It Never Fails

On the face of it, the reason seems kind of stupid, or at least trivial. I'm not going to provide details, but a directive was made by our group's managers in our group meeting today which did not sit well with several folks on the team, who raised their objections to it during the meeting. I basically stayed out of it during the meeting, but found myself absolutely seething with frustration and even a bit of anger afterwards. I even made a comment about the directive as we were filing out of the meeting along the lines of "how obnoxious", which I know was overheard by at least one manager.

I went for coffee with some co-workers afterwards and expressed my frustration over it. Neither of them were especially sympathetic - the issue isn't really a concern for them. I think they were rather surprised at my reaction (so was I, actually); I spent pretty much the whole time at coffee being completely distracted by the issue.

So now I'm trying to decide what to do about it. It's not an issue which is something I'm likely to do anything drastic like quit over, but usually when I feel this frustrated about something at my job, it's an indication that I think there's something really wrong and I need to talk to one of the managers about it. I'm trying to figure out how to handle it. I've decided to take the weekend to cool off and then see about either writing an e-mail or approaching someone in person about it. Each option has its plusses and minuses.

Maybe it's politically unwise to say anything at all, but it's perhaps a flaw in my character that I generally feel like I need to raise these issues. (I've never felt that I'm politically astute in this way.) I think it's important for employees to be able to talk to management when they have this sort of a problem. Not feeling open to do so I think is an indication of a serious failure of communication among all concerned.

On the other hand, there's nothing less pleasant at a job than having a strong disagreement with management like this. Sigh. I always get so worked up about things like this. Well, that's why I'm going to try to cool down this weekend.

What bugs me most about this is that it seems to continue what feels like a "tradition" of coming back from a nice vacation, rested and ready to go, and then having something come up which just wears me out again in short order. In a way it feels like this whole week has been such a "something", as I never got into a groove on my projects for various reasons, and now this.

Argh. It never fails: It's always something.