Friday, February 24, 2006
henry ford sucks it.
there's this gross duel going on between my boss, who's currently in spain, and the project manager at dayjobinc., who's a bigoted brit. neither of them are good bosses, but one is a marginally nicer person and doesn't say stupid things about gay people, so i marginally prefer her.
since she's gone, the brit PM has scaled back his civility and is sort of ragging on her publicly. i try not to respond. but the tech VP called me into his office this week saying he'd heard a rumor that i was considering leaving, and i think that rumor came from brit boss trying to imply to the higher ups that my immediate boss was so poor that i was going to quit. i'm feeling a little bit manipulated.
this is all backstory to yesterday afternoon, when he had a meeting and i stayed after to explain some bugs. he noted that i have a lot of time off. this is true; i work 25 hours a week or so, and i had just taken a week off to go to seattle. i think he said: "you get more time off than the king and his dog!"
and my first thought was, i do get a lot of time off. jeez, have i been insensitive to the needs of this company? to my fellow workers, who do *not* get this much time off?
except that's backwards. it's not time "off," and i don't "get" it. that time is my real life; time at work feels like time "off" from everything important. and the fact that i work part time is a contract, not a privilege. when did we all tacitly agree that work is the most important thing, and that the basic adult committment is 40 hours a week--more than we spend with friends, families, spouses, or sleeping? part if it is that i've got this other unpaying vocation going on, but honestly, even if that weren't so: more than 30 hours a week sitting at a desk making money for other people just makes me Very Sad and Sort of Angry. this part-time stuff is how i've figured out how to make the world liveable.
so, brit boss, screw you. yeah, i take a lot of time away. it's the best time i have. and, frankly, i think i'm managing my world a lot better than those of you who stay here ten hours a day. pah.
since she's gone, the brit PM has scaled back his civility and is sort of ragging on her publicly. i try not to respond. but the tech VP called me into his office this week saying he'd heard a rumor that i was considering leaving, and i think that rumor came from brit boss trying to imply to the higher ups that my immediate boss was so poor that i was going to quit. i'm feeling a little bit manipulated.
this is all backstory to yesterday afternoon, when he had a meeting and i stayed after to explain some bugs. he noted that i have a lot of time off. this is true; i work 25 hours a week or so, and i had just taken a week off to go to seattle. i think he said: "you get more time off than the king and his dog!"
and my first thought was, i do get a lot of time off. jeez, have i been insensitive to the needs of this company? to my fellow workers, who do *not* get this much time off?
except that's backwards. it's not time "off," and i don't "get" it. that time is my real life; time at work feels like time "off" from everything important. and the fact that i work part time is a contract, not a privilege. when did we all tacitly agree that work is the most important thing, and that the basic adult committment is 40 hours a week--more than we spend with friends, families, spouses, or sleeping? part if it is that i've got this other unpaying vocation going on, but honestly, even if that weren't so: more than 30 hours a week sitting at a desk making money for other people just makes me Very Sad and Sort of Angry. this part-time stuff is how i've figured out how to make the world liveable.
so, brit boss, screw you. yeah, i take a lot of time away. it's the best time i have. and, frankly, i think i'm managing my world a lot better than those of you who stay here ten hours a day. pah.
