I actually got up at what would be considered “on-time” today. I ran by Hardees on my way in to work, and actually got there about 5 minutes early. I got a few random things done before I had to call and make an appointment at the doctor’s office because my allergies were so bad I could hardly go 20 seconds without wiping my nose, and my entire head was about to explode all over my nice 21″ monitor.
After I got out of the doctor’s office, i decided not to go back in to work, but to stay home and rest some instead. Unfortunately, I had to make myself check WebCT and see what school work was due this week. My exams don’t become available until tomorrow, but I realized I had an enormous amount of last minute and make-up work due in the next two days. I spent the entire day working on homework and taking tests, except for the hour I took to run over to Quiznos.
Unfortunately, I’m not even half way done with all of it. hopefully by tomorrow, I’ll actually have time to go back to work, assuming I’m feeling good enough to go back anyway.
So anyway, I check my email at work a little while ago, and see once from my boss to several people, including myself.
I know I’ve talked about this on IRC a couple of times already, but I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it here. About a week ago, my boss came over to me at work and told me to look up the HIPAA regulations that all companies were supposed to have met by April 20th. So, I spent the week delving into the regulations. Multiple hours a day were spent reading the regs and making notes about what we needed to do and document to be fully compliant (you know, that extra mile that most people probably fudged over).
So I spend all this time preparing everything, getting ready to give a very detailed step-by-step guide to my boss. At this point, I’m probably at least 80% through the regulations, if not more. So I log in and check my email, and there’s this email from my boss, sent to me, all the “executives”, and one of our managers (the only semi-technical one we’ve got, who is over our Customer Service Department). In the email, he explains that he wants this manager to become our HIPAA Security Officer, and says that I’ve been looking at “some of the data objects” relating to this project, and tha the should use me as one of his primary resources.
So basically what we have here is my 80% of the work, almost ready to give my boss this step-by-step plan, and on the day I’m out of the office sick, wishing I could die, he hands the project over to the guy who doesn’t do jack on a daily basis and makes four times my salary.
So now I have to come up with some polite but forceful and passionate way to tell my boss how insulted I am that he obviously thinks I can’t handle this project on my own, and at the same time show him that I amore than capable of doing so, if he’d just let me.
I mean, honestly, all of this is really common-sense stuff. Don’t let hobos sleep in the garage next to boxes of old claims, don’t give random people on the internet access to lists of social security numbers, etc. There’s absolutely no reason I can’t go around and tell people the few simple procedures we need to change, if I were just give the authority to do so.
But no, instead, I’m stuck being a “resource” for this manager, which basically means I’m the one doing all the work (most of the security-related stuff is on the domain anyway, so I’ll still be making the changes one way or another), and I just hand it to this guy so he can go hand it to our boss and take all the credit for it. I mean, why involve the middle man here?
I’d love to know the reasoning, but perhaps that’s not for simple minds to ponder (or know).
I am, however, very proud of myself. Not once have I bashed anyone in this entry, and not once have I used any sort of profanity. Instead, I’ve kept my cool, reasoned this out, and come to the only conclusion someone in my position could come to.
Now, if I really wanted to add salt to the wound, I could point out that this manager was originally the one put in charge of this thing, before the deadline passed and our boss gave me the job. Now apparently he sees work being done on it, and he’s back in the game.
Now, on the bright side, this does mean that it’s not my butt on the legal chopping block anymore. I’m once again just a meaningless peon (oh, I meant “resource”) for someone else. Unfortunately I can’t help but feel insignificant and insulted instead. This was a chance for me to happily take the bull by the horns and get many things that I’ve been saying needed to change for over a year now actually changed.
So what do you think? Am I over-reacting? Is this just a convenient excuse to give this manager something to do?
Again, I’ve surprised myself with my restraint thus far. I didn’t send back any nasty note to my boss, I didn’t randomly shut down one of the servers I manage, and I didn’t set fire to the building. In the morning, should I still feel jilted by all of this, we’ll just have a calm, reasonable talk. At no point in our meeting will I shout random profanity, make comparisons to the Nazis (or other fascist dictator groups), nor shout “That’s it, I QUIT!!”
What about you? If you were in my shoes, would you be offended?
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