Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat itRecent events have led me to believe that I am forever doomed to repeat my past mistakes, be they in my professional or my personal life. Of particular note is the direction my corporate masters have chosen to take with the company.
-George Santayana
The industry in which I work can be very unpredictable. Catastrophic loss situations come without warning, throwing everyday life into complete disarray. The upper class twits that rule from on high have seen fit to employ people with production backgrounds at the upper echelons of the corporate structure. Henry Ford invented the production line. To build cars, not to deal with 100 flooded basements.
To their credit, I can see where certain techniques can be lifted from large scale manufacturing and applied to what I do. I take issue with the pencil-necked, bookworm, micromanaging douchebags that think everything can be run by a strict set of rules, governed by some fucking spreadsheet or flow chart devised by someone that has never seen two feet of raw sewage in a basement let alone been the poor fuck sent in to clean up the aforementioned fecal matter.
The principles they are trying to apply are good only in theory, the single most important factor left out of the equation is the human one. You cannot quantify humanity and their associated foibles into a number that you punch into Excel and spit out a nice colorful pie chart.
Trying to put the sort of controls in place that they are will lead to their utter ruination. They leave no buffer to deal with the inevitable issues that creep into every project, be it large or small. There is no way to predict nor schedule "Mrs. Jones" psychosis into the equations they propose.
By removing the human element and trying to boil down the restoration process into raw numeric data is sheer folly. I'm tempted to take a step back and watch the tragic comedy unfolding before my very eyes, but only so I can laugh and point when it blows up in their faces. On the other hand, my personal frustration of being reduced to a powerless, faceless "employee number x" leads me to believe that yet once again I'm faced with the grim reality that I need to change, at the very least my employer, if not the very field that I'm employed in.
With the recent departure of our branch manager (or mangler depending on your perspective) I've seen numerous asians in the armor developing within the ranks. Lacking the figurehead to "lead" them (and I use the term very loosely) the herd is beginning to tear itself apart from within. Many other things have come to light, most of which are rather disconcerting to myself and the other management staff and despite our best efforts to bring some cohesive leadership, our grip on the beast that has emerged is tenuous at best.
In addition to the internal strife, as customers learn that someone new has assumed control of their file they are employing all sorts of tactics to try and gain from this situation. The most common is that certain extras were promised that were never documented or claiming certain portions of work are required as a part of the claim, many of which I consider dubious. I am left in the unenviable position of trying to ascertain what is and is not relevant to the original loss and calm down irate customers that feel like they've been left high and dry with no answers.
I am in full on damage control mode right now. Trying to plow through the approximately 100 open files I had prior and deal with the 100 new files I've just inherited. I can only react as new fires ignite the second I quell the one previous. The mental stress is beyond description. My formerly razor-sharp wit is presently as keen as a stone smoothed by hundreds of thousands of years lying at the bottom of a river.
Essentially I'm dumber than a sack of hammer handles.
Working 70+ hours a week with no obvious gain (unless you consider no social nor sex life a gain) is beyond my comprehension. Yet if I don't put in these hours, things slip further and further out of my control.
I had the luxury of having a very close friend visit me this past weekend. As well other friends I rarely speak to anymore all chose that weekend to call and invite me out for various social functions. It put my current situation in sharp contrast with what it could be.
I find it criminal that I've put myself in the same position I was in with my former employer. Despite my best efforts I continue to fall prey to my own subconscious machinations. My self-destructive streak runs far deeper than I had previously thought.
I need to excise this tumor from my soul and escape the land of the living dead.
