Inertia, Vacations, and Pressure

"Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. "
"The relationship between an object's mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force F is F = ma. "

"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. "

So said some old dead geezer 321 years ago. Amazingly, he was British.

We had not yet returned from our delayed Christmas vacation when the phone rang. It was my office. They were excited. So excited that they called me up in Hawaii to tell me how great it would be, and how much money 'we' were going to make from loads of night and weekend work, and how I was pivotal to this whole effort, and wow, gosh golly gee wouldn't it be great if I could show up to work on the Sunday I returned from vacation so that I could get right to work?

Let's review the previous laws. I was at rest, a very long, protracted, enjoyable state of rest. I was not ancy about returning to work and 'making a difference.' In a business sense, I had gained mass with a promotion, and an insufficient amount of force was applied to cause acceleration. But the most interesting is always the third. My equal and opposite reaction was to be pissed that my company would call me on vacation to ask me to work on Sunday.

I go through the motions on my return to work. They really did want me up there, they wanted me at this 'exciting' job immediately, and pressured me to drop my other work to go. Never mind that one of these pieces of work was a legal, court-mandated response to a government agency that had to be completed in two days. I communicated this to my company. They chose to ignore it, forget it, or not to care. Another small irritation.

I get to this job, and it is an 'exciting' job: excite \ex*cite"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Excited; p. pr. & vb. n. exciting.][L. excitare; ex out + citare to move rapidly, to rouse: cf. OF. esciter, exciter, F. exciter. See Cite.]1. To call to activity in any way; to rouse to feeling; to kindle to passionate emotion; to stir up to combined or general activity; as, to excite a person, the spirits, the passions; to excite a mutiny or insurrection; to excite heat by friction. (Dictionary.net)

Notice how in the definition of this word there is no guarantee of a positive connotation?

The jobsite was in a panic. Vice Presidents were shoving directors, who shoved managers, who shoved their employees. Multiple departments across the company. Something went wrong and it needed to be fixed. It is the job of a "leader" to push people to do things they don't want to do, or so I'm told. I went in with a calm, rested head. I knew the capabilities of all involved. And I walked out of my first meeting on the jobsite almost having quit my company.

Let's revisit. I had overcome my inertia. My entire company placed enough force on me to get me in motion with sufficient acceleration. But the forces, man. My company was, in effect, shoving me over diamond-grit sandpaper into a granite mountain wall. In effect, my company wished to move the mountain of a multi-national corporation. With me. What's the equal and opposite reaction to being broken and crushed?

If I succeed, they get the credit. If I fail, "we" get the axe. No assurances of "your standing with us will not be diminished if we do not achieve this goal." The glib wisecrack more frequently uttered was "you can't put nine women in a room for a month and make a baby."

After a mere 4 days on site, I left for the weekend. I went to Vancouver. I shouldn't have taken my cell. I received a call while sitting at the border crossing to the U.S., and it was a client on the site. He expressed his extreme disappointment with my work. I asked them (singular, intentionally vague) if there was anything I could do to relieve that disappointment right then, which got a 'no.' I told them I would return and address the issue when I returned to work. Then I let my company know about it.

This job has progressed, and the pressure hasn't died. Our company has work around the clock over both of the previous weekends to meet this customer's demands. I'm currently on call, in case there is a revelation and we need to return. No schedule. Our project managment is trying to do what it can with a customer that's behaving like a teenager in puberty. I may need to leave "at a moment's notice" to work for 12 hours. On a Saturday.

Sometimes I wish I didn't have Crohn's, because then I could just drink the pain away.