Monday, October 11, 2010

Job Security vs My Sanity

It’s been a while since I have written anything here. I made the MISTAKE of going to a training class. Why was it a mistake? I learned a lot. I should have a new certification that I’ve wanted for a while. I also was out of the office for a week. THAT’S why it was a mistake. Even though I had a consultant covering for me while I was out, leaving the office is a double-edged sword for me.

I’m a firm believer in keeping your personal life and professional life separate as much as possible. I think it’s nice to just get away sometimes. Unfortunately, since I run all of IT at my company, I’m the only one who understands the way it’s all setup. I’m not saying the other guys in IT aren’t helpful. They just have much different skill sets. For example, my new boss who is also the CIO in training asked me this the other day: “Does the Operating System gets installed on the Hard Drive?” How do I respond to that? It boggles my mind that someone with a self-professed, 15 years of experience working in many different, fast-paced environments could not understand how an OS is installed. They just don't get the infrastructure, support sides of IT. When I leave for a day or two or even a week like I did for training my return is usually a nightmare.

When I arrived back at the office, the first thing I noticed was that there were 6 boxes of backup tapes from our off-site vendor sitting on my desk. Did the consultant not understand the directions I left for sending tapes off-site? I wish. He never bothered changing the tapes. So I was “lucky” enough to have 6 days of failed backups waiting for me. I immediately ran into the server closet and began rotating the tapes and getting the backups straightened out. Once that was complete, I headed back to my desk and got ready to start going through my open Help Desk tickets. Then I made yet another observation, my keyboard and mouse were different. How could I tell? Well my fancy keyboard with all the media keys and volume controls was on my chair and replaced by a regular no frills USB keyboard. I asked my boss if someone had been sleeping in my bed. He replied that they had received a last minute new hire and they needed to give them a computer, so they gave her mine. Wait…..WHAT?!??!?! YOU GAVE A USER MY COMPUTER?!?!?!?! ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FREAKIN’ MIND?!?!?!?!? Why would you do that? Did you ever think that maybe I have sensitive information on my computer that a newbie shouldn’t see? Calm down Stranga. Let it go. It’s not worth losing your job.

It’s great that I have that luxury, especially in rough times like this. I actually control my job security. They can’t fire me, because as seen by my 6 days out of the office, they CAN’T do my job since I have 74 new Help Desk tickets waiting for me.Where should I draw the line though? I can't take a day off without getting blasted with a million phone calls, emails, smoke signals, faxes, whatever when someone can't figure out how to check if a power cord is plugged in when a user's computer won't turn on. By the way, that was an actual "Major Issue" while I was out. 3 guys, 2 days of troubleshooting, no one thought to check the power cord. Seriously? 

What should I do? Do I stay here and deal with levels of stupidity that are rarely seen? Or do I take my newly minted VCP and get out of Dodge? I'm leaning towards the second option. What are your thoughts?