hello again

i've been pretty quiet on here for the past few days.

i started in the new position on thursday - i am so much happier and more relaxed, it's unreal.

that got me thinking about my past (almost) year at the OU so far and what my accomplishments have been.

i'm pretty damn proud of what i've done in the past year.  i started at the secretarial level, taking over for someone who was leaving to get married.  i fought to be kept out of the secretarial pool, arguing that i'd be far more effective if given room to work (although at the end of the day i'd still be female, and hence easily confused with a secretary in that dept.).

then i got a raise after being here for 3 months.  nice.  of course by then i had taken over the whole system, worked on expanding it, and started on the web site.  lotsa work, lotsa going home really late.  not so happy.  and covering for someone who was an incompetent.  also not fun.

then i asked for an office, and was rebuffed.  because "no woman has ever had an office on this floor".  so i went back and argued it out.  i left with a promise for an eventual office, and it ended there.

so when i found out that someone i was training in to do phones was making more money than me, i got mad.  i asked for a raise.  i was told no because "he has smicha".  cute - he wasn't done with it yet, and at the end of the day, he was the receptionist/phones person.  not cool.

so i gave notice.  i got called back in 2 days later - i was being given an office, etc.

then the responsibilities kept growing and the work kept piling.  and i was staying on top of it all.  when it hit the point that i was designing the Pesach section for the site, i went and requested a raise again.

and i got it.

then things got bad.  someone i worked with suddenly turned on me and i realoized that all along this person had seen me as his personal work secret.  either the fact that i was doing stuff on my own or the fact that higher-ups liked working with me - i'm not sure what set him off, but he blew up.  so i asked for an apology, like a nice person would, and he went off on me again.

which is when i decided to quit.

until this job came along.  better position, better people, better chance of maintaining my sanity.

and my salary has increased by a third.

so.  i think i'm happy with how this all turned out, if still a bit upset that someone i thougth was a friend was really a user.  hey - those like lessons can really smack the hell out of you.