �hidden� goal. So I really have 6 goals. And then, about an hour later, I remembered that we are developing a new workflow software system, and that will be rolling out before March 1st, so I will have to develop the training manual for that as well as roll out the training. This was not listed as one of my goals, and it�s going to be huge. So add another big thing to work on, and technically, I now have 7 goals to meet in 6 months. So that is frustrating me just a little bit. Okay, more than a little. But I�ll have to get over it and just work on those 7 goals. In a way, it�s okay, because for the past couple years, I haven�t had a lot of direction on my job. I am expected to do things, but no one is telling me what to do. And I get tired of trying to figure it all out for myself. I mean, I find stuff to do, but it gets overwhelming at times. It�s nice to have a sense of direction.
So all of that was going through my head as I was getting dressed. Then, I went to get my lunch together and I remembered I needed to bring something to work for a friend of mine. I am going to be helping her make her bridal shower invitations and wedding invitations. I needed to stamp some different ink colors this morning because after work we are going to buy the paper and it needs to match. So I was getting out some of the stamps and one of my containers of ink pads fell on the floor. What a mess. I was bending over to pick them up and my roommate came out. She was getting ready for work and had probably heard the commotion. So she comes out and says �What were you looking for?� Maybe I am totally irrational. Maybe (well definitely) I was just overly sensitive, but that question really pissed me off. I mean, what a stupid question. I am picking up stamps and stamp pads, so obviously, I was looking for a stamp. Does this question help me clean them up? NO! And why do I need to answer such a stupid question? Did she try to help me or say anything constructive? No, she just asked me a stupid question. I don�t know why, when you see someone dealing with something, you have to ask a stupid question. Okay, I know I just woke up in a bad mood and on a normal day, that probably wouldn�t have bothered me. But this morning, it pissed me off.
So today, was my day to whine. I guess we all need them sometimes. In other news, I got to talk to Fido last night (only for about 45 second but I�ll take what I can get), so I am happy about that. All for now. I�ll try to be in a better mood later.
