TRANSITIONS

Tuesday.

I reported already to my new boss .. take two. The first one i did about more than a month ago when the new organizational chart was poked in my eyes. Unluckily, the engineering department will lack in manpower should i be transferred immediately to the new section, so "they" have agreed to "indefinitely" extend my service to the department until the newly-hired engineers arrive. Unfortunately, up to this moment, there has been none. Sigh. I don't know why the vacancies haven't been filled up.. Is the compensation not enough? Are the qualifications too exxagerated? Or is the company really cursed?

And so i've made my mighty effort to know what has been going on with my career here. I approached the engineering head and asked him when and where the lateral transfer would really push through. (Lateral transfer: No salary increase, no promotion whatsoever, just addition of work and transfer of boss and office ) From Design Engineering to Cost Management. Whew. Sounds a tad complicated :D. The boss said Tuesday. And this is the day. This is it.

Baffler: New Organizational Chart was effective March 7, 2008. Our human Resource Department records
still has me under Engineering Department. How stupe could they be. Grrr.


If i'd tell you how my career has been groping badly with all the transitions going on, (and without them telling me of course), you'll understand why i would plotz with joy the day my job description would really be defined. Most of the times, i feel like a ball being thrown to where i would be of great use. If such is the case, how utilitarian could it be. I am serving three bosses, i mean really big bosses all at a time: engineering department's assistant manager, the plant manager and the president of the company.

The engineering department's assistant manager, who always arrives at a time most convenient to him, say 11am. (Inset: work starts at 7am) After having gone through the tremors of three consecutive resignations of the key players in his department, i could almost sense that he also wanted to quit. Left to serve in his department were three engineers: Two of them is sick of absenteeism and hindi-mo-ako-pwedeng-utusan-basta-basta, and i, the only rose among the thorns, is sick of boredom and laziness. So you can just imagine how hard it is for the boss to propel his department towards achieving high productivity.


Though admittedly, i can sense that he can sense my boredom at my work, he always relies to me because i think that he thinks i am his secretary. (Ang gulo..weheheh. Tongue twister?) Not really, it is because he has no choice, i am the only engineer available. Absent palagi ung dalawa. duh. Maybe it is also because im the only one left who still obeys his orders. Most of the times, i want to condemn him to an eternity of torment whenever i am asked to do things in his behalf, just because...he is also absent. :lmao: He has even passed down to me some of the jobs of those who resigned, like those new jobs for development for the new toyota R-type transmission. Now that i am being pulled out in his army, i can understand why he has become that adamant in a decision that was agreed upon by the top management.

The other boss that plunges me into the realm of uncertainty is the plant manager. Just because he is the plant manager, he can always ask orders to anyone below his rank. And the fact that he will be my new boss has given him the best authority to ask me to do soooooooooo many things in his behalf.

The memory is still fresh five years ago when i was just taking a shot in a post here. I knew the plant manager doesn't want to hire me. How did i know? The HR manager then told me. He doesn't believe that my capabilities as a lady engineer would do well to the company. He says a lady engineer couldn't even lift a five-kilogram metal forging. How would i be able to perform the job fully? What the HR Manager then did was to indicate that i will be deployed in QA department instead of the Engineering Department. So during the course of training, the assistant manager of QA was the one who prepared the module. But come end of training, the engineering assistant manager insisted that i will be joining his department. So contract signed: junior design engineer :D Weeeeeeeee.

What transpired in those five years was that this plant manager has tasked me to do sooooo many things which are beyond my duties as a design engineer. Archiving of events, monitoring boards, fair and exhibits and other functions outside of the company. (Some are even personal stuffs like school projects of his daughters..hehe) Of course, i can never complain. He is the plant manager. And now that i am under his umbrella, i just hope that the things that i did in the past years had him believe that i can do better than what he was thinking of me back then.

And the last is the really big big boss, the Company president. I don't know what went through his mind, but he just chose me to be his representative in the Toyota Suppliers' Club working committee. And to say this is just a mere representation is an understatement.
Hell to the club, i could have been paid for just working there as a committee. There are gazillions of works to be done, which kind of reiterated in my regular work here in the company.
Even harder because my performance in the committee would reflect that of the president's. If not for the kindred spirits of my co-working committees, i really would have let the president throw fires of hell to me by not performing my responsibilities in the TSC.

Yeah. I know i am underpaid. Not well-compensated. And it's my fault. Because i choose to stay. I can always leave the company whenever i want to.But i choose to work and work and work. I have convinced myself to stop complaining about the things that i have no control of.

I wonder if my five-year work experience here will slake the hunger and thirst for my career and professional growth. Maybe it won't. And if such is the case, what is next to me?