Elphaba has a hard-on for certifications, professional development, and "advancing your career."
I am 18 months from retirement. I don't give a shit about certifications, professional development, and advancing my career. My only professional goal at this point is keeping my head down, doing my job, getting vested for my retirement account, and getting the fuck out of this place at the end of January 2025.
The last time I had a one-on-one with her (thankfully, something I will never have to do again), I pointed out that I was retiring and therefore additional training for "career bulding" would be money ill-spent. She wasn't having a bit of it. "I expect everyone under me to attend two training classes per year."
Okay, I decided I wanted to take Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator classes. They aren't applications I use professionally, but we do support those users who do use them.
DENIED. "Not job related."
So this week I find myself in an online Sharepoint class. My boss called this "a learning vacation."
I will readily admit that I do not understand Sharepoint. I had some company-provided training prior to COVID and WFH lockdown that allowed me to handle the few requests for minor changes that came in, but since we've been back in the office the entire infrastructure was changed and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing any more. Add to that the fact that I simply don't care about any of this shit.
Bad attitude? You betcha!
As if to add insult to injury, I don't have rights to do anything in Sharepoint any more anyway. I've pointed this out several times to the people that have the power to do something about it, but—like getting a company cell phone because the greeting on my personal cell was deemed "unprofessional"—nothing ever gets resolved. So any tickets that come in that involve Sharepoint changes get ignored until someone else picks them up.
It's going to be a long week. But at least I'm not in the office.
I get it. I'm 2 years and 8 months to retirement, but I couldn't care less about "professional development,"
I can so relate to this post. I'm envious that you have only 18 months to go.. I just turned 60 last month, and I figure I'll probably want to put in 5 years before pulling the retirement trigger. Maybe 2.5 years if I'm feeling really ballsy and confident when that day comes. I have a much younger and very ambitious manager that is always pushing me to work harder, be a mentor to colleagues, lean in to leadership…and I'm just counting down to retirement LOL.
I'm glad to see you kept this blog going. I added you to my blogroll a long time ago. Most of the other blogs I used to follow are no longer active.
Been there, done with that. Obviously, she gets reviewed on how many of her direct reports get x hours of training which should be job related. She won't look beyond that metric because she does not have too. So, you will retire soon (you will love it), so enjoy wasting company money on stupid metrics compliance. Deep breath and move forward with doing what is required and only what more feels right to you.
Spot on!