Loss of Innocence

Ya know what gets my goat?

I've been working for my current company for seven and a half years. "I've learned a lot" doesn't even begin to truly express the knowledge I've gathered while "doing my time."

Lessons I've learned at my current place of employment:

• How to lay off your own boss while you've only known them for one year.
• How to investigate sexual harassment accusations involving your friends.
• How to fire an employee in which you actually fear physical harm.
• How to deal with an upper level manager that actually screams at you in front of other employees and accuses you of things that are actually technologically impossible.
• How to layoff your friends and co-workers in dire economic times.
• How to deal with grown adults having jumping-up-and-down hissy fits at you and your subordinate, cursing the F-bomb at you because you caught them in insurance fraud.
• Taking on the jobs of four people and not getting paid for it while others are getting incredible raises with threats of quitting.
• Listening to high level peers in the industry gossip and bad mouth people I consider friends.
• Realizing that the world really does revolve around the all mighty dollar, and although we produce items that teach the youth and future of America, it really only comes down to politics and profits.

It's not in my nature to threaten to quit if I don't get what I want. I don't go out looking for another job unless I'm meaning to take it. I've made a promise to a company, and my boss, and my co-workers, and I don't take that lightly, even though my company's actions (or lack thereof) show otherwise toward me. I'm sticking this out, probably to the bitter end, but I don't like it. The lessons I've learned here have jaded me into an excessively cynical and untrusting person and that's not the lessons I want to pass on to my child(ren). (However, I don't want them to be excessively naive liberal weenies, either.)

Every experience in life is a learning experience, a right of passage, if you will, into another phase of your life. They aren't always great, warm-and-fuzzy lessons, but you need them to mold you into (hopefully) a compassionate, caring, and not-so-naive member of society. What gets my goat is I had to "grow up," and I don't like it. Not one bit. These past seven and a half years have been difficult and tenuous. I put up with it because of loyalty and rent.

So, who the hell cares, right? Welcome to the party. It's about time you showed up.

Yankee Doodle Dandy,

-TYG