[OT] Away for a while and a rant

Posting a quickie just so you won't think I am (or Sammy is) being rude.

RL is kicking my @$$ right now. In fact, if you don't mind, a need to rant
a bit...

rant

A year ago I lost my job as a web architect and since the bottom had fallen
out of this job market, couldn't find another job doing this. After 4
months of unemployment, I decided to take a job as an Executive Assistant.
I had to take half the pay I was getting, but I figured, hey, at least I
won't have the job stress associated with the higher salary.

Unfortunately, part of my job duties as an EI was to update their web site.
Well, updating the web site quickly became extensively high-end programming.
*BUT*, my salary is still half of what it was and I'm still required to do
all of the EI duties (step and fetch it type stuff), PLUS they gave me 15
different vendors to handle, and just about everything else that the 20+
people they just laid off were doing. So now I'm:

- Going to get the mail and sorting and distributing it (a whole mail bin
every day)
- Doing personal chores for my CEO (paying his traffic tickets, filling out
his kids' insurance forms, renewing his passport, running down to his car to
fetch things for him, etc. - ad nauseum)
- All meeting presentations in PowerPoint
- All Excel spreadsheets with Visual Basic macros
- External and internal contact information
- All correspondence - email and snail mail
- All FedEx-ing, faxing, and scanning of documents
- All filing
- Answering the telephones
- Taking care of all repairs of all telephone, cellular, and computing
equipment
- Coding invoices for 15 different vendors for accounts payable processing
- Taking care of resolving invoice problems for 15 different vendors
- Creating all graphics, multi-media, interactive forms, and code for a 250+
page web site
- Filming and editing a safety orientation video for the company

I feel like I'm going to drop dead from exhaustion - I'm going crazy with
stress. For instance, they gave me the project of creating a Safety program
on our web site that is about 25 pages of interactive forms using 10+ tables
in a SQL database, and editing about 700+ pages of Safety forms that need to
be put on the web for downloading. When I worked for a web services company
as a consultant, years ago, the web service company would have taken the job
and put 4 people to work on it, given the client a 3 month time frame for
completion, and charged the client $100,000 for the job. I was given it a
few days ago and told the roll-out date is February 1, 2005! I've been
working 16-hour days and this is the first time I've forced myself to take a
break to come read the group a bit.

/rant

I promise to take some time this weekend to write a couple of "With Mommy"
stories.

Hugs,

CatNipped