Well, today was an interesting day at work. I actually mean it in kind of a positive way for a change, despite my boss leaving and that hanging over everyone's heads.

On Monday, my boss's new job was officially announced. The person who used to bully me is very reasonably freaked out that we will be put under the supervision of that certain manager, since that one used to bully her. It's a shame we're not friends because I certainly sympathize there and am terrified of this as well, because lord knows if that happens we will both get canned. (Come to think of it, I'm amazed she didn't get canned because the rest of that one's favorite targets have been fired or quit in the last five or six years. Go figure.)

The Big Boss briefly popped in for a minute to say that she was working on a plan and if we had anything we wanted to discuss with her, we could make an appointment to talk to her about it. I found out that most of the rest of the shark tank is going to be having private meetings with the Big Boss, so I decided to as well (you shoulda seen the expression of her assistant when I was the third one asking for that). I am going to suggest that my old manager from...I guess she was two other managers ago by now, be put in charge of us. She's techie-minded, she used to work on this stuff as well before being shifted to other projects, and she's a super nice person to boot. I don't think she has too many people to manage (unlike that certain manager), so it seems like a reasonable request. Or if we follow chain of command, my boss is usually directly under the second in command (who I really like), so maybe she could do it. I don't want to be all "OH HELL NO" directly about the certain manager like the other one most likely will need to be (I try to stay on the manager's good side, which you can do as long as you're not under her direct supervision), so I'll try to be Positive!

I keep running into the girl mentioned here (may have to come up with an alias for her because she has a unique name), this is the third time in five days. "I swear I'm not stalking you, but I do believe in the Law of Attraction," she said. I can't argue with that. She was also telling me that others were telling her that the perpetual job opening in our office is a revolving door (I guess she applied at some point, so good for her on not getting it), and I was all yeah, that job is really hard, without getting into the details of it. Another person just got hired again and I overheard someone saying that new people are pretty much chewed up here and...*sigh*.

As for today, in the morning I had a meeting with another office to find out what they do (they were devastated to hear about new boss's job too, albeit happy for him) and that went really well, it always helps to get a bigger picture of stuff.

We are having business process mapping going on for the Shark Tank activities, but right now it's focusing only on what I do (the other three are just forced to sit there bored off their asses, unfortunately for them). This second meeting for that went better than the first, I think. The first was kind of weird because I'd expected to just be working with the analyst (who's lovely) alone and instead Big Boss was in it and I think we were all surprised at what she wanted more details about vs. what she didn't, so that was odd. This time was more straightforward.

I ended up explaining in great detail exactly what takes me so long and how much time I spend essentially compensating for broken shit that the tech offices will never ever ever ever fix (the analyst has been asking and she gets the same "hell no" results we do) and all of the various crazy ways I have to work around broken programming to get everything done alone. I think the BigBoss (and probably at least the newest shark, the other two kept quiet) was freaking flabbergasted at this level of crazy, and she straight up said something about how I should go have a drink after all of that is done and that I must be a rock star. Flattering! But apparently this level of craycray is not typical for this type of org and she wants it fixed, so amen to that. I do love her zeal for that sort of thing so far. I was also amused that she straight up said that she wanted to change the acronym for one of the super ancient programs I use to something ah, much less flattering. My boss was all "I'd like to burn it all down" and "I have some suggestions!" (Alas for him, he is going to a place that apparently has even more ancient crappy technology than we are using.) So that was fun for me.

I do kind of wonder what the sharks think about the sheer amount of work I do now since they normally know nothing or next to nothing about almost all of it. Think of it as foreshadowing--if I get fired and frogmarched out of there, one of those lucky people will have to take it over and I'm sure they will deeply enjoy it. Uh, not.

As per my conversation with my shrink today (summarized as "Read The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck" and "go apply for jobs already even if you're not sure you want them"), I worked on a resume for a totally different business field from my own tonight. It's very weird to do that. I think I fit their rather enthusiastic job description at least, but I had to cut a whole lotta jargon I use in my line of work and ah, do a lot of white space. So at least I did something today.

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