...Today is the 8th anniversary of me starting work for the place with the red envelopes and all the DVDs. And what a roller coaster of a year it's been.

Everything's different at work. Everything.

My reporting structure? I report to a doorknob appointed by the COO. What the heck is an operations analyst doing reporting to a finance guy?

The COO that came on board this time last year that appointed said doorknob? Gone. Now we have an interim COO while they search for a new one. He's a longtime buddy of mine as we've worked here together for all of his 7 1/2 years. No, don't start speculation that I'll get special treatment just because I'm an old friend...

My status at work? Well, I was trying to find a new job. That didn't work out too well, because I'm still here. I'm still trying, but I guess no one wants a highly capable analyst with massive Excel programming skills.

Now before anyone starts *anything* with that: I appreciate the many offers of help that people have offered over the past few months, but I: a) know how to search Monster, b) am not interested in relocating, and c) can probably find my own job so please don't search the job boards on my behalf because I know what to eliminate and what not to just by looking at it for 5 seconds. Now, if you personally know a hiring manager that's looking for someone in Silly.com Valley and hasn't found the right person yet and is getting frustrated because everyone they've met just doesn't quite cut it, that might be a different story... but I digress.

Materials? Someone else handles them now, and I have no part in it. They've completely redone the methodology for reporting such things and I'm trying to get the final disentanglements off my back for that responsibility.

Metrics? I still manage them, but they still want to automate them. Push button reporting. That's great if we had the structure to be able to do that, but unfortunately things weren't built that way in the beginning...

People? Well, one long-timer left, and another was abruptly let go. And the management styles of either of them weren't liked by the guy in charge. He liked to b.s. and didn't really talk business. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but you have to know when it's time to talk business...

Do I still like it here? Depends on the day of the week. The stupid new receptionist (who has been with the company for a long time and jumped from Operations to CS and now back to Ops so that she could keep her job) removed my mail folder from the filing cabinet at the front desk. I know she doesn't like me. She's never respected me or listened to me, even when she was reporting to me. So no, today I don't like it here, but I'll have fun asking her later where my mail folder is when I go to check it and she attempts to look innocent and claim "You had a mail folder?".

I *will* nail her to the wall if she says that.

Am I happy? Well, I'm not sure. I still love what I do, and I still like the company, but I don't like my reporting structure and the lack of information that I have about what's going on. Oh yes, I'm out in the cold, freezing without a clue. And it really helps when you're an analyst to know what's going on that changes your data. It doesn't help when you alert someone to a change in the trends and they tell you that something that affected the data changed two weeks earlier.

I suspect with the changes that that is going to change significantly. At least I hope it does. And if it does, then I'll stick around for the long haul.

Until then, here's to my 8 years, and let's hope that this is a year that brings changes for the better instead of the confusing ones this last year brought.