It's a Generational Thing

Gar!
I just got off the phone with my mother.

I absolutely cannot (and should not) talk to her about work. She comes from a completely different frame of reference on all-things-work. When I tell her that Dude is a pain in the ass, she tells me I need to change my attitude. When I say I'm thinking of looking for a new job, because I'm tired of working 50+ hours a week for crap pay (yes, I know I did it to myself); she says I need to stay put, because "bad times are coming." Never mind the fact that most firms in Houston are still hiring prodigiously. Never mind that the reason I got a damn college degree was so I could have choices about where I work- if not exactly about what I do.

I know where part of my frustration with her comes from. For the longest time, I blamed her for not "letting" me be an Art major when I entered college- she told me "I'd never be able to make a living that way." Truthfully, I should be angry at myself for not having the huevos to pursue what I wanted, and stop placing blame on her.

The more unhappy I am at work, the more I venture into The Land of Regret- even though I know I'm too damn old to start over. Taking a small pay cut was bad enough. Starting over at $38k- and with student loan debt- would be impossible.

I constantly think of ways I can manage to remain in the industry (see above, RE: too damn old to start over). I believe I have narrowed down the 3 things I want out of a job- though I don't know where to find said job, or if I'm fooling myself by thinking it exists:

1. I want to work 40 hours a week, period.
2. I don't want to wear a damn business suit, or even "business-y type" clothes every day.
3. I want $62k, which, according to the salary report I purchased recently, is what I'm worth.

I know I can't realistically ask for "less stress," "less frustration," or "less jack-assy project schedules," so I'm not even going to bother.

So tell me, Houston Architecture World, does such a job exist?

Big vs. Little

Over the last nine years of my "illustrious career," I've bounced back and forth between working for small firms (fewer than 25 people), and working for large firms (300-1000 people). There are good and bad things to both, of course.

Here's the breakdown on how the current place (17 people) measures up:

Good: The dress code is very relaxed
(not that we actually even have a dress code). I am allowed to, and often do, wear this shirt.

Bad: I have gained so much weight as a result of stress eating, that I couldn't wear any of my suits if I wanted to.

Good: things that I couldn't do at my previous, large-firm job, that I can do now:

• take 90-minute to 2-hour lunches, and nobody says a thing
• drink beer at lunch

Bad: things I could do at my previous job that I can't do now:

• work 40 hours a week maximum
• take vacation without having to answer my phone for a work-related call

Good/Bad: I didn't have Project Manager duties at my last job. I do now.
Bad: I'm getting paid less than my last job, though I have a whole lot more responsibility.

Good: I can cuss like a motherfucker, out loud, and it's perfectly acceptable.
Bad: I often have good reason to need to (see next item).

Bad: Things I had at my previous, large-firm job, that I don't have now:

• in-house ability to print larger than 11"x 17"
  (My first job while in school was at a firm of 7 people. They had a plotter.)
• a copier and/or scanner that will handle larger than 8.5"x 11"
  (we have a multifunction fax/copy/scan/print thing that is 5 years old, and does 90% of our printing)
• access to anybody else's calendars
  (We don't have an exchange server. Seriously.)
• e-mail that will send files larger than 5MB
• IT support
  (We have a guy, who is friends with Dude, comes from a wealthy family, and only does IT as a time-filler for when he's not playing golf.)
• access to MEP/structural consultants who are worth a damn
• a boss who allows me to look at the project contracts
  (I only care about looking at the contract to determine what our firm's project-related responsibilities are. Dude is concerned that the staff will see "the numbers," by which he means "what the partners are getting paid." I really don't give a damn about that.)
• paid disability leave
• a retirement plan
• performance reviews
• a clear-cut timeline of when I could possibly receive a pay raise
• direct-fucking-deposit
  (The absence of this, of all possible benefits, pisses me off the most.)

That puts the tally at 4 Good, 6 Bad.

But wait, should the last item count as one thing, or twelve? Some days it counts more heavily than others. For example, it was definitely a 12 during the week we were moving offices.

This is what our office felt like during that week:

What I'm Doing Right Now

Sitting on my ass in a coffee shop...but, wait!

It's not what you think. I'm not really slacking.

Well, I am, but it's not my fault. I was forced into it, pathetically enough.

Our office is moving, and through a complete and fucked-up lack of planning on the principals' parts, we don't have an office space this week. In fact, we may not have an office space next week, either.

Our crap is packed up in boxes in a storage room, which is doubling as a sad little workspace for the three marketing people as they desperately try to issue an RFQ. Despite the fact that they have no e-mail access. Or phones.

Dude (my uber-clever pseudo for Principal #1) told everyone to basically take the week off. That would be great, except that I kind of can't. I currently have a project in construction, and it's of the sort (a renovation with an unrealistic schedule) that has anywhere from one to twenty Crises-a-Day. I often have to answer RFIs and turn around submittals the same damn day they're given to me, because it's for something the contractor is mobilized to begin the same day or day following.

This project was already several months behind
schedule when I got on it last October (natch). I tried, in futility, to
tell the Principals that this project was not going to be done by
the Owner's specified date of the following August. The Substantial
Completion date is now set at September 3rd. There's no way
in hell we're making September 3rd, either. But I'm not wasting my time
trying to tell anyone that, this time. I'm just keeping it to myself,
because they won't listen anyway.

In order to give the (%$@*^!&) contractor this quick turnaround, I really really really need access to AutoCAD, the project's files, my contacts, the intarweb, Adobe Pro, Excel, and a courier service. I thought I could manage most of what I needed to accomplish by piecing together a "mobile office" with a flash drive, my home computer, a 30-day trial download of AutoCAD, and driving things to the consultants my damn self. I'm sure you can see where this is going- I was grossly incorrect in my assumption.

I don't have a printer, ever since an incident, ironically, stemming from me trying to print something for work, killed it. No problem, I thought, I'll just print to pdf. Nope. I didn't have the pen table files, so if I tried to print from AutoCAD to pdf, it would be all the crazy colors of the layers.

I don't have Excel on my home computer, so I can't even open the RFIs from the contractor, because they're in Excel format.

I can't do anything design-related, because I'm not authorized to select even a paint color for the door frame to a toilet without Dude's approval. He's been "unavailable" because of the build-out of the new office space. He's been doing very important stuff- for example, he blew me off all day Monday because he was picking out carpet. Even though I've been trying to get him to sit the hell down and pick flooring for my project, which has lead time issues, for months. (Going back to the digression, this is part of why the damn thing was/is so behind schedule.)

My home internet connection is notoriously sketchy, and about the third time it went out yesterday, it resulted in me having a major meltdown of the FUCK IT ALL TO HELL variety. I decided I'm just not going to try so hard to work, when my employer can't even provide me a fucking workplace.

So I'm at the coffee shop, sponging off their free Wi-Fi. And I may go get a massage now. The project, the contractor, the consultants, and Dude can all just go fuck themselves. Tomorrow I'm on vacation until the 7th.

Except for when I'm picking up fabric sample FedEx's from my front doorstep in my PJs.