just a case of whinertia

"One more thing. How good are you in Excel?" I remember the interviewer adding that one last question before the close of our discussion, as if to stress out a point. "Because our work highly involves the use of the application. We have these in-house templates...". With pride in her voice, she continued talking about different formulas and other Excel-related stuff they use at work in an attempt to make me picture the level of proficiency she expects.

"I'm pretty damn good," I told her. Minus the damn part. But what I really wanted to say was, "I'm a freaking god in Excel" but I was tired and I felt that the interview wasn't going anywhere.

She nodded, as if she wasn't entirely convinced. But whatever, right?

Not a month had passed and I found myself mocking their supposedly automated templates, only to realize later on that I am in deep shit. The trouble of overhauling their juvenile worksheets ate a lot of my man-hours since the process involved both the understanding of the logic behind the file and its actual reconstruction.

But that was just a piece of the hell that I was in store for.

It totally sucks to take over someone else's job without a proper turnover. It's not that a new employee can't learn the ropes by himself but process immersion is really time consuming. What can actually get him up to speed much more quickly would be mentorship and guidance from his predecessor.

Needless to say, I didn't get one. When I joined the company, all I got was a three-page print out that attempts to point out the steps I will have to follow to make the reports I will be accountable for. What's worse though is that nobody can seem to give satisfactory answers to my queries. These things frustrate me to no end. Any sane person will be, right?

Work, these past few weeks, has taken its toll on my mind, body and blog. I lost precious sleep, had stress-induced chest pains, got a pimple, lost my appetite to write, suffered from alienation and carried the weight on my own. It's more pathetic than being heartbroken. Who the hell whines over stupid Excel sheets?

But it's all over, for now. And I'm really glad that I could smile again. I missed it so much.