Earthquake Weather

It feels like earthquake weather again. The seismologists say that's just an Old Wives Tale, but normal people know better.

It was cold this morning when I took my little dog Abby outside so she could water the grass (actually, she puts her front feet in the grass and waters the driveway, but we love her anyway). I got to work at 8:00, did some work then had to go over to the other building for training at 9:00. It was still cool outside.

By midmorning, a Santa Ana had kicked up, and the trees outside the training room windows were blowing wildly. A group of us from the class ate lunch outside. It was hot, and we had to hold onto our napkins and weight down the plastic to-go boxes that the cafeteria serves the food in. We talked about earthquake weather, and one of the women said it didn't start being a threat until the wind died down.

It doesn't happen so much in the summer, when the days are hot and so are the nights. Earthquakes are about contrast. When it's hot during the day and cold at night, that's when there's a threat. The earth expands. Contracts. Expands. Contracts. Slips. Or so the Old Wives Tale goes, if you ask the scientists.

Class ended at 4:00, and I went back to my desk and worked until 8:00, trying to get my work caught up to where it would be on track with my scheduled ship dates. When I finally left the building, it was still hot, but the wind had stopped, and I thought again about our conversation at lunch.

We had also talked about how they fired one of the guys in our group Monday. "For performance" was all they were able to say, due to confidentiality concerns. It didn't seem right, though, because he was one of the ones who was busting his butt at all hours getting work done.

They've fired two other people since I started there over two years ago. The first one we understood, because he had a bad attitude and would talk the company and the department down a lot of the time. You can't let that continue for very long, and they had given him chances to change his ways.

The second guy we also understood, because he made mistakes and missed deadlines too often, and nobody liked QA'ing his stuff because it sucked up all our time and put our own work at risk.
But firing the guy on Monday we didn't get. He made mistakes, but everybody has. Since the workload increased, the mistakes have increased as well (our department has a two-fold bottom line: orders must be accurate, and they must be shipped when promised). In addition to working hard, this guy has taken the lead on some process improvements for our group.

One person at lunch thinks the guy may have been set up for failure by an uber-manager who didn't like him (forgive me, but I'm terrible at remembering people's titles). There was one order the guy did, where he stayed up until 10:00pm to get the order shipped on the promised day, but instead of thanking him for the hard work, the uber-manager chastised him for not managing his time properly. That didn't help morale for the rest of us any more than it did for him.

I wasn't here when he started working for our group, but the keepers of the history say he was hired as a non-technical manager. He managed, and the peons worked. But when the workload increased (before I started), he offered to help out if someone would teach him how to do the technical stuff, which someone apparently did, so the guy picked up some of the spare work and took care of it. But he still didn't have the solid technical foundation that the rest of the workers had. About a year ago, without explanation to the rest of us, he was demoted to being a worker. He didn't seem to be angry. He just kept on working, like everyone else. I never had problems QA'ing his work, and I never heard him grumble, so it's hard to understand why they let him go. And it's even harder to know if any of the rest of us is safe.

Actually, I came "this close" to telling the aforementioned uber-manager's replacement, when she announced that the guy didn't work for the company anymore, that I wished I were the one getting fired so I could get unemployment and not have to work there anymore because things are so bad (BTW, the uber-manager didn't get fired; he was promoted to doing special projects for the department head whose smile doesn't reach her eyes).

The other thing that came out of our lunch was that the company might pay for my tuition for getting a Master's degree. I knew they'd pay for me to get an MBA or a Master's in some sort of computer-related major, since I do that kind of work. But those degrees are repulsive to me. One of the women, from a different department, said that someone else she knows at the company is getting her Master's in Social Work, and the company is paying for it. The only stipulation on the tuition reimbursement is that you have to stay with the company for at least a year after your studies, or you have to pay the company back.

I've wanted a Master's in Marriage and Family Therapy for some time, but my workload and the resulting lack of brain function at the end of the day has prevented any serious thought in this direction. Plus, I figured I'd have to pay for it, and it ain't cheap. Now it's a possibility, but I'll have to talk to HR and get the facts before I do anything. Especially about the part where I'd have to pay the company back for the tuition. What if they fired me? Would I have to pay it back? And if I quit halfway through the program, would I have to pay back all of it, or just the tuition for the classes I took within the last year?

And if I went for my Master's under the reimbursement program, would it become too big a golden handcuff to a department that's wringing the life out of me?

There's too much upheaval in my life right now. It's hard finding time just to sit still and breathe.

Definitely earthquake weather.