Monday 1 October 2007

Pic of the day: "Forever, forever, I want to stay like this." This somber picture from the anime Lovely Complex sums up the mood of the day. Unfortunately, in real life as well it all has to come to an end. In a manner of speaking, it came to an end today.

Work stuff

So it is official, more or less. Oh, it hasn't exploded in the papers yet. I wonder when it will. But we got it now, we who work here. We have prepared for it for a while, but not everyone knew for sure. We knew that our workplace was going to go. We knew that we would not be fired. (We work for a branch of government, and traditionally we accept a somewhat lower pay in exchange for job security. It is not like the state will go bust.)

I may well have been the only one who felt like smiling. And I probably shouldn't, because there were others who felt more like crying. I got the job I asked for, which is in information and communication technology. My new workplace will be in the same city, just 10 minutes or so further to walk. My mew boss and most of the people in the IT dept will work three provinces away. There will probably be more work, but it just might be interesting. I guess I won't start writing about work anyway, since my employer didn't knife me in the back after all.

Unfortunately, many of my coworkers can't say the same. Some are planning to quit. A few are planning to move. Most are going to do a very different job than before. And not least, we will be broken up. We have had a very good work environment, people have overall had as much fun at work as you could reasonably expect with a job like ours. Now people who have been friends will slowly become strangers. That is not a cause for celebration.

And so I don't celebrate, at least not in public. But I'm pretty amazed that I have been treated this well, I have to say that. Until just recently, that was quite unexpected. I was mentally prepared to either move far away or go on permanent sick leave.

I'll still have to throw away another half ton of paper, though, this time at my workplace...