My lucky streak continues, first I won a book, then a bag, and now…500 smackers!!!!

My boss called me up yesterday to tell me that I was selected by my peers for this month’s Teamwork Award.  Basically, we have this program which is a lot like an Employee of the Month thing.  It was definitely nice to see my hard work get noticed and rewarded.

The award showed up on today’s paycheck.  After taxes, I pocketed $285 more than a usual check.  This will certainly help offset some of these recent car repairs, although, since we have a car fund for things like that…let’s do something fun with it and drop it in the travel fund for Greece!

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may remember that last year my work asked if I wanted to work from home full-time and I jumped at the opportunity. I filled out the required forms and whatnot but then it all got caught up in redtape and budgets and I ended up not getting to do it. At the time, they said it was only a matter of time, but by early this year it was looking more like it would never happen.

A few weeks ago, our director came in to town for a quarterly meeting and I got up the nerve to make a meeting request for a 1 on 1 session with her to talk about my future but also to inquire about working from home.

Long story short, I went in to the meeting and asked about working from home. While I don’t get to do it full-time, she agreed that I could work from home one day a week and if after a couple of months it is going well, I can move up to two days a week.

It’s not exactly my dream scenario, but it’s better than nothing! I now work from home every Tuesday. This is my second week doing it and I can’t tell you enough about how much I love it. Love love love. Sometimes you just have to ask for what you want…the worst she could have said is no. It’s a good reminder every once in a while.

On the financial side, think of all the gas money I will save, as well as the reduced wear and tear on my car. And oh, not to mention the 1.5 hours of my life I get back that I’m not commuting on Tuesdays!

Yesterday I had my annual review (I met expectations) and I was pleasantly surprised to find out I got a bonus.  $700 big ones which will show up on next weeks paycheck and be quite a bit less after taxes. 

Honestly, I was surprised, but mostly because I was expecting a raise.  I’m kind of bummed that for the second year in a row they haven’t given out raises (at least to me).  I know they had a very limited amount to work with this year and the raises went to people that we making much less than me.  I also know that I’m an idiot for whining about getting a bonus.  I must remind myself to be appreciative of having a job at all.  And I just found out today that some people didn’t get raises OR bonuses…so I’m doubly appreciative.

Bird and I were talking the other day and the conversation turned to having work friends.  I was wondering if it is the norm to have friends at work or do most people go in and do their thing while keeping their coworkers at the acquaintance level, never forming real relationships.

Here’s a quick summary turning what was a really long post into a shorter one:

• At my old job, I had 4 or 5 really good friends.  We were close.  We talked about our lives outside of work and sometimes we hung out outside of work.  Heck, I ended up marrying one of my work friends.
• At my current job, I have no friends.  There are several reasons for this:  number of coworkers, structure of department, nature of work, lack of common interests, age range, etc.  Literally, there are some days when I do not speak a word to anyone.  While not an extremely social person to begin with, it makes for long, boring days.
• At Bird’s current job, she has a few friends.  However, she will admit that they are quite negative, constantly complaining about work or anything else they can think of.  This seems to directly affects Bird’s attitude (like them, she doesn’t like her job much either but I think it gets compounded by her friends harping on how bad it is every day).  I also see her reasoning that it may be better to have negative friends than no friends at all.

In the past, this has led to some issues.  Bird’s work is fast-paced and crazy stressful.  She often works long hours and is flying a million miles a minute the whole time.  Her boss is a crazy person.  My work comes in seasonal spurts and currently we are in the slow season.  There is little to be done and I don’t have any friends to make the day go faster (except Twitter friends!).  When I pick Bird up from work at the end of the day, I’m ready to burst for lack of social interaction, ready to tell her the one billion things I’ve been thinking all day.  She, however, needs a good 30-45 minutes to just decompress and not do anything at all, including talking to me.  This had led to confusion and hurt feelings.  In time, we’ve figured out what was happenign and we’ve learned what we need to do for each other to make it work.

But all that leads me to the main question, do you have friends at work?  I am really curious as to where the majority lies with this one.

On Friday, my boss called me and presented me with an interesting opportunity.  Actually, it was only tenative, but she asked if I would be interested in working from home.  Management has been looking for ways to offer perks to employees in this time of salary freezes and they have singled me out as a potential candidate.

I told her I was definitely interested.  She said she would work it up through the chain of command and see what they can do for me.  I’m pretty excited about this.  One of my best friends at work recently started working from home fulltime and absolutely loves it.

There is a little bit of an issue as to when I would actually start telecommuting.  I don’t necessarily want to start working from home immediately because in two months I will be moving from my current house and temporarily into Bird’s place while we look for a new place together.  Once we find a new place, then I would get set up with the required systems and whatnot to work from home.  I already filled out some of the paperwork today and I put a goal date of 11.1.09 so that is what I’m aiming for.  I’ll keep you posted.

Okay, so I’m pretty excited.  Does anyone out there work from home?  Pros?  Cons?

Just had my performance review.  All around it went pretty well.

But no raise…which was not a surprise.  And also, this one was new…no bonus.  Boo!

Not really a surprise at this point, but still kind of a bummer.  All told, happy to not be laid off and to have received an encouraging review.  My supervisor really seems to like my work even though it seems like she barely knows me because she’s in Ohio and I’m in Minnesota.

My plan:  Keep on doing what I’m doing and hope the economy turns around so I can get a raise AND a bonus next year!

Last week at work everyone in my office got a meeting notice with a one word title:  MANDATORY.  Big and bold, just like that.  The meeting was taking place within 15 minutes from when we got notice.  Um, hello, that’s scary.

So we called in to the conference call and we were right…bad news.  There will be no raises this year.  For anyone.  For any reason.  Across the board.  No promotions. No cost of living adjustments. Hiring freeze as well.

So that sucks.

But the good news:
They’re doing this to try stave off more layoffs.  So basically…better to have a job and no raise than to have no job. It didn’t really come as too big of a surprise, I mean, everyone knows that everyone is hurting. All our competitors are doing layoffs and we’ve already had one round. So when the meeting notice came up, I think we were all thinking the worst. So it really wasn’t as bad as we were thinking and in the end I think everyone really appreciated that the company was making this effort rather than just cutting away!

Feeling grateful for having a job today.

Remember back in June when the CEO sent out a memo and everyone started talking layoffs?  Well, the layoffs eventually happened and fortunately I was spared.

Do you also remember how I hated my new job this summer and secretly wished I would have been laid off because I was trying to get my old position back?

Well, I received an e-mail yesterday from a former colleague of mine and she said that layoff rumors were now buzzing around the office at my previous employer.

Sadly, today’s newspaper confirmed the rumors.  No one knows exactly who will be getting cut, but they do know it will be from my old department.  The official word is that it is going to be a “substantial” amount. The unofficial word is that it might be the whole department.  Outsourced to India.

I’m very sad and worried for my friends, but on the other hand, I’m thanking my lucky stars (and God) it didn’t work out for me to go back there.  Sort of that whole unanswered prayers thing.

Of course, things are still a little off at my current job.  Five people have left in the last two months and most of them were upper management.  It makes us little people wonder if they know something we don’t.  Overall, I just don’t feel incredibly safe.  There is very little work to do (because we’re sort of a seasonal business) and so they have us doing busy work.  I don’t know.  I don’t exactly feel totally secure that I won’t be getting let go, but for now, I’m just very happy to have a job.  Amen.

Hey, I just realized it’s been a while since I’ve complained about work or given you any update at all.  I think the last thing I told you was that I hated it and wanted out!

It’s gotten a little better.  I’ve finally started to figure out what I’m doing which really makes a huge difference.  I have a little more confidence and things are going a little more smoothly.  Morale is still pretty low and there are some bad vibes around, but whatever, it’s a job and I’m happy to have it.

And that leads me to this…I’m a little worried.  They don’t seem to have much work for me.  Today I went home two hours early after not really doing anything all day.  With the economy the way it is, well, I feel expendable.  Granted, we are in the slow season and I was warned that it would get like this, but I had no idea it would actually be this slow.  The days really crawl by when you don’t have anything to work on.

On a more positive note, we received our third quarter metrics toady and I’m ranked 3rd in Quality Score out of 7 on my team.  That’s a feat I’m pretty proud of as I’ve only been there about seven months now.

All that to say, work is not as bad as it was a few months ago but it’s still not ideal and I will still be keeping a glancing eye open for other opportunities that sound interesting.

(Note: I just found this post in my drafts folder and I had written it in mid-August.  No idea why it never got published, but here it is for what it’s worth.)

I just realized I never filled you in on what happened when I went in a couple of weeks ago to meet with the director from my old position. She had called the night before and told me that basically her hands were tied and my prospects didn’t look good. You can read about that conversation here. Well, I went in the next day just to meet with her and talk a little bit about the situation. It was really great to be back there.

We basically sat in her office and she explained to me how the order had come from high above (one of the VPs) that times were tough and basically there was an external hiring freeze. Everyone is watching their bottom line these days and this company is no exception. They were now only considering internal candidates. My director was awesome though and offered to help me in any way she could. She then proceeded to ask the million dollar question: “So what do you want to do?” As in, what kind of job do you really want? I understand she was just trying to help me out and she said she would use all of her contacts within the organization, but that question really haunts me and I just wasn’t sure what to tell her. I still don’t know.

I thanked her for her time and her offer to help me. She did leave me with one little sliver of hope when she said, “Now, I’m not entirely sure what will happen if we don’t get any internal candidates.” But I’m not holding my breath. They are pretty tight-fisted around that place and if there is a hiring freeze on, it’s going to stay frozen for a while.

The director then asked if I wanted to visit anyone and I thanked her for the offer and she let me go visit my old friends. That was my favorite part of the day. I spent almost 45 minutes visiting and catching upwith several of my friends and former teammates. So while it was a disappointing day, at least I had gotten the heads-up call the night before so I wasn’t completely blindsided.

Things have improved ever so slightly at my current job, so I haven’t spent much time or effort either looking for a new job or taking my old director up on her offer for help. However, two more layoffs were just announced in my department today and I found out why the girl two cubes down from me wasn’t at work. Layoffs just aren’t great for morale, you know? Especially after the last round when they said they were all done. Today’s email just said something like: the best way to prevent more of these is to work extra hard and win business. Nice pep talk, chief.