Chaos Attraction

Panic Attack Again

2003-03-20, 7:02 p.m.

Today, I overheard my boss and the head of the department talking loudly to some other people on the other side of the cubicle wall. About how they're getting crap about us getting an imaging system (which we will really need in the next year or two, hence the new computers we got) because it's too expensive. And apparently my project is at risk, again, of not getting funded this year. Which would be stupid of TPTB to do since it takes an average of 8 years to get this kind of thing running smoothly and we're halfway through, but since the campus is Budget Cut Crazy, I can't say I'd be totally surprised to find out that they'd decide to cut us entirely this year and just stick with paper forever. Especially since this project is supposed to get advisors involved, and advisors so far (with the exception of one department that wants to use it) are either going "Huh? What's this? What's a computer for?" and are slowly being led by the hand into it, or snittily saying they will have no part of it. Last year my boss had a hard enough time getting this year's funding.

Last week we were told that there wouldn't be any layoffs. Now I think my odds of layoff again have gone up. So much for no longer worrying about it :(

Even worse was the comment I heard from the peanut gallery after HOD and my boss went off to a meeting, saying "Oh, poor HOD, he didn't know about this." Presumably, that meant that he didn't know about this last week when he told us all that we weren't doing layoffs of anyone unless we found out we had to make bigger cuts than we were supposed to.

And right after that, there was a budget forum meeting. Which are rather frustrating for everyone, since (a) those speaking at the panel don't really know very much that they can tell anyone, and (b) the questions asked range from the practical to the rather stupid.

I'd just like to know, why on earth during a budget forum, people were asking stupid questions like "Are the parking fees ever going to go down?" and "Why didn't you make the new parking structure more than three floors high so parking could be cheaper?" For one, don't you have other things to worry about here like GETTING LAID OFF SO YOU NEVER PARK HERE AGAIN? For two, what are they going to do, slap their foreheads and say "By golly, you're right! Let's go build another floor onto it right now?" like they had never thought this out long in advance before starting construction on it in the first place?

Anyway, it was the usual bunch of "we don't really know anything, we'll get back to you this summer" and saying that anyone who gets laid off gets preferential hiring if any positions at all open up. Which is sweet, I must say. Though if I get the boot, given my total lack of qualifications for anything, I don't think there'd be anything they could hire me for short of janitorial work or something, and they already laid off almost all of the janitors :P

I pretty much knew one way or another that this job wasn't one that was likely to last beyond another year or two once enough stuff is put into the system so that it would work smoothly without our assistance. Despite my job titling upon full time employment, it's not really "career." But financially, I'm not up to finding anything else to do right now. Jobs for my qualifications seem to be about nonexistent. I suspect I'd be downright shitty at telemarketing, retail, and food service. If all goes to hell, I will pretty much be stuck moving home and well, giving up on life. Dave was trying to talk me into moving to his town and paying half the rent I do here, but if I don't have a job, where am I going to be paying this rent from? Unemployment doesn't pay enough for rent. Moving home may be bad for me emotionally and jobwise, but at least I wouldn't starve or end up homeless. And that has to be the priority over everything else.

In short, I'm right back to panicking again, with no clue what's going on for sure, and sitting in suspense. I can't stand this. And bad enough that that's my personal life, now I get to do that for the war too.

Which is a shame, because until all this I was in an oddly good mood for the past few days.


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