Beauty, Beast and Bother

On Saturday, November 10, Missie and I attended our second show of the current season, Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Because our tickets were for the Saturday matinee, we expected the theater to be crawling with ankle-biters and we were entirely correct. Many of the little girls came dressed as Belle, the heroine of the show, which I admit was kind of cute. A grandmother in the row in front of us brought a 10-year old boy who fidgeted and thrashed and did everything he could to be distracting during the show. Not fun.

The show itself was typical children's theater fare. The acting was overly dramatic, the voices fine, the dancing acceptable. The only real standout was Hilary Maiberger as Belle, whose voice often managed to soar above the incredibly loud orchestra sound mix. The somewhat Spartan staging did not win me over. All in all, not a wasted Saturday afternoon, but this likely won't be my favorite show of the season.

The Bother came the day before. I received an Outlook request for a meeting back at the office (I had been working from home for several weeks at that point) to join my boss, Tonya, and her Boss, Eric. This couldn't be good.

Recap: Just over one year ago, Eric convinced me to take on a special project, developing a distance learning program they insisted on calling "Video Professor" to train ambulance billers via the internet. I was dubious that the complexities of state-level billing specifics could be trained remotely without some human interaction to gauge performance and provide timely feedback. Worse, the company wanted to do it with virtually no resources except me developing content and an IT person converting the content to video via Captivate. Eric convinced me, saying that even if it didn't work, we could at least convince Upper Management that we made a sincere attempt. "You might be the only person in this company who can do it," he cooed. I asked for a verbal guarantee that I would have a job when the project was complete. "Of course," he replied, "you are too valuable to lose." So, despite my misgivings, I agreed.

Over the course of the ensuing year, the direction I was given in developing materials changed on three separate occasions, once only a month after a previous change. Tonya hired a new Training Manager to "backfill" my position and put the new hire in charge of QA as well, after demoting the long-time QA Supervisor. I was shuffled off to an office away from the training department, eventually to a mostly-empty suite where I usually only saw one other person, Eric's Administrative Assistant. Separated from the other staff and craving human interaction, I nevertheless did everything asked of me and met or exceeded every deadline and goal. At the end of October, I asked to work from home, since I didn't interact with anyone anyway. Permission was granted.

Then came the meeting with Eric and Tonya. Eric asked how Video Professor was coming along. I replied that it was difficult because so many changes were being made to the billing computer system that completion seemed to be a moving target. He agreed and stated that Upper Management had decided to "shelve" Video Professor until the computer enhancements were complete, at least a year in the future. As a result, my position had been eliminated. They would "allow" me to finish the modules I had in place through the end of the year, but as of January 1st, I would no longer be employed. I would get a generous 3-month severance and could use part of my remaining time in 2012 to start looking for a job.

(Aside: Eric mentioned a Contracts Supervisor position becoming available, but he said there would be a lot of people applying for it and I would have no preference over others. Nevermind that they appoint people into positions all the time. The position didn't really appeal to me, so I didn't pursue it. Come to find out later that they created the position for a specific individual to keep her from being recruited by a rival billing company. Liars.)

I was a tad dumbstruck, but hardly surprised. The company that currently employs me embodies corporate double-speak, so I knew the promises of a year ago were empty and baseless. Eric went on and on about how impressed they were with everything I developed and that some modules were being used currently in other offices. He would do everything in his power to help me seek employment. (I asked for a letter of reference, but have yet to receive one.) He told me it had nothing to do with my performance, they just decided "to go in a different direction." Tonya said virtually nothing beyond apologizing for the corporate cliche of pink-slipping me on a Friday afternoon.

So, my time with my current employer is now limited. The logical part of me says it is probably for the best, but the emotional part of me is angry and frustrated and confused. I spoke with the gentleman on the West Coast who was handling the project integration. He said he was shocked and believed it had more to do with internal politics. He said everything we developed was superior to anything he had seen before. Bless him. Of course, he still has a job.

So, onward and upward. Missie and I are still going to Florida for vacation at the beginning of December, where I hope to work out some of my inner rage. I do a bit of work on Video Professor every day and spend time revising my resume, looking at Monster and LinkedIn.

Fuck.