Can I just vent for a minute? Feel free to skip the rest of this post if you'd like.
So the past month or so we've had various crises at work. The past 2 weeks, especially, a bunch of people were pulled off our normal work duties to handle the crisis. It also involved some late hours, working on the weekends, etc.
Of the 20+ people that I worked with directly, there were about 5 of us that actually bothered to monitor progress over this one weekend when things were still up in the air (including me). (By "monitor progress", I mean actually communicate with each other over the weekend and work to resolve outstanding issues. 99% of the other people were completely unavailable.) Between losing my entire weekend to work, and coming in at 5am to help resolve the issue during the week, I probably put in about 120 hours over the course of the 2 weeks to get this crisis fixed. Most of the other people probably averaged more like 90-100 hours over the 2 weeks.
Today, we get to our monthly company meeting where we hand out awards, and there's barely any lip service paid to the 20 of us, let alone the 5 of us that put in the extra time/lost sleep/lost weekends/etc. Which really frustrates me...not because I think that my 120 hour effort was especially note/award-worthy, but the fact that it was compared to everyone else's 90-100 hour effort, I feel that's worth a mention.
And...nothing.
I know it's silly to gripe about this sort of thing...I have a job, a steady paycheck, I even got a raise this year (albeit a tiny one). In most respects, my job is really great. In the area of recognition for work, though, I think this sort of thing is the norm rather than the exception, at least in my department. And while I enjoy what I do, I would like to get recognized when I outperform my peers in some fashion.
/End rant...thanks to anyone who's still reading this...
