You get what you pay for.

I got called on the carpet today. Yesterday, just when my trainees were coming in and I was hoping manage things by breaking them up into two groups, one to be in the classroom environment and the other to be listening in on calls, there was a meeting in the training room. Some Bank people were using the space to do something and noone had told me. So I had to scramble to find spots for everyone on the floor untill they got out and freed up the classroom.

During this frantic scramble to get things organized so as to not waste people's time, I ran into the HR Person and expressed my frustration over this situation to her.

This morning I was called into a meeting with the HR Person, my Team Lead and the Education Coordinator to go over how this had been unprofessional. I should not present a negative impression to new trainees.

I knew this sort of thing would come up eventually. I have not been quiet about my growing frustration over a lot of things and figured I would step too far out of line eventually.

I apologized about my emotional outburst but said I was being asked to do something that I considered impossible to do to expectations, I did not have anywhere near the resources necessary to make it happen, I am not getting enough time to reformulate plans and adapt to changing situations (this whole project had been dropped in my lap with only a week's notice) and one needs to add to the the frustration of doubled energy costs and not having a raise in three years. It should not surprise anyone that I might get a little frustrated and emotional.

The one thing that probably kept me from saying "If you don't think I'm handling this or working to your expectations then you can find someone else" is that the Education Coordinator preempted it by saying they thought I was doing a very good job of training.

"But. . . "

In spite of the compliment, they still had their concerns and the final counter I had to that was "You get what you pay for." If they want me to perform in a professional manner then they should pay me like a professional and maybe drop a little bit of money to get the resources necessary.

I did learn that they aren't hiring the second group of eight next week. That's going to be put off for two weeks or so. Gee, it would have been nice to know that in advance. Gotta' love that proactive communication.

Once the trainees came in, things went fairly smoothly. Splitting them into two groups worked pretty well except that at the end of four hours solid of training passwords I don't have much of a voice left.

At the end of the day, I was called into the office to speak one-on-one with the new Site Manager. He's been here for three weeks and this is the first time he's introduced himself.

He started off talking about the tax issues I had way back in April. The one where my local taxes were being paid to the wrong boro and the other where I had never had my Pittsburgh Occupation Privlidge tax paid. He assured me that he was putting resolution of that on a timetable but, in all honesty, I don't see how he can apply any pressure to Corporate HR to do anything.

He said that he heard lots of good things about me and had also heard some of my recently expressed concerns. I went over them again with him and he was unable to make any committment over whether we would ever start getting raises again.

All in all, he seems sincere about his open-door policy, about being an advicate of the analysts, of working on communication issues between the leads and the analysts and all the things you would expect a new manager to talk about. But I have grown quite cynical and will believe it when I see it. Until something is actually done, until I get my job description changed or I see a new number in my paycheck, whet he's putting out is just rhetoric and empty platitudes.