At 2:30pm this afternoon, I am lounging in my office, in my blue chair, cheerfully murdering people over the internet in Modern Warfare 2, when my phone rings.  It's work calling, and apparently the guy who works the swing shift on the weekends called in sick, and the morning guy was getting swamped. 

He asked me to come in early.

I agreed, and arrived around 2:45.  I plug away at tickets and calls, until 4.  We're still fairly busy, but not crazy, and he leaves at 4:00, the end of his scheduled shift.  I'm kind of annoyed at this point, but whatever, it's calming down.

From about 4:30 till 6:00, it is absolutely insane.  Call after call after call and chat after chat after chat.  Couldn't even think about looking at tickets.  Our office manager prides himself on being available at any time, and always says that if we need him to come in, to call him.  So I take a break for a few minutes to do so, asking him to come in to help.

I explain that it's nuts, and that I could use a hand.  He proceeds to tell me that if it gets nuts, to call him back, and he'll see about coming in.

You read that right.  He told me to do what I was doing already, just at a later time.

Furious, I hung up, and went back to work.  It's calm now, and I expect him to call me back at any minute, to ask how things are going.  At which point I'll have to tell him that things are good, only to have them blow up again.

I need a new fucking job, and I need it right now.

Nobility is easy to fake

I have been working in IT for ten years now.  I started at a call centre, supporting ISP clients on dialup.  I did some DSL support there, as well.  I did that for four years, and hated every minute of it.  When I got laid off from that job (ten days before Christmas, over the phone.... still bitter about that), I took a year off.  Drew pogey.  Grew a beard and wrote a book.

I then got a job at another IT company, a small, young, local one, offering tier 2 services to webhosting companies.  I spent three years there, and genuinely enjoyed it.  I left for greener pastures, and a significantly higher payscale, on good terms.

The place I left for was an old, multinational billion-dollar company.  It was awesome.  We were tier2/tier3, and I didn't have to deal with the public in any way.  I was on a pager rotation, and the pay was well worth the hassle.  Great benefits, great atmosphere, challenging and interesting work. 

Then I got laid off from there.  Back in March.  At least they had the decency to do it in person. 

In a panic, as the wife had just changed jobs as well, I contacted the old webhosting company, who had been on hard times, changed the name of the company, and gotten some new ownership, to see if they would take me back.  It was a big paycut, and a little humiliating, but I have a kid to feed.  They took me back, which was great.

But I hate it.  I hate working in IT, and I hate dealing with the public.  I dread coming to work every day, and I hate shift work, and I hate hate hate.

But it pays the bills, if barely, and my personality is such that I'll stick it out for a while.  Until I reach the breaking point.  Not out of some noble gesture, doing good by them who did good by me; rather it's a side effect of my laziness and paralyzing fear of change.

Even when my stress level is through the roof, and I'm not sleeping at night because of it, I'll still get up and come in to work.  I'll still sling these tickets, and mack on these servers, for as long as it takes for somebody to push me out of it.