Putting out Fires

These were taken by J and his wife in England. 

I don’t ever really talk about work (as any good blogger knows not to do), but today I’m pissed (and not in the English beer-drinking sense).  I was supposed to be in England for three weeks to work on a specific program.  Instead I was there NINE weeks and I sort of ended up taking over leadership of another program happening at the same facility in addition to the program I was originally assigned to.  I honestly think I was instrumental in helping save a program that is going to bring about $1million profit to the company. 

Yesterday I was forwarded an email that was sent by the England project lead to my management team telling them what a stellar job I did for my lowly pay grade, and how I was a self-starter and took initiative and all that crap.  He spelled out to them that they were lucky to have someone as educated and motivated as me and that they should reward me in kind.  I was blown away!  Coming from him it was quite a compliment and it made the whole trip worthwhile.  He actually pinpointed myself and my friend J as two people who put forth extra effort.

Well, today I walk past my big boss (who I swear doesn’t even have a clue what I do there) and he asks me if I like baseball.  I was so shocked that he actually spoke to me that I stupidly said yes.  So then he thrusts two crappy upperdeck tickets into my hand for a monday night baseball game.  No explaination.  No “hey, just wanted to say you’re doing a good job”.  Nothing. 

A little later one of the other bosses went up to my friend J and I heard him giving tickets to J too.  “You and Amanda did such a great job in England and we wanted to thank you.”  This is one of the biggest companies in the whole world and all we get for putting forth a huge amount of effort, saving the company a TON of money, and giving up two and a half months of our lives is CRAPPY BASEBALL TICKETS?  I’d have preferred that they just went on pretending that I didn’t exist.