It’s Tuesday, and I’m already done for the week. I’ve had enough. I can’t handle any more fun.
Work sucks. For the last few weeks the sword of Damocles has been hanging over our head as our customer has progressively dropped hints that they were going to re-scope our effort. Once they admitted to the fact that they were going to be changing things, they reassured us that “we’d like most of it,” but wouldn’t tell us anything about what the changes were or why we’d like them. I didn’t buy it, and after the “big reveal” today, I still can’t figure out why I should like it other than they’ve finally managed a little bit of realism in terms of schedule. They’re handing the interesting/challenging/worthwhile pieces off to another group who is demonstrably incapable, and we’re somehow supposed to help make them successful without having any real leverage or control over them. They get the real credit if it works (it won’t), and we get blamed if it fails (it will). What’s not to like?
On top of that, we’re supposed to legally have a special relationship with our customer — more of a partnership than a contractor/customer relationship. They don’t seem to believe that. We are supposed to be trusted agents, advisors, and risk reducers… not traditional contractors. They treat us like blood-sucking, bottom-feeding, soulless, profit mongering, heartless, slime-eating, contractors. Rather than pull us into their discussions about how to re-scope the program we’ve spent the last year trying to help them define, they hide it from us and ask people who have partial and partially incorrect information to tell them how to re-scope to meet their new objectives. I’m pissed, but can’t say or do anything about it. My profanity filter is struggling to contain my opinion on this matter.
Ahh, you say, at least you can go home and be around those you love. NOPE. They are out of town, and it’s just me and the dogs. Sometimes I like being alone. When I’m feeling okay, I get a lot done when I don’t have competition for time. I have time to write, tinker, whatever. It’s only a temporary thing, because being alone for too long is a sure-fire way to screw me up, but in the near-term it can be kinda nice. Not today. I came into this week not feeling great. Work has fed that beast. Fed it, and let it loose. It’s about all I can do to make myself cook food and do much more than watch YouTube. I really need to spend time working on business development stuff, and I’ve not really written anything for a while. It’ll wait. I can’t make myself do it. A part of me wants to just get blindingly drunk and wait for the week to end. Too bad that’s not really an option.