So my wife... went to see the Avengers yesterday.
Posted by
Mop (198 lbs) (aka rburriel)
May 10 '12, 09:18
|
(One day that statement will end with "...has finally left me," but not today. Sorry ladies, there's still a ring on this finger!)
So my wife, as some of you know, has found herself a new job at the University. She worked pretty much for the red-headed step-child of the least liked sibling in the family.
Many months ago, her manager - whom she liked very much and basically kept her insulated from all the grief in the department - finally had it up to here and left. This left the department without leadership for a while. My wife considered applying for the management position but then they made it a professional faculty job so she wasn't qualified. But that didn't keep her - my wife - from pretty much keeping things going smoothly while a candidate search was performed. It took a very long time to find a replacement.
In the meanwhile, someone finally realized that the department was operating on old computing hardware and an order was finally made for replacement computers. The usual replacement cycle is something like 3-5 years. This was on the outside of 5 years. She had the same computer they gave her when she first arrived. Now, some of you guys know this story, too. They replaced her Core2 Duo Intel with a... Core2 Duo Intel. I firmly believe that Dell sold them some lease buy-backs. They may as well have returned her old computer to Dell and then buying it back from them. Frustrated, she upgraded the computer herself. My wife complained and was stonewalled. I think the people who made the purchase decision were ultimately embarrassed and wouldn't fess up to their utter lack of know-how. I suspect that for half the price they paid for these machines, they could have gotten better computers at Best Buy.
Any talk of training within the department basically involved the theory (never put into practice) of sending one person to a training class, then having them come back and teach everyone else. Ultimately, no one ever went anywhere.
Eventually they got a new manager. No complaints about him. He does a good job, but he's clearly running an unloved department. Then the director - the boss of bosses - stepped down and was replaced.
I won't speak as to these fine people and their policies. They certainly see a need to improve matters and are making strides towards that end. Only to say that my wife's work environment wasn't getting any better and her stress was showing. I encouraged her to look elsewhere for work and reached out to some of my contacts. In this small town, that means working for another department. She'd already fished for an opportunity to do some work on behalf of another department on campus (specifically, the central software development team on campus) with whom I work closely, but was shot down. Understandably, you can't argue that your team is short funded while you loan out your best people to other groups. But it was clear that this other team had their eye on her and when the opportunity came up, they wrote up a job posting. Within two weeks of the posting closing, she'd been hired.
To contrast with her old job...
They immediately delivered to her a 2011 Macbook Pro (the kind with the 500 Gb SSD), booked her for training in Chicago, and sent her volumes of training materials to beef up her skills. Yesterday, the whole department went out to lunch and then to see The Avengers. So things are a little different now.
Mop
|
Responses:
-
woot -- nm
-
Capstern
May 10, 09:36
-
That she survived Academia Nuts is remarkable, and she did so with grace and style.
-
Old Antarctic Explorer
May 10, 09:35
-
Very nice. Way to go Mrs. Mop! -- nm
-
Krusty
May 10, 09:32
-
Mrs Mop in chicago, groiny in chicago.......
-
groiny
May 10, 09:27
-
As shaggy dog stories go, this one isn't bad.
-
TWuG
May 10, 09:26
-
Thats awesome. Can that happen to me please!? -- nm
-
lileve
May 10, 09:25
-
Yeah for Ms. Mop!! -- nm
-
Epiphany
May 10, 09:25
-
holy 5 paragraph david! nm -- nm
-
groiny
May 10, 09:25
1
-
this is like watching a later season 'Friends' episode. They tease a huge reveal, all week, then they end up showing the reveal,in the last 5 seconds
-
flavorize
May 10, 09:23
-
High Five Mrs Mop! -- nm
-
CrankYanker
May 10, 09:23
-
so she liked it? -- nm
-
Beaker
May 10, 09:21
-
Sure it didn't happen two weeks ago? -- nm
-
amoxy
May 10, 09:20
-
yay! -- nm
-
znufrii
May 10, 09:20
-
That... is an odd review. -- nm
-
Iron Spawn
May 10, 09:19
1
|