Maybe it's the position of the moon?

I’ve read posts on a couple of blogs in the last few days outlining several bloggers feelings of unrest over their current “employment circumstances”…And as favourable as my new job is to me in wage and low stress levels it still seems that I must join their ranks.

Working at a school of any kind means that you spend your off season (the period between the end of April running to late Aug – early September) planning for the following year. As a “start up unit” I have spent months listening to the wailing despair of my boss because she as an academic feels that she should not be held to the budget rigors as set by the local bean counters.

In my mind I hear myself saying: “yes, but it’s the bean counters that rule business…and at the end of the day…a school is a business” no?

And I have recently spent 2 weeks correlating information backed up with statistics from our own work to prepare for the “planning stages” of next year culminating in 2 weeks of pretty much sitting on my thumbs while waiting for the boss to “get herself together” enough to start planning next year. My co-worker and I have discussed add nauseum the need to focus on our core business and to make sure that our planning was based in knowledge needs not gut wants.

This morning, my boss sat at the desk of my co-worker and “whispered” with her for 4.5 hrs in setting the guidelines for the 2 of them for the planning of next year. I sat across the room on my thumbs once again. This would be her version of teamwork.

At noon I got up for lunch and when I came back the boss was gone. Without a word to me as to what I will or will not be doing for the next couple of months while she fly’s hither and yon making an ass of herself. And when I came back from lunch I had an email from her that was a major compliment for our unit...she forwarded it to me and her notation was one sentance: "it's all about me!" - I keep thinking that she has got to be jokin...but she ain't.

The whole thing brings a multitude of thoughts forward for me.

• How incredibly rude!
• What? Are we in grade school?
• Can I get much more bored and not snap my Twinkie?
• Just how much time can I spend surfing the web without feeling guilty?
• Can I get much more bored and not snap my Twinkie?
• How could I have bought into her sales pitch? How could I (jaded old me) have taken her suggestions that this would be a place to foster “real teamwork” and “exciting futures” and believed them as the truth?
• Can I get much more bored and not snap my Twinkie?
• How could I have possibly come to work for someone with less “people managing skills” than the doorknob?
• Can I get much more bored and not snap my Twinkie?
• How could she not think that her little tete a tete with my co-worker today could not have been construed and exclusive as opposed to inclusive?
• Can I get much more bored and not snap my Twinkie?
• How could she, as a manager, and having read my resume and seen my work, not want my input?
• Can I get much more bored and not snap my Twinkie?
• …are not my skills and abilities what she hired me for?
• Can I get much more bored and not snap my Twinkie?
• In good conscience can I continue to sit here with nothing to do and not bring it to her attention over and over again (I’ve asked the co- worked twice a day for weeks if there is anything I can do to assist her)
• Can I get much more bored and not snap my Twinkie?
• Is it wrong to expect to find some sort of satisfaction and feeling of contribution and/accomplishment from my job?
• Can I get much more bored and not snap my Twinkie?

I’m concerned about the fact that I left a job that I’d been at (with some success I might add) for 3 years to come here.

I’m concerned cos it seems to me that when the bean counters ask her to do something that is my forte she puts it off till the very last minute and then brings on the full kaleidoscope of histrionics over how much she hates doing it when I could have done it in a day or a week or an hour – and she’s ever the martyr and stays all night burning the midnight oil cos she’s so hard done by….

I’m concerned that I’ve sacrificed my sanity/patience for a retirement package and the ability to further my education cheaply.

Mostly I’m concerned that someday one o them bean counters is gonna find out how much they are paying me to be a glorified receptionist or the queen of photocopying and I’m gonna end up worse off than I was before.

I’ve tried repeatedly to broach these subjects with her and her answer to me is that we’re “a team” only we aren’t – that’s pretty obvious.

When I call her on it she tells me I’m “snippy” – I can’t help but think that the time will come that I lose my temper with her…and then she’s gonna be very frightened….LoL

The VOD thinks that she’s scared of me…I think she isn’t – but at this rate she ought to be soon.