The Hammer Falls

For weeks I’ve been worrying about job security. The IT field is not the most stable of professions and these are not the most stable of times, but I’ve been especially worried since a) my company tends to lay people off near the HKRXmasux holidays, and b) I’ve been under an atypical amount of pressure at work. People have beset me with requests for end of month and year reports and database queries for actual data from 2005 before it ended. Another group wanted me to maintain a schedule for a server without giving me access. I did the best I could, but I could see frustrations mounting as I could only offer excuses instead of results, such as “I can’t summarize the hours for that employee – he hasn’t started working here yet.” Also I’ve been coming in late (but staying late to catch up, if necessary) and blogging on company time.

Today I bumped into one of my supervisors who requested a quick meeting with me this afternoon. He’s a nice man with a permanent hangdog expression that makes any encounter with him seem like he’s going to tell you that your mother just died. Note – he doesn’t know that in my case that would be good news, but I digress.

Anyway, he dolorously invited me into his office, told me to close the door, and then jabbed a stake into my heart. No, wait – I think I made the last bit up. He didn’t kill me, he just told me I was being resourced, which is what they used to call being outsourced, which is what they used to call being right-sized, which is what they used to call being downsized, which is what they used to call being terminated, which is what they used to call being fired. I probably forgot a couple of terms from over the years, but it doesn’t matter since that didn’t actually happen either.

After I sat and we exchanged obligatory pleasantries, he informed me that I have been promoted from a junior database administrator to a full-fledged DBA, a move which brings a significant raise. He asked me not to talk about the raise since we’ve been on a permanent freeze for as long as I’ve been with the company (and as long as anybody else here has been around), and I only got the raise because my other bosses actually carved the money out of the budget as thanks for the wonderful work I do. Go figure.

So, I guess I’m going to have to drink some celebratory beers tonight, as opposed to the beers I normally drink because they day ends with a “y.” I’m going to make an effort to arrive on time in the mornings, starting tomorrow if I’m not too hung over. I almost feel guilty for blogging during the work day, but I’ll get over that.

Final note: neener neener neener.