The Last Post Ever About My Old Job

Really. I promise. I have to spew this, and then I can let it go forever. I think. Maybe.

The RLA and I went out the other day to a pretty good Mexican restaurant, and who did we see there but the Boy Wonder, my former co-worker. And did he have stories to tell.
Which, as it happens, I would rather have not heard.

The Big Guy, one of our other team members, left to go to the Health Plan. The Database Guru took early retirement. Took is a liberal use of the word, because it was really more of a "You will retire now, take the pathetic excuse for a package we are offering, be glad of it and don't let the door hit you on the way out. You have four days to pack and go."

That left the Boy Wonder and the Pointy Haired Boss as the only two people in the web group. Boy Wonder had to pick up all the work from the Big Guy and the Database Guru, in addition to the work he already did, and that was pretty much everything to do with the intranet.

The Pointy Haired Boss was left doing my work, which was the web site. But. The PR director left a couple of weeks after I did, and Loogie never came back from medical leave (the hospital wouldn't let her, even though she wanted to) and the interim staff over in PR wouldn't know how to supply content to a web site if their lives or jobs depended on it... and we all know that it doesn't.

That meant that all the PHB was doing was updating the cafeteria menus once a week, and the employee newsletter once every other week, and the calendar on an as-needed basis. He does this by cut and paste, and he doesn't do it right, because when the page displays there are misspellings and various type faces and sizes.

Nevertheless, the PHB was "overworked" by all of this (it was cutting into his solitaire time and his on-line hunt for dates) and so he got a new employee. The department secretary/billing clerk who had taken a class or two in web design at night school and wanted most desperately to join the web team, finally got her wish and is on half duty learning from the PHB how to do the cut and paste.

In the meantime, the entire medical information services group is being outsourced piecemeal. The guys who sold us our web program are back in town, pitching new services. Since we didn't buy what we really needed the first time, and since we didn't buy enough licenses for everyone to do their work, I'm guessing that they'll just pick up the whole thing.

None of which is what I was told by the Senior Vice Weasel President when they threw me out the door.

Further, the PHB will be staying on at the hospital until he retires. Now, he's over 60. He was eligle for early retirement. He is a manager. He was in the DROP, which was an early/extended retirement program. According to all the promises made to the hospital staff, only managers would be laid off, only people eligible for early retirement (55 and older) would be forced into early retirement, and only people in the DROP would be expedited through the process and sent home.

Except for the PHB, beloved by his incompetent director, the Balding Middle Management Ken Doll. Beloved and protected and allowed to continue on, playing solitaire, sleeping at his desk, and searching for love on the internet while I file for unemployement and wonder what the fuck happened to being good at your job as a requirement for staying employed.