Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends...

Part of me thinks that might be interesting, but another part admits that to be an immortal must be pretty tiresome.  I mean, the wonder of inventions, of new knowledge, and new art is probably wonderful, but the truly depressing part might be how cruel people can be to one another and the world at large.  

So yeah, it's been a year.  

Putting it mildly.  

I mean, at the beginning of the year, I was sitting fat, dumb, and happy, with a solid job, working with people who liked me, who I really liked, and doing a job that really felt rewarding.  Then I started to get this itch.  I started looking around, outside my foxhole, as it were, as it had been three and a half years, and the IT Dork deep down inside of me kept screaming "Look, these jobs never last forever, you're gonna get run over and flattened by something because that ALWAYS HAPPENS!"  A larger portion of my semi-logical brain said "shaddup you in da corner dere.  Youse don't no nuttin about what youse is yappin about."  

And then June 1 I got an invite to a very quickly arranged large staff conference call.  Huh, says I, must be some good news they want to announce.  Silly mortal.  Not even hardly.  

Turns out one person on that phone call got good news.  She told us she was taking early retirement after working for our employer for a fair number of years, and she was excited.  About 99% of the rest of us did manage to come up with new vocabulary.  Me, on the other hand, was yelling in my head at the part I'd previously told to shut up.  "Now, you can say I TOLD YOU SO!!!"  The company would be shutting down slightly over 50% of the locations my job and my team supported.  In doing that, the reduction in workforce would be done to adjust, or "rightsize" the team for the work expected to remain.

After screaming a number of profanities inside my head, I buckled down, got to work, and then got whacked sideways again.  My supervisor, who was also going to be leaving the organization, asked me to leave the team, most of whom would be leaving anyway, and take on a challenge with a new group, being responsible for taking care of our patients.  I was asked to find new organizations - off an approved list of them - who would be able to care for our soon-to-be-former patients once our locations that would be closing closed.

So yeah, I'm being cagey about the numbers.  I'm not sure how much of it is public knowledge (my employer is a public company, but some details may not be public knowledge yet, and it definitely is not my job to spread that noise - or news).  But the bottom line is there were a lot of people who had on-going health needs, and we took care of them.

As I moved through and worked with nine different locations to shut them down, as I would run out of options for some patients, I was told after I'd run out of last resorts, desperate hail Mary's, and sheer determination not to give up, I was told to, after getting the approval from one of my supervisors, to transfer the person I couldn't find a new home for to one of our locations that was remaining open.  So I did this a few dozen times.  I hear you thinking "wait, a few dozen times?"  Let me put the number in some specific light.  

Of the patients whom I was asked to assist with transfer, and who failed to transfer so they ended up staying with us in this special location, it was less than 1% of the total number of patients we dealt with.  Off the top of my head, it totaled less than 0.25% - that's not 25 percent, that's one fourth of one percent.  A pretty small number.

As I worked through the people who needed a new home, I ended up speaking with patients.  I reassured many of them that we weren't going away until we had gotten everything worked out.  I was thanked, I was cursed out, I was asked some difficult questions, I had people crying and complaining on the phone.  Ya know what?  I don't blame 'em.  To get told that an organization who was taking care of some pretty complex medical needs was going away out of the blue had to be scary.  We did the best we could.  

And my supervisors on that transition team complimented me often.  Some of their compliments were based in part on the habits I'd picked up about 25 years ago, working in IT.  I did not know what might happen between now and the next time I'd need the thing I just learned, but I did know that I really DID NOT like asking someone the same question.  I knew everyone was busy.  Everyone had people pulling them in multiple directions.  So when I had to ask "how do you do that?"  I made damned sure to take plenty of notes.  Over the years, I made it my job to make it possible for someone else who was able to read and understand the language to be able to step in and handle some of the basic parts of my job.  I realized that it could happen that some day I get clobbered by a beer truck.  Or a herd of run-away elephants.  Or eaten by a yeti.  Who knew.  But it was part of my job in some places to consider the worst case scenario, and do what I could to mitigate that, and if at all possible make it so that if something terrible happened, the business remained in - business, that is.  

So I kept good notes.  Because the position I was in was not comfortable, I reminded myself daily that each day could be my last day there - not because I might die, but because it was entirely possible that another bolt of lightning might come out of nowhere and that could be the end of me.  While it would be painful, it wasn't my job to make sure I screwed over whomever had to pick up the pieces.  So I made darned sure that there was plenty of information so anyone who had to step in knew exactly where I was with each patient.

This diligence and efficiency impressed my new supervisors, and as my time wound down, after a few extensions were added to it, they hunted high and low for a spot for me.  After a couple of interviews and some painful experiences, I was told I had a new job.  Due to the timing, however, I was going to miss the first chance they had to train me for it.  I'd miss that training because it was two days of training that conflicted with the last two days I had to work the remaining patients we had left.  And while every single step of this project was particularly well planned and taking more time than anyone anticipated, I did not want to throw my patients at someone else and run off.  Didn't feel right.  So I kept on it.  And in the end, the last patient transferred out about twenty minutes after my last day had been scheduled to end.

Before that last day, though, I'd gotten the new job, and because I was staying, I had to do something about the accumulated vacation I'd been hoarding to add to my severance, but instead needed to use it, not lose it, and I was a bit of a crispy critter.  So I took a week off, and my first day back was to start about an hour before my 2-day training was to start.  Pretty smart scheduling, huh?

For those of you who have been following me for more than a few years, you all know that the sudden appearance of a shiny light at the end of the tunnel is usually not a flashlight attached to the head of a mouse.  Nope, it's usually the front high beam of a fiendishly powerful locomotive, come to smash another stack of my dreams to smithereens.  

And this train was a bright, shiny red.  I logged in and followed the instructions I received to call my new supervisor.  Who had to tell me that the new job which she hired me to do had gotten cut, instead.  But she felt absolutely terrible about this, and to make it up, I needed to call another number which she gave me.  I did.  After thanking her, profusely, for what she had been able to do, that hadn't worked out.

Then I called that number.  And it turned out to be the phone number of my former supervisor's supervisor.  I had been on a team, managed by someone who reported to her.  And now I was on the phone with her, as she asked me if I'd be willing to consider coming to work for her.  Which is a little bit like after catching a bowl of ice cream someone threw at you to make a mess, and they failed miserably in their task, but the next fellow that stops by has an entire bar full of ice cream toppings.  Everything you wanted.  

From where I sit now, I can admit that yes, my momma raised a few fools.  I was not one of them.  I was pretty damned smart, because just after she finished telling me that I could keep my new pay rate, I said "yes please" in my best excitedly professional shriek.  Back home.  Right where I started.

Except for one slight knee to the groin.  

Remember way back at the beginning of this process when I was told if I couldn't find any other place, put these tough-to-place patients over there?  Yep.  "There" is now one of the locations I am solely responsible for.  I'm back to not being allowed to speak with patients, which is fine by me, as I've got almost no training at all in how to tell someone "hey, there's some news about your medical services..."  I am, however, well trained in being a stubborn bastard who keeps chopping away until I get an answer.  In my world, I'm over about 96% on the success rate.  Which is a little scary because some folks have not been as lucky.  But me, yeah, I get there, eventually.

But that was the work side of the world.  Home life is still there, still chugging along fine.  As are all of the plans and dreams I still have.  And I'm doing much better than I have been for a number of years.  I'm not yet beating the highest pay rate I ever got, but I am getting much closer.  The job I had before this one did literally double my pay rate, which is only about the third time in my life that's happened.  Of course, it did start pretty low, so to double a little more than nothing to "well, that's getting pretty close to almost something" was nice.  I doubt there's enough room, demand, and time for me to pull that off in my current position, but I say that mostly because I started off a heck of a lot higher than I was previously.  But I get it - in my previous job, I went from $7 an hour to $14 an hour in six years.  I've gone up 20% in 4 years now, so I can't really complain too much.  And I like the steady work.

So there's a year in review that's pretty damned short on useful details, but I'm happy.  Hope you are, as well.  Have a safe and happy new year.