Mixed Bag Of Rant

Okay, so I know it is taboo to bitch about your job on your blog, so I’ll try to keep names out of it for privacy’s sake. Since I graduated from college, even before then, I have always worked for small companies. For whatever reason, I had an obsession with working for the Pre-IPO, start-up companies. I don’t think I was turned onto it for the $$ at stake, but more for the environment. The freedom to have opportunities to be creative, move up the ladder, wear jeans to the office, attend raging parties til the wee hours of the morning and be told you can come in late the next day, think, breathe… So when my little start-up got eaten up by Jonah the Whale, I thought… okay. This is going to be okay. We’ll have more money to play with, more ability to get the job done, and more opportunities for growth. I couldn’t have been more wrong. We seem to have less money, less ability, and definitely no opportunity for growth. As a matter of fact my job went from a mixed bag of variety and experiences to something a monkey could do fairly easily. I seriously think I lose IQ points on a daily basis. What a disappointment! I can barely get out of my cube now without tripping over some red tape. Needless to say, about 50% of the employees that got our wee little company off the ground in the first place are no longer around. No more are the days of innovation and the “can-do” approach to everything our clients ask for. Everything now needs to be approved by someone at least two ranks up from you and usually, never gets approved so essentially, nothing ever gets done. Which brings me to another point- what’s up with the ranks? I now get to work with a girl, and by girl, I mean girl just graduated from high school, lives with mom and dad, and has never taken a college level course in her life who is suddenly outranking me? Or thinks she does? I can honestly say with every fiber of my being this makes me crazy. Did I seriously waste 40K and 5 years of busting my ass in college when I could’ve simply walked in the door, got a job and became an insta-manager? If that’s the case- I want my money back. Perhaps it is the notion of rank that makes us all crazy. The drive to be more important than what we might actually be. When I took time off to go get married and go on a honeymoon, for the first time in my career, I think my worth may have actually been known. I was shocked to find out that so many were lost without my vast administrative capabilities and my poor executive (ha! an oxymoron) was seriously up a crick. Luckily, to my group, this was a reminder of what the little people actually do, and how hard we work. Now, I don’t expect to someday be an executive, but I certainly hope that I will continue to have worth- whether I continue to be an executive assistant, or if I am actually by miracle of God able to make use of my marketing degree.