9.06.2004

I'm nobody

I could barely bring myself to go into work last week.

My company has largely moved to a new floor it purchased in our building, but I stayed behind in the old digs, which are now empty and largely desolate. It was a strange environment even before the mass migration. I'll walk past people in the hallways, and they won't even look at me. I wasn't introduced to anyone when I started there; just plopped in a conference room as a makeshift office. I have supervisors who only talk to me, via e-mail, when I do something wrong.

Then, in the employee evaluations, I was, strangely, dinged for not keeping my supervisors apprised of my progress (as were my two co-workers on the same project). This was the excuse given for my less-than-average raise. But since then, when I try to tell my supervisors what's going on, they're largely unresponsive. On one part of the project, I asked three times for a meeting to make sure I was meeting the project requirements, and was blown off each time. When I run into a roadblock, it's like pulling teeth trying to get them to help.

Every morning I wake up later and later because I hate my job. But mostly I hate myself for settling for this crap. It's easy to get complacent when they don't pay attention to when you come and go, and just collect a paycheck. But when you get treated like a nobody for long enough, you start to believe that you are a nobody.

That's why it gets hard for me, at times, to even bring up this web page, which I haven't done all week. I sometimes can't bear to look at my own stupid ramblings, peppered as they are with pop-culture references and profanity. Not because I'm embarrassed, necessarily, but because... they don't mean anything. They don't serve any useful purpose, because I'm a nobody. I have no power and no influence. I have no money. I can't change anything about Washington, so I'm just waiting for the day when I can leave.

I'm not exactly making the world a better place through my existence. Congress isn't going to read any of this and say, "Oh yeah, we should do something about that." All I can do is sit behind my computer screen and make fun of all the bullshit, and hope that it helps a few like-minded Washingtonians feel better.

So... hope this helps.

No comments:

Post a Comment