My Surreality Check Bounced

"Why settle for a twig when you can climb the whole tree?"

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Location: Binghamton, NY, United States

Journey is a rogue English major gone guerilla tech. She is currently owned by two cats, several creditors, and a coyote that doesn't exist. See "web page" link for more details about the coyote.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

If you're going to screw me, at least buy me dinner first.

My workplace is in transition. Note, I say "my workplace," and not my company. Since last April, I've been a subcontractor. It has something to do with hiring practices, something to do with too much bureaucracy, and something to do with a very ugly business transition. To wit, my workplace is part of Company A. They had entered into a ten-year contract with Company B to do their IT. Company B brought me on board as a subcontractor (meaning I work for Company C) to help with a particular project, and they liked me so much that they decided to keep me on a growth position.

After five years, Company A filed for termination of contract with Company B, and decided to bring in Company D to do their IT, instead. In legal terms, this is called a transition of services. In common parlance, it's a clusterfuck. About ten days before I would have been a hired on permanently by Company B, all subcontractor conversions were put on hold, and for the next two months, we didn't even know who Company D would be. (We suspect Company A didn't, either). Following that was an uncertain period where we didn't know if our jobs were being whored out to Company D or brought back in-house to Company A. A couple weeks ago, we found out that almost everybody is going back to Company A except for us. We are going to Company D, apparently as a gift for some other things that Company D is doing.

Today, I got to work and found out that Company D had posted all our jobs on the Internet. Over a week ago. And not told us.

We knew we were getting fucked--we didn't know they were going to try and slip us a roofie.

The last time I worked for someplace bound and determined to work me over this bad, it left me with an anxiety condition that I will probably have until the day I die. If there were any other job opportunities, I would go elsewhere. But I live in a fairly small metropolitan area, and the economy sucks right now. RH and I have been trying to buy a house for the last six months, and I can't be without a job and have that go through, let alone make the mortgage. I just don't have a whole lot of choice except to bend over and take it.

But that doesn't mean I can't call it like I see it.