I'm free!!!
Monday was my last day at SBC. Ooops, excuse me. Monday was my last day at "the new AT&T, powered by SBC". I'm happy that I've finally been able to free myself from the clutches of that evil company. LOL.
I'm a little bit sad because I like the people I work with. My peers are a very nice bunch of people for the most part, and we were a very diverse group. There were old curmudgeons, annoying lardasses, a couple of chatty Chinese women, a super-friendly and submissive Filipina, a fun and extremely hard-working white woman who has led a very colorful life, an extremely intelligent Indian immigrant, some young slackers, an Indian youngster who acts like he's an oversexed surfer dude, a couple of young eye candy types (white and Latino), and lots of other friendly folk. I will miss all of them. Our immediate managers were good as well, who always tried to do right by us (although unfortunately upper management wasn't always on the same page).
Morale was crap, our department was treated like the company's red-headed stepchild, middle management was completely inconsistent, we were shorthanded, and we were overworked. And they kept dumping process upon new process upon us without increasing headcount (kind of the federal government unfunded mandates, no?). Plus, the fact that my job wasn't that interesting to me was the killer. Like I've said before, a job that's not interesting and yet still manages to be stressful is definitely not the job for me. Plus, I really hate the corporate culture at SBC. It's painfully clear that you're not working for a California-based company. It's too regimented and rigid, very "all about corporate good", and completely in love with stupid acronyms. The corporate headquarters are in Texas, and it's no small coincidence that our most demanding customers with oversized senses of entitlement are companies in Texas. Sometimes I just want to tell them to shove their longhorns up where the sun don't shine.
I've almost an entire week off before I start at my new job. Wheee! What to do? Clean (still have a lot of unpacking to do), sleep, cook, see movies during the day, sleep, do Christmas shopping and shipping, have the car serviced, sleep, maybe do some geocaching (if I can get Bill to lend me his GPS receiver and teach me how to use it), and sleep.