Tag Archives: job

Slamming door…

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Yes, I know I work in a different office than you do, but you need to get it through your thick skull that I’m not the enemy here and I’m not asking for information because I want to start a game of gottcha. The bottom line is I need this information to do my job. If what I’m going to discover in that data is somehow professionally embarrassing to you, while I feel bad about that, it’s not going to stop me from getting the information I need…

But go ahead and feel free to slam the door in my face, because now I get to go to my boss, who’s going to go to his boss, who’s going to walk across the hall to see your boss and explain that you are going to release the files I’m asking for. The only thing different is that instead of me having three days to do the analysis, I’m going to do it in one… and spend the other two stage-managing the inter-office war that you’ve decided to start.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Tweaked…

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On the surface the range of issues I deal with in this new job is deceptively similar to the position I ejected from in Tennessee. To be sure, there’s plenty of org chart shuffling, PowerPoints to update, and a metric ton of reports of one stripe or another that need to be completed. The difference, though, is that even when it’s minute, you can still see progressing being made on these projects. There’s plenty of infighting and office politics, but on the whole, projects are handed off between offices more or less seamlessly. There’s even collaboration between different departments… and it’s actually encouraged. It’s like someone has taken reality and tweaked it just a bit. Or maybe more like they’ve smacked it in the side of the head with a 2×4.

My perception is obviously shaded a bit by the recent past, but I can legitimately say that this has been the first time in a long stretch when I didn’t wake up in the morning looking for a reason to take a sick day. That long stretch of early morning parking lot pep talks is, for now, a thing of the past. Does that mean things couldn’t turn into a poop sandwich tomorrow? Not so much. For now, I’ll just appreciate it for what it is.

Pax…

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You can tell in processing today went well because I’m not griping and complaining about it. The day was planned in advance. Things happened on time. And I didn’t leave the room feeling like that senior leaders were pumping sunshine directly into my fourth point of contact. It was an unexpected and pleasant surprise. Plus, I have a window. I’ve never had one of those before so I’m disturbingly excited about being able to see if the sun is shining or if it’s pouring rain before actually walking out of the building. I’ve said it before, but it warrants repeating; Best. Demotion. Ever.

Demoted…

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At midnight tonight I’ll officially be reduced in grade and my supervisory authority will cease to be. I’ll revert to being a simple action officer – working projects and meeting deadlines. The only timesheet and evaluation I’ll have to worry about are my own. The only training I need to think about is mine. I’ll be back in the organizational sweet spot of being a technical expert. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get to feel like part of the solution instead of part of the problem… and make a few extra dollars for my troubles.

All things considered… Best. Demotion. Ever.

Just like that…

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I’ve had nine months to think about what this post would look like, but surprisingly it’s not one that I started working on in advance. Now that the day of jubilee has arrived, I find myself at something of a loss for words. How do I sum up the experience that has been finding my eject handle? Is it defined by the statistics? 273 days on the hunt. 91 days of frozen time. 385 resumes submitted. Sometimes I felt like I could count off the hours of each one of those days. Almost a year of complete confidence tempered by false starts and rejections. And then moments of unadulterated joy. Whatever the moment is, it’s not defined by the statistics.

I’m feeling very conscious of those who made the jump before I have. Of how much I miss them and how much I’ll miss a few of those I’ll leave behind. I’m conscious now more than ever of home, of family, and of friends from whom I’ve been too long separated. They say you can’t go home again. I’ve been away long enough to know that everything has changed – and that nothing that matters has really changed. I’m coming home and I’ll take it as I find it, changes and all.

There is plenty of time to go into specifics later. For now, let it suffice to know that tonight I will sleep the sleep of the vindicated. My great experiment in Memphis is drawing to an end. I’ve survived my ride on the crazy train. And I’m coming home.

When I sat down to write, I thought this post would be a valedictory. It seems my nerves are still too raw for that kind of triumphalism. Give me a day or two for the reality to sink in, though, and it’s a fair bet that you’ll be reading posts with some serious swagger.

That’s progress…

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I had a vague hope for most of the day that the powers that be would intercede and pass the word before close of business. It would have been nice to spend the weekend in something other than a state of definite maybe. That might over-state the situation a bit, but the clock is running and almost everything involved in this process is time sensitive. The longer it takes to square things away here, the more of a headache it’s going to be to start getting things lined up on the other end. Until they officially put a mark on the wall, I’ll remain stuck somewhere between reality and happy illusion – and there’ll be a hard limit on how far I can and can’t prepare. Can I pack every stick of stuff in the house? Sure. But I don’t know if that means I’m going to spend the next two days or two months surrounded by boxes and making dinner every night in the one saucepan that I didn’t pack. I can’t make any definitive plans to get a house full of boxes from here to there. Maybe more difficult is that I can’t start making any decisions about where I’ll be unpacking all those boxes once they get to wherever they’re going. I’m getting visions of way too many nights hanging out in a not quite mid-grade extended stay hotel. It won’t take me long to close out on this end. That’s the beauty of planning your exit for the better part of the year. The issues that are bedeviling me tonight are all about what happens after the Mayflower truck pulls away from Memphis. I know I can torch that bridge when I get to it, but for someone who lives his life by a plan, it’s the kind of uncertainty that can keep a guy up at night. If there’s any up side, it’s that I seem to have gone from being paranoid about the job itself to only being paranoid about what it’s going to take to get from here to there. That’s progress.

We’ve got a heartbeat…

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I hear it in the hushed conversation over cubicle walls. I see the grins and sly thumbs up offered by our own HR staffers. Somewhere just beyond my field of view, the wheels of the great green machine are in motion. We’ve got a heartbeat. It’s faint, but there. After the torturous road this process has taken just to get to the “tentative” stage, I don’t dare to think of it as a done deal. The probability of success is definitely increasing, but that’s a long way from a signed set of orders and a new desk. Nevertheless, I’m raising the confidence meter from cautiously optimistic to hopeful.

Experience has taught me and millions of others that the Army is a serious player in the game of hurry up and wait. I’ve got the waiting bit down to a science. It seems that we’re about to get a lesson in extreme hurry up. I’m confident that in this case, hurry up is far preferable.

A sign of life…

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After another week of ponderous waiting, I was given another gentle reminder that this thing up north might actually work out. I got to spend a few minutes talking to a to individual who will act as my “sponsor” during the transition and in-processing period. It wasn’t exactly the call from HR that I have been waiting for, but it’s a sign of life. At this point on the long, torturous process I seem to be overly given to looking for signs and reading tea leaves. Absent the magic moment when they throw the switch from tentative to official, that is probably as good as it’s going to get. After nine months, you’d think that I would be use to waiting for things to happen.

The ability of the system to make the simple things hard is never far from my thoughts these days. Since this whole exercise involves filling out some paperwork and moving my electrons from one database to another, it’s still hard to understand how it could possibly take as long as it does. The irony is that once they pull the trigger, they’ll probably want to give me a short reporting date and wonder why I can’t get out of here with a whole two weeks notice. I’ve been around this Army long enough to know better than spend a dime making preparations without a set of orders in hand. So, I hurry up and wait.

That sound you hear…

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Since I had them scheduled anyway, I decided to keep two interview appointments I had made for this afternoon. All I can say is that I hope I didn’t disturbe anyone with the strangled gurgle you heard coming from West Tennessee. That was surely my ferocious choking during a job interview with a federal department that rhymes with Domeland Obscurity. It. Was. Painful. I’m only blessed that I didn’t really have to listen to myself give the answers. Once I realized I’d completely lost the bubble, I stopped listening to myself and was focused on keeping my answers as short as possible in order to put the interview to rest with some semblance of dignity. Lord. It was just brutal.

The first question was ok. The second question is where the wheels came off. I don’t even remember what the topic was… and halfway through answering, I realized that even as I was giving an answer, I didn’t remember what the question was. The answer ended up being a series of vaguely interrelated partially developed thoughts as I mentally groped for the thread of the conversation. Needless to say, I never found the thread and never recovered my equilibrium after that. Running out the clock was really the only option I had left.

I knew I was in the deep grass when the panel leader closed up with “Thanks. I think you have some adequate answers there.” Adequate. Wow. Ouch. At least I didn’t drool on myself. Without a question, that was the most painful 25 minutes in recent memory. It was a shitshow tempered only by the fact that it was the second of back to back interviews and the first went remarkably well. It’s the carnage of that second one that’s going to stick with me, though.

91 days…

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The post I was set to bring you tonight will not be appearing because the subject matter went and changed on me between the time I started writing and the time it was supposed to post. Instead of another rant about the Army personnel system, I bring you tidings of great joy. The 30-day civilian hiring freeze is over – ending its 91-day reign of terror. Don’t believe, me? Check out the Civilian Personnel website for yourself.

Aside from the system not being at a complete standstill, I’m not exactly sure what the great thaw really means yet. I know that it means that personnel offices now have a 90 day backlog of hiring actions to clear and that’s never a quick process even under the most optimal conditions. I don’t have much faith at this point in any of the possibilities that looked promising back in February. Expecting magical reanimation of things just as they were at the moment they were frozen back in March seems about as likely as breathing new life into Walt Disney’s frozen head. Sure, it’s sounds possible… maybe… but not very likely.

What this probably means is that at least now there’s a fighting chance at working through the nomination-interview-hiring process to the point where a job offer is at least a possibility. So now it’s a mad race to spool up and flood my resume back into the Army system. Nothing like being back at square one.