I an a designer in a company that has a terrible IT structure. The place has been around since the late 80's and is set up with each designer saving everything to their own drive with their own naming conventions. As a legacy of when hard drive space was expensive, all files are saved by date – in individual year directories per workstation. So finding legacy files was like a library organized by publication date, not topic and author. Imagine no dewey decimal system. And on top of that, there's no central system for tracking orders. Just a chaotic salesguy barking orders per whichever client is yelling at him. I'm wasting so much time just finding things that I'm in trouble for taking too long.
I figured the only way to fix this was to fully recompile everything into client-based files so now there is a common file tree that any designer can plainly see where things are – instead of needing to know when and who did something to find it. That took months to do. Now the boss is coming at me for not following the existing system. And now another new guy is “faster” than I was BECAUSE I FIXED A HUGE PROBLEM!!!
So here's the fun part: I was in my 1 year review and was asked about my attitude a few days back. Well, my wife has been having a lot of physical and emotional pain. I told my boss that I was having trouble with the fact that my wife – literally the only person in my life that has shown me love and compassion – had asked me to be OK if she committed suicide. I probably don't need to tell you that's one of the saddest feelings possible for a spouse to bear. Apparently that was the wrong thing to say to him. He actually got angry with me for telling him why I was a bit distraught. Like I was wrong for being human in his workplace. He questioned my decision making process for even telling him. I'm shook. Now I'm in trouble for not going fast enough, but gutted of all motivation and feeling totally invalidated. All that effort is not at all seen, nor appreciated – I'm a liability now and I don't know how to change his mind.
Bare minimum from here on out. Gotcha, boss! Sorry for the human thing. Won't happen again… :'(
Cuz I'm moving on ASAP. Just gotta keep away from the burnout depression just under the surface of it all. His concern is keeping “negative thoughts” off his fishing boat. My concern is keeping my wife alive. We are not the same.