New job, SOS.

My first couple of days on my new job was filled with surprises.  First the owner and director of the small high tech firm was gone from the site and would not be back for a couple of weeks.  Before he left, he gave me an assignment and gave me six weeks to complete the project.  Imagine my surprise when on the first day at work, the head of the two person tech service lab told me the the work the owner had given me to do was now to be completed in one week.  Going from six weeks to complete a project to one week in called generating stress and pressure.

Not only was the timetable drastically reduced, but now I was told that Jim would be competing with me for the successful completion of the work.  It was totally unrealistic because of the huge advantages Jim had.  First, Jim had been with the company for over a year which meant he was familiar with the equipment, procedures and personnel,  Second, he was the "manager" of the processing lab which meant he had a technician to do the laboratory work for him.  Third, the manufacturing area prepared samples for him in an effort to expedite the work.  In comparison, I was on my first day at the job and did not even have a designated work area in the lab.  Maybe it was me, but it sure looked like a no-win situation to me!

As the week progressed, Jim would occasionally stop by my office to learn about my latest results.  If I mention something of interest to him, he would appear to grab and ball and run.  And while everyone else in the area contributed in some way to help Jim, I was left to plod along on my own.

I began to wonder about the validity of the whole project since there was so much hype associated with it.  If I asked Jim for some data on his work, he would put me off and assure me that the results which had be described to me were accurate and real.  But I never saw any actual data.  When I went to his technician, Shelly who was reported to have done the work, I got the same response - no data.

OSEventually I found some data in a former graduate student's notebook and two production sheets from when manufacturing had made small batches of the product a couple of months earlier.  However, none of the date gave me any processing information which meant I was still in the dark about the material in question.  The entire situation was deliberately absurd.  I ended up drawing up my own plans and trying to work in a goal  oriented manner.

After my first week at work, I left my job feeling defeated and depressed.  Besides that, I still had to deal with the daily harassment outside of work from John Potts and his friends, and of course the constant harassment from fascist gestapo agents who still came in my apartment when I was gone.  There is no way to describe to another person what "living" like that is like.  It is hell.