So, as I mentioned
previously, my stint working on site at one of my company's clients ended
at the end of last month due to contractual headcount reductions. I returned
to the general Professional Services pool in at the office.
It's been an interesting couple of weeks, and I get the distinct impression
that they don't really know what to do with me. This is partly of my own
making, as I have been totally frank an honest with my management about an
opportunity to work overseas that arose months ago. That has gotten to the
point where I'm just waiting for the visa to get sorted out, and then I'm
pretty much going to resign. Problem is, I have no real idea of when the
visa is going to be ready, so therefore I can't give anyone, myself
included, a better idea of time-frames than "probably November".
So for the first week and a bit, I sat at the desk of a project manager who
was on leave, and did bits and pieces of a number of projects. The work was
very stop-start though, and I found this a bit unsettling, as Professional
Services is all about billable hours, and I didn't want to have big wads of
unbillable time on my timesheet where I'd been twiddling my thumbs.
On Monday, when the project manager returned, I relocated to the "hot desk"
- a desk intentionally kept vacant for visiting members of staff from other
offices. That lasted until about lunchtime yesterday, when I was asked if
I could help out with a stack of documentation relating to the old client
whose site I used to work at, that needed to be done by the end of the
month. So then I relocated upstairs to the NOC.
Then my old boss called me this afternoon and asked me if I'd prefer to go
back to the client's site for a couple of weeks to help bail out a hardware
upgrade project that had gone off the rails. I'd much rather to that than go
batty trying to write gateway design documentation, so I agreed. I just have
to wait for a new building pass to be issued.
So, in summary, I feel like I'm a bit... unallocated. But I guess that is
the price I have to pay for being upfront and honest about probably leaving
the company. I get to keep getting paid until I leave, and they get to throw
me wherever suits them. C'est la vie.
