Catharsis

I had promised myself that I would talk to my contact over at the old test scoring place around this time about the bullshit that went down in the spring.  I was a little late asking to see her in person until I got back from Atlanta when I should have asked her while I was down there, but she did return my call and, thankfully, granted my request to see me in person about what was troubling me.  And I was able to see her before I went back to work ... and the new test scoring place.

That was yesterday (Friday) afternoon, and although I didn't want to go on and on about what pissed me off to the point where I would get the palpable sense I was wasting her time, she spent 80 minutes listening to just about everything I wanted to say.  I am actually surprised that 1) she was willing to spend that amount of time with me and 2) I had the composure to go through the list of grievances I had in my head, even though I didn't feel I prepared as much as I should have.

Unfortunately, what she said wasn't 100% comforting like I wanted it to be.  She knew that the project I was on was kind of a shitshow.  She also agreed with me that the idea of promoting people in the middle of a project is far from ideal.  However, she said that has happened in the past, that probably will happen when this project comes back around next year, and she could not guarantee that these battlefield promotions wouldn't happen in other projects in the future.  "Things happen," she says, and although she knew it was cold comfort to me, it was still cold comfort.

I didn't completely shut the door and say I would never come back to this place; I knew, and I think she could tell, that I was in no position of leaving based on just that principle.  We kind of left it on typical boilerplate process: The company would evaluate me, and based on that, I would be sent a letter listing the projects for the next year.  However, my contact invited me to not indicate interest in doing that particular project ever again, and she would do her best to accede to my wishes.  It's the best I can do, and she knew that, and she was OK with it.  I am comforted that she didn't like what happened.  But if this does happen again -- and she basically assured me that it will happen again -- will I take it as well as I did this time, which wasn't that well?

Well, even though I didn't get what I wanted, it still felt really nice to be heard.  I will take this as a good thing.