Change is Coming

The last week on the job has been a very strange one for me. While my activities were mostly within the scope of legitimate business activities (I'm at the office 10 hours a day yet don't have work to justify the time I spend there), there was a lot of politicking and gossiping. Now, I'm not really clued in on the scurrying little conversations that go on around me. Not only are they in Spanish, I find a lot of the gossip to be childish and immature. However, I knew that something was up.

Friday, in the afternoon, I started to have concerns that maybe they were going to fire me. I've been on edge since I last talked to my boss and since nothing substantial has actually changed since then and I still do not have a clearly defined role, I have been more nervous about things than I probably should be. As I did my work and observed the scurrying chatter and rumor I started to become angry at the idea that they could fire me. If anything, I thought, they should fire my boss for total and complete deriliction of duty.

Just this week, we had two high level meetings with USAID officials where key parts of our presentations (the team's, not mine) were incomplete to such an extend that the meetings should have been canceled or postponed. It was embarrassing and while not necessarily the direct fault of my boss, it certainly reflected on the fact that he wasn't running a tight ship. Hell, he wasn't running much of a ship at all. I commented to my wife just the other day, actually, that I wasn't really sure what his job was - or, better said, what he did all day. Because he certainly didn't seem to be doing any managing.

Well, Friday night, my wife and I had a friend over to our place who is very connected into this company, the Colombian government, and USAID (she was on the committee that awarded this project to my company). I explained the trouble I was having at the company (interviewing for one position, being contracted for another without being told, and working as a Technical Forestry Assistant which I am completely unqualified for). She put a call in to a friend in the company to discuss my situation (there is an opening in the policy department) and guess what: they fired my boss on Friday night.

Now, I'm not sure what this is going to mean. I'm going to try to transfer out of my department to something more suitable and with this contact that I have (a very good friend of my wife's) that may be a possibility. In the short term, however, I really don't know what's going to happen, who is going to be the new boss, etc. I imagine it will be the previous "sub-gerente" who I think is very good and a very hard worker. Hopefully, my role will develop in a reasonable capacity. Either way, things be a changin and I can only hope that these changes put me in a position to excel.