To live the impossible dream.

Intitally, my rant for the evening was going to be about how the Corporate Overlords, in spite of recently landing a $150 Million contract with a major corporation, had decided to cut costs by no longer matching employee's 401k contributions. I was going to go on about how they had done this several years ago after making another announcement about how well things were going or how it had been reinstanted after last years merger.

But then the shit hit the fan.

The HR Person came to me at the end of the day and essentially informed me that hell was arriving next week. You see, as part of The Bank's cost saving measures, a helpdesk specifically for support of a major financial services subsidiary was going to be discontinued. That meant that the Corporate Helpdesk (us) were going to have to take up the slack.

Next Monday, HR will be bringing in eight additional employees. And the week after that an additional eight. I will need to train them all and have them up and running by early September.

This is, of course, impossible.

It's not that I can't teach that many people in a classroom environment. We don't have a computer projector but I can get creative around that. No, the real problem is when they have to start sitting in front of a computer. The HR Person, told me that they were working to get additional space and equipment but my point was that we didn't have the mentors.

There comes a point where the trainee needs to start taking calls. There is no way that they can go into it cold so they switch places with an established analyst who listens in on the call, coaching and, if necessary, jumping. With two or three new analysts, this isn't too much of a drain on Help Desk Resources. But eight or sixteen people essentially off the phones while trainees get their feet wet. . . Hell! We have about that many people on the phones normally. Can anyone in the IT industry anywhere imagine taking their entire staff off of whatever their doing to late an entire staff of novices take the helm? What sort of lunatic would do that?

Well, apparently I am that lunatic.

I told the HR Person outright: "It's impossible. I'll do it but I'm telling you right now that I think what you ask is impossible and will not work."

As I enumerated all the obstacles, I could hear my voice rising. More that once I stopped mid sentence to start over again at a lower volume. And then, I said what she probably already knew and I was too fed up to mince words about.

"This is a hell of a lot of work to expect from someone who hasn't gotten a raise in three years."

Years ago, when I started training, I asked about having my job title and description changed to reflect these responsibilities. I knew then that it would never happen because the title of "Trainer" would need to bring with it at least another $15,000 in salary, given market norms. I pursued it for a while because I was amused at the lengths they went in avoiding giving me an answer. They could have just said no but they kept up the pretense of trying to find out.

I'm not amused any more. This is too much and while I have too many ethics to tell them to take a flying leap over this, I am thinking that when this is all over I should just say, "You know, I really cared about being the trainer, about making a difference here at the help desk. But these past years have shown that you have been taking advantage of me by not compensating me for the work I have done. So I was thinking I would cut my losses and go back to doing the job that's in my job description and that I am currently being underpaid for anyway."