Reason number 10 skillion

There are many reasons why my job makes me unhappy and this morning was a swift back hand upside the head reminder of that rolled into a tidy little package.

My job responsibilities include making the customers happy. A task that is more often than not completely outside of realm of possibility for me to make happen. So it goes when in the Customer Service field. I get that. I sleep some what well at night knowing that. But here's when it rubs me raw, when the person who can make me happy, contented and joyful in my job doesn't give a crap.

That is what happened this morning. I came in to mass quantities of emails, system support requests, and voicemail messages all saying the very same thing; "What happened to my assignments? Why can't I see my assignments? Where are the assignments for my Users?" And while Yes these are good questions all seventy skillion of them, I cannot answer any one of them. I must sit and wait patiently until someone who can actually help me finally decides to arrive at work.

My start time is 7:30 AM because being the sole support person for all of our customers I MUST be here to help them and they are all over the country, all over the world in fact. So I arrive diligently at 7:30 this morning to the aforementioned throttling by all forms of communication available to our customers as to why the h-e-double hockey sticks the site has so meanly eaten their precious test assignments. I then proceed to try to wait it out patiently until someone arrives to help me. The clock keeps on ticking, I keep on getting yelled at, my patience keeps on getting thinner.

Then it happened. 9:30 arrived and my savior sauntered in. I immediately told him about the issue that was causing great distress for all of our Users (the Users who just so happen to pay our salaries and keep us fed) and he said "Oh OK." He then walked off to chat with his best buddy for who knows how long as is his usual morning ritual. I managed to stew in my ever rising juices for a half an hour before I went into said best buddy's office and tell my savior "I don't mean to be a pain but this issue is getting too big to manage and I'd really appreciate your help on this." To which my saviour responded "Oh OK." Once my savior finally started looking in to the issue he realized the enormous scope of the problem and proceeded to snap at me and otherwise make me feel like a little piece of dog crap who had most certainly put myself underneath his shoe intentionally and must have made this vile stench occur.

Here's the thing; I can't and don't touch the programming code. That is entirely his job. That's what said saviour does "full time". So when the code is broken there is absolutely no chance in all of the ever loving universe that I broke it. It's completely, utterly, totally impossible for me to have that power. And yet there is one person alone who would have the "skill" to break the program and send all of our lovely, happy, joyous Users scrambling toward me, and that is my savior.

So what is one to do when she has no power to fulfill her job responsibilities and the person who can make her job better, more complete and fulfilling has no interest in doing that and also happens to be her boss? I think we all know the answer to that and it's called Craigslist job postings.