So, last Friday I get called into the principal's office--I mean my manager's office--and get a formal warning?...reprimand?...talking-to about my (earned, paid, and approved) absences over the last eight months or so. Sure, there's been some hardships what with the one car struggling for survival (which it eventually lost just last month) and that little problem with my daughter facing potential brain surgery. But through it all, I've done my work (programming) and met my deadlines and even received a little emailed pat on the back for helping another programmer with a client on a system I knew little about. But what's this? I'm not in the office enough? And I get the impression that it's not really my manager that's all that put out about it--except for when I come in late which is almost always due to the fact that I depend upon a not-totally-reliable bus & light rail system--but that she is responding to the complaints of others. My co-workers? My manager's boss? I don't know so now I must suspect everybody.
My morale was not all that high anyway as budget cuts and departmental re-orgs have shifted me into working on mainframe programs (f-ing COBOL) in a 30-year old language that I haven't touched in over a decade rather than on web apps and or Visual Basic programming. But now...I was quite close--I could feel the words rising in my throat before I choked them back--to simply saying "Fine. I'll just quit then. And as I am, or was, the ONLY person you have working on the PL system, I guess your target dates are going slip way beyond the legal mandates. That's too bad, isn't it?" I am paid to be a programmer not a chair warmer. As long as I am indeed programming and meeting/exceeding my milestones, does it really matter how happy I keep the clock watchers?
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