12/16/13

Ok, so I mentioned dreading coming back to work last Monday and that it wasn’t the icy roads but the job itself.  I also said I was just about ready to chuck it all and go find a different job.  Well, something has come up which made last week bearable.  If it pans out, it will probably be a pretty good thing… if not a super fucking amazingly awesome thing!  Here’s the story… Monday morning when I got to my desk I began going through all the e-mail I'd received since before Thanksgiving.  Fortunately Jason didn’t delete any of them.  There was one, sent Tuesday the 3^rd which said something to the effect of, “We’re posting an ‘Audio Visual Engineer’ job on the internet job listing site.  You might want to apply for it.”  Then, three or four e-mails higher, there was one from a dude asking me to ‘splain this job to him as he’s interested in applying.  I replied, “I just heard about it myself, let me look into it.”  Well, when I went to the job listing site, this job was nowhere to be found.  I tried the internal website but was blocked because I'm just a lowly plebe… I mean contractor.  I called the lady who told me of the posting and she confirmed it was on the external site.  I said I'd try that again.  It was not there.  I then called a friend in HR and asked her about it.  She could see the posting but didn’t know why it was down from the site.  She gave me the number of an HR person in Technology Services.  I called her and said, “Hi, this is Tim the A/V guy.  I was told by Silvina that there was a job posting which sounds amazingly like my current job.  I can't seem to find it though.”  She said she’d have a look and after a moment asked when I'd be free to interview!  She went on to say that the posting expired at midnight the night before but that she would pop it back up if I'd call and tell her as soon as I'd put in my resume and applied for the job.  I finally found the posting but was in such a hurry to get applied and the posting back down that I didn’t really read it very closely.  I applied and sent my resume to them.  Within an hour I was called to see if I could interview for the position at 0900 h Tuesday!  “Um, yes please!” I said.  Tuesday I went to the interview not knowing what the job was to be exactly… and I'm still not 100% sure even now.  While I was filling out the “Yes, it is fine with me if BNSF looks into my closets for skeletons if they offer me the job” form, Sylvina ‘splained the job to me.  Of course, since I was doing paperwork, I only caught the highlights.  At the end of the interview, which seemed more like a psych evaluation than an assessment of my ability to perform the job, I finally apologized and confessed that I was only half listening when the description was given.  I think I also admitted to only scanning the job posting before applying since it was, technically, closed for submissions.  She re-explained that I'd be in charge of making sure all the meeting rooms were up to a standard when new rooms were built and old rooms renovated.  I asked about the current service contract and said that the railroad really NEEDS to keep it in place and that the guy who covers for me would be the perfect replacement.  It sounded like that was the plan… well, they didn’t say who would be the replacement though.  When we finished, they said they would let me know something this week.  They have to go through, evaluate, and interview any other applicants first I'm guessing… even if the job were created with me in mind… which I DO NOT know is the case, but circumstantial evidence sure looks that way.  All of that really buoyed up my spirits last week.  Then came this morning.  The new conference room is almost a total disaster.  We still haven’t finalized all of the installation and programming of the system and the room is booked solid, every day!  It is a nightmare for me trying to learn how to work the thing while showing the users at the same time.  I'm not very happy again.  I'm not 100% sure that I won’t give up this “Bird’s nest on the ground,” as mom calls my job, if they don’t offer me this new position.  I'm not happy doing what I'm doing, I don’t see it getting any better (short of the new position, and even THAT is no guarantee), and in fact it will probably get a lot worse.  I don’t know what I would rather be doing but… well, I just don’t know.  Lettuce hope they offer me the job and that it is more “management” than “service and repair technical.”  So, there’s all of THAT going on.  I think I'll stop here and go off to do other stuff for the rest of the day.  I'll tell y'all about the weekend tomorrow.