2001-11-12 - 3:04 p.m.

a choice that is not a choice and a bad, bad day

If you want happiness and light, turn back now. There's precious little of that in my world, my life and my mind at this particular point.

Today, RadioVoiceBossMan told me that I wasn't doing a good enough job at Exactimundo Software. It seems that WalkingMan, through whom I got my job, and who I thought was my friend, did a review of my code this weekend and pronounced it crap. I was given a choice, and the rest of the day off to think about it.

The choice is: 1) stay on under the condition that I meet certain performance goals in the next two to three weeks of face firing or 2) "choose" to quit now, take my oh-so-generous two weeks of severance and just walk away.

RVBM tried to be diplomatic and politic. He tried to talk up my strengths (which unfortunately fall in areas where there is no work to be done) and downplay my weaknesses (which unfortunately fall in areas where all my work has come from). He used terms like good fit. He mentioned that if I quit I'd still be able to get a reference from Exactimundo.

He also made it pretty clear (or so it seemed to me) that he has *no* confidence that if I stayed I'd be able to live up to their expectations.

Excuse me for one second...

Fuck!

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

Fuckety-fuck-fuck Fuck!

Fuck!

Okay, I'm back.

Now, don't get me wrong. I hated this job. I really did. But I never wanted to be ushered out the door. I never wanted to be fired. It hurts my pride. It hurts my sense of self-esteem.

People in my family don't get fired. We just don't. We work hard and if we fuck up we make it right. We may choose to quit a job (though I'm by far the most prolific at that), we may be laid off, but WE ARE NOT FIRED. That's definitely NOKD.

I have a million thoughts about how I can shift blame here. I mean, I really haven't understood what I was up to for the past couple of months. I really honestly feel like I was set up to fail. I was given a big chunk to work on that I didn't understand, had to specs, no guidance, very little (and grudging) assistance, and I know someone else could have done it better, but by God I got it done. Or so I thought. Apparently, even though I thought it was functional, it has been declared that it is *not* functional (no specifics forthcoming) and that what I did is all crap.

This from someone who was my friend.

But look all that is just bullshit. It's me justifying and rationalizing, and casting about for someone else to blame.

You want the truth? The truth is that after the first couple of months I didn't give a shit about that job. And if my heart isn't in it, I either don't do it, or I do it half-assed.

I deserve to be fired from that job.

There I said it.

It makes me feel a little better to fess up, but I still have a few niggling concerns and thoughts to work through here.

Fuck Exactimundo Software. They're trying to be fair and even-handed, but they're still being a pain in the ass. There are only about a million details that I can't even begin to relate that make me hate not just the job I did, but the company I did it for. They're assholes, and fuck them.

I'm going to quit. I view the choice I was given as a rhino's bargain. There is no good choice. They're giving me the illusion of free will so they don't feel so bad at fucking me over. If I chose to stay on, I believe that I really *would* be set up to fail, and I would be fired before the end of the month. This way at least, I can honestly say that I quit. I can also collect unemployment.

Which brings us to the subject of money. This sucks. I have two vacations planned between now and February, both of which are going to need some cash outlay in the next week or two. My sister found a house for sale in her neighborhood that she wanted me to look at. Not looking bloody likely just now.

I'm going to be okay. I have savings. I'll survive. I'll find another job. I just really would have preferred to do all this on my terms, on my schedule. The job market sucks right now, and hiring goes into a coma from mid-November through the end of the year. Not that I couldn't use an extended vacation, but I didn't want to be gutting my savings in the process.

What am I going to tell Mom and Dad? My sisters will support me. Well, TwinSis may judge harshly, but that will last all of ten minutes, and then she'll support me. Mom will give me her dissapointed thing, then try to hire me on to work for her (ugh). Dad. I have no idea what Dad will do or say. He aint gonna like it, that's for sure. Remember, we don't get fired, forced out, or otherwise fuck up. We work hard and we excell. *That's* what our family does, in Dad's world. Anything less is unacceptable.

The thing here is that, you know, fuck 'em. Love me unconditionally, or not at all. I know they love me, and they'll still love me even though I fucked up. But they're going to be disappointed, or pissed, or otherwise unhappy with me. And they *are* my parents. And I do care what they think of me.

Course, right now I should probably be taking care of me. I took a two-hour nap when I got home (big river in Egypt, rhymes with re-smile) and right now I need to look at my finances and do some number crunching.

Then I need to start looking around for a new job, looking into unemployment, deciding what to do with the rest of my life. You know, all that.

It's not been the best of days, and it's long ways from over.

Oh yeah, and in the world outside of j$'s little bag o' woes, another plane went down today. I don't even know what to say about that.