When your job interferes with your heart.

So, my acting supervisor has decided to hand in his letter of resignation effective immediately.  This will happened on Friday.  This wouldn’t be such a big deal except for the fact that it necessarily means I am going to have to miss more time than I already do with the kids I volunteer with. 

The thing that pisses me off is that this is an entirely selfish move.  It would be one thing if he were moving on to greener pastures or what have you but he’s not.  He didn’t do what he was supposed to do, got in trouble for it, and then rather than sucking it up and accepting responsibility for his actions he decided to throw a hissy fit and say “If they are gonna treat me like that I am getting out of here”.  Fuck THAT!

He officially quit because “he was tired”, but he gave any number of people any number of reasons, each of which was different.  I am in a tricky situation because I have to not act like an entirely cold asshole, but really, I am glad to see him go.  The man was essentially dead weight and served only to come dangerously close to sexual harrassment charges and get us complained about to OMH for taking inappropriate tones (too flirtatious, angry, dismissive) with the clients. 

So here I am bashing him for being selfish while ultimately being selfish myself.  I am pissed because I don’t want to have to spend more time away from my kids, but they would probably be alright with out me.  But I don’t know that I would be so without them so that’s that. 

To make matters even more frustrating I was called in to the CPO’s office and told I was going to get a raise and promotion.  Now this would be super exciting and what-have-you, if it weren’t immediately recinded less than 18 hours later.  No promotion, no raise, and they are apparently abandoning their “hiring from within” policy which I have never actually seen happen except for once over a three year period. 

So in closing, fuck this place, I need out, anyone hiring?

Why I do What I do

A little about myself, very little actually and you will forgive the generality of this paragraph but, again, all in the name of trying to stay as anonymous as possible.  I am a mid-20’s graduate of a state school.  After graduating college and a brief stint working for my uncle in construction I took a sales job.  This job was not worth while as I saw relatively no money off of it and came home after lengthy commutes all day to feel like shit.  In addition to the lack of fiscal reciprocation and long days, the practices of this company and many other rooted in it’s parent company were dubious at best and evil and duplicitous at worst.  My ultimate decision became that if I was going to make no money I might as well do something which made me feel good about myself, so I left that job and joined the social service field.  Funny story, to me at least, when I made up my mind to leave the private sector I used to spend the first day or two in a sales territory lining up sales so that it would look like every day was a profitable day, and then would drive out to turf, knock out a lined up sale in the morning and then in to the city to interview for other jobs.  I guess that’s not nearly as funny written down as it was to me at the time.

I have been at the same agency in the same position for two and a half years.  I greatly disapprove of this particular agency and my reasoning for this will become a large portion of what the basis of this blog will be.  I do this job for two main reasons, while I abhor the administration and staff I work with for the most part (like any other job there is a select few who are very nice and I am actual friends outside of work with one or two of them), I feel a deep seeded need to help the clientele as best as possible.  This is, in the most general sense, a mental health program.  I love most of the clients I work with, they want to get better and I fundementally want to help them do so because that’s what my life is, helping those who want help.  They are basically good people who have made poor decisions for any number of reasons but they range from people still studying for their GED to people who hold multiple advanced degrees.  An interesting fact is that many of those who are very well educated like to have the most down to earth conversations, and enjoy interacting on a relatively base level, with many conversations centering on music, art and sport.  Those with considerably less education are the ones who will talk to you like you are attending their guest lecture. 

The other reason is that while I work for an agency I can’t stand, I volunteer for a non-profit which I love.  The anticipation of going to volunteer is often times what I use as motivation for slogging through a day of actual paid work.  Something about that previous sentence is severely warped and reversed.  The people I volunteer with and for are amazingly gracious.  They are motivated to make themselves better and better their community therefore it works to motivate those helping them attain these goals.  The people I work for and with, for the most part (again there are always exceptions) their highest motivation is extremely selfish and is usually centered around a way to trick people in to giving them what they want.  The contrast is stark and often times very disconcerting. 

Also, it helps that they don’t make you pee in a cup.

My love for people is what keeps me in these fields, I love to help people and I feel that most people want to be helped, I just wish there were more agreeable manors to do so and that the hierarchy weren’t so similar to what I fled in the world of sales and direct-marketing.

The Generalist.

As I sit here, working another glorious holiday, which is pretty much par for the course for me,  I have decided that the best way for me to not have as much crushing depression and internal rage is to voice my issues.  The agency I work for, which will be refered to as PB&J’s for reasons of anonymity, is comprised of comprised of 98% Minorities and 87% women, which means as a white male I am the lone representative.  Whilst I am not asking for any level of sympathy or anything like that, I know the white man has a long standing history of getting his fair share of breaks, I am simply explaining because it has alot of reflection on the assignment of tasks. 

Also reflecting on this is the fact that I have one key word in my job title which means that everything falls in my lap.  That word is Generalist.  Now, for those of you who work in a similar field to this you will know what this means and therefore know how much it sucks.  For those of you less informed a generalist is a person who, while specifically tasked with certain responsibilities, is also responsible for many general duties which can be assigned at any time.  These can include anything from leading trips and facilitating groups, to cookin meals and repairing electrical appliances and everything in between.  I stronly advise anyone considering joining the world of non-profits to avoid this title, as it is usually a dead end and underappreciated, while you interact with the clientele the most out of everyone you are ranked lower than the reception pool on the org charts.  So fuck that. 

Anyways, this is my new foray in to blogging.  This post is very short mostly because I wanted to just set up the ground rules for the site and introduce myself, although for lack of a desire to get dooced I will leave it at that.  This site will be updated frequently.  See-ya.