Steady As She Goes

Work has become absolutely exhausting over the past week. I am not sure if it is the increase of human activity within the office, the shifts in responsibility, or the recent lost of those who actually do their work and care to extend their hand to help out with other problems. Whatever may be the cause, I have the feeling that this change has the potential to affect me the most of all.

Recently, over the past 4 weeks, three very prominent, hard-workers have quit from my division. While these three were here, the work load plus any other miscellaneous inquiries, which happen to filter towards us due to people not answering their phones, were easily control and distributed between the four of us. But now, as the third and final closes out his last day, I can already feel the pressure of handling all that was covered between the four of us.

The work load, to be honest, is actually not too bad, at least for the moment. The thing that is getting to me has to deal with all the projects and issues that could easily be eliminated by increasing the productivity of the management in my division. There just does not seem to be the leadership, development, and the promotion of overall morale that one would expect to find in an office with such an important role to fulfill for the inhabitants of this state. No one seems to care about professional development, that it be their own or others. Everyone seems to push on any issues of a project on to whomever they can find if they are not responsible for that project in question. All everyone seems to want to do is the bare minimum and spend the rest of their day talking. No wonder, they can’t keep young professionals there, especially those who are looking to expand upon their professional career.

Now, I am not saying the whole office is in this slump, perhaps not much of it is at all, but it just seems that way and is extremely frustrating. I try my best to help people out; I always tell engineers, that I will see what I can do, find out, or work out for them. It is just frustrating that I really have no one to look up to for advice, guidance and support. I usually can handle most of it myself, but it would be nice to have someplace to go for reassurance and more knowledgeable opinions.

The other week, I participated in a conversation with people from three different generations. (It was a very interesting conversation to be apart of, to hear the opinions of such different people.) There was one comment from one of the older men that relates to what I am experiencing at work, that being “our society is turning into a recreational society.” I thought it was funny how easily and quickly I related this comment to the environment of my office.

Well, I will just keep trying to do what I am doing. Push myself to raise the bar as much as possible. I was thinking that I could ask to start doing more cross training, expanding my possibilities. Who knows though, I will see where the next year takes me. Hopefully, I will take and pass the fundamentals exam, take the GRE and apply to grad school. Right now, my job seems to be nothing more than a dead-end which I must not allow myself to get stuck in.