Changes and More Changes

Hi, I’m an AT&T employee and much of what you’ll read here is my opinion.

The last year has been tough at work.  I’ve battled frustration, depression, and anxiety.  Last April, my Father-in-Law suffered stroke like symptoms during the night and was taken to the hospital in Gadsden, Alabama.  They processed him through emergency and placed him in a room, where, he coded a short time later.  Hospital staff were able to revive him and over the next couple of weeks were able to stabilize his condition.  He did two stints in the cardiac care unit before finally being dismissed to a rehab facility.  He is much better now, but that started an episode of several months traveling to Gadsden to assist my Mother-in-Law as she became his primary care giver. 

Our family helped out in any way we could and we still drive down every other week to take care of their yard work.  Judy and Stephen have born the brunt of all the mowing and raking but a couple of weekends we even called in extended family for extra hands.

All that helped me to begin thinking that my problems at work needed solving.  Life is too short to be miserable.  

Being locked in to a supervisor that I considered a bully, was ruining my normally happy disposition.  I couldn’t transfer anywhere due to undeserved personnel entries.  You can read about those in earlier blogs.  My thirty-five year anniversary was in June and the company donates $200.00 toward a meal for a celebration.  I refused to have one, since I believed it would be hypocritical for the manager to present any award at any party.  It was my decision and I’m still happy with it.

I spent July through August mulling over how I could afford to retire.  The numbers just weren’t there and I was too young anyway. The problem of what I considered harassment and bullying at work wasn’t going away, so through prayer and talking it over with my wife, we came up with a solution.  I decided 2014 would be my last year at AT&T.  We would look for a new home, a “fixer upper” in a rural area.  We would spend six months to a year remodeling, retire if the situation didn’t improve, and relocate there.

We decided our hunt would center around the Cullman, Alabama area due to it’s central location to the children, grandchildren, and Judy’s parents.  From the time we made that decision, an amazing series of events took place and we had a second home in about thirty days.  By the end of October, 2013, we were spending every weekend giving an old home life support.

The house had been owned by an elderly gentleman with medical problems.  He was unable to take good care of it for quite some time and had moved away to Memphis six months earlier.  “Fixer upper” doesn’t really tell the whole story.  I’ll do that over the next series of blogs and show you some pictures, along with some good stories of problems we’ve encountered.

Getting back to the work update, I was changed over to the “NIBS” group in February in a company reorganization. My work responsibilities changed from working on mostly “pots” (plain old telephone service) to Uverse repair with some outside plant routine work.  It was a good change except for the scheduled hours that go with it, 9AM-6PM. 

About a month later, I arrived at work, turned on my computer and got the “time for a new password” message.  I sat there a minute and thought, “I need relief”.  I typed “relief” and added a couple of special characters to it.  Not a minute later, my manager walked in and announced he was moving to a new job.  It reminded me of the Jerry Clower story, “just shoot up here amongst us, one of us got to have some relief”.  He called me on his last day to say all the entries in my personnel file were gone and that I was free to go.  I could write a whole blog from that last sentence but it would challenge my Christianity, so I’ll let it go…

Our group currently has a “relieving” supervisor.  I’ve still got a transfer request to Cullman pending, just in case an opening for a facility technician becomes available.  I now have a linkedIn account and have the idea that some company in Cullman needs an awesome employee.