On the Road Again

For the fifth time in a year and a half, I'm moving offices. Next week I uproot my new digs in Tecumseh and move to Kingsville. Just me. Nobody else.

That just sucks.

I hate the idea. But even more than that, I hate that first of all; everyone knew before I did, and secondly, no matter how much I bug my boss, he isn't saying shit about it. Just that I'm going, and that's that. It's really not fair to me, I bust my ass in there and he treats me like something he scraped off his shoe. Really, why should I be excited about this?

I'm going to be the prepress person. I'm going to output all film for our press. That means being the middle man between our press people and the customers. If anything goes wrong with the files being sent for printing, it stops at me. Theoretically. I also will work towards updating the current technological situation in that office - bringing the people there into the twentieth century. We'll work on the twenty-first down the road. Finally on top of this, I'm bringing one of my magazines with me that I am solely responsible for every month, and still maintaining the IT for the company. This I get. I'm the production manager, hence I should manage to be where production happens.

That's about where my excitement ends. Kingsville is a one-hour commute. That's adding almost one hour and 45 minutes to my day. I also drive an SUV. Gas is going to kill me. I also am going to be cubicle dweller. I'm losing my office, which is not a big deal, but I will miss the privacy of being able to close my door and put some music on. No more. I will be in a 5'x5' cube with little more than a desk and a ton of noise. New people too, some I'm looking forward to working with, others I will take a wait and see attitude to.

I talked to someone down there today, in the early planning stages of the transfer. This person already has my duties laid out, most of it concerns this person's work, which is waiting for me. My response to this is NO. The argument started already. They don't realize that I'm coming there for very specific reasons - not to take over their work, but to enhance the abilities of the department. It made me wonder something - If I do your work, then do my work, on top of commuting two hours per day, what exactly are you planning on doing? Uh, that's right - nothing. I'll be damned if I'm putting in 50-60 hours per week doing other people's stuff. Nope. not gonna happen. This aught to be fun. Sometimes being the manager really does mean shit. People will push you for their own gains anyway.

I work well with the press manager, and the sales manager. The other people there are good folks, one is the mayor of the town, and County Warden, and is running for federal politics in the next election. One is the former owner of the company who stayed on after the parent company bought her out. And there are others, all local Kingsville people. I've been associating with them since the takeover, and have rarely had any complaints or issues. However only being a transient in that office has always disuaded the tendency to prolong any disagreement. Being there all the time my change that. There are those there who don't take well to change. They like the status quo, and part of my mandate is to break the status quo. I can see the approaching storm.

And I better invest in a raincoat.

Cheers.