Emotionally Damaged: Living With Job Burnout - PTSD - Chapter 2

 

Emotionally Damaged: Living With Job Burnout - PTSD - Chapter 2

From the basement to the second floor, and then to the first... This picture shows the central open cathedral effect of Stewart Hall as it was when I started working for Dr. Munn...Dr. Barton...and then Facilities Analysis and Utilization. I had a few moves outside the building, one of them to Willey Street in an old house that the University owned. Later Facilities Planning and Management moved to the Evansdale Campus in leased space...

During the early years as I worked in Facilities Analysis and Utilization, we had what I would call centralized line authority. That is, while I would report to one boss--William Campbell who reported directly to the Vice-President for Administration, I would also have staff responsibility to all other vice-presidents and well as deans and directors, to whom space had been allocated for their use. I had the authority to work directly with those offices. This grew out of my responsibilities for classroom management, but continued as I took over space utilization, allocation and planning for renovations.

It was a cooperative arrangement that allowed me to see the full campus-wide space utilization information and work to respond to all needs across the campus.

However, when the vice-presidents began to add line authority assistant vice-presidents, the flavor of the organization drastically changed for me, especially. Colonel Hank Snoreck was appointed as the first assistant vice-president for facilities. Although nothing was officially discussed with all staff, I learned that Snoreck would not continue the organizational flexibility I had earlier been given. Instead, I heard things like: "I know more about what facilities they need--don't bother contacting them."

Well, I knew this wasn't and would not be true. 

It was then, that Snoreck moved Campbell upstairs.  At that time, WVU used the euphemism often to promote individuals to a staff role under a higher official, pending their being...moved...out...

In place of Bill Campbell, Jim Shaub, from Snoreck's former Air Force ROTC unit, first became Associate Director during the transition for Campbell. Then he was automatically moved to the Director position. Bill Campbell made the deal for me that he would agree to the organizational changes ONLY if I were made Associate Director... 

While I became Associate Director, at NO time ever did Jim Shaub ever sit down with me and review my former responsibilities, what they involved and how my staff were used to respond to those responsibilities. In fact, not only I was now over everything I had earlier been involved with, but now, I was given additional responsibilities pertaining to the Planning function which essentially covered the construction portion of the facilities planning function.

The next major disruption was that I had a manager position open within the Facilities Management portion of the office. Before I knew it, I had Colonel Snoreck leaning over my desk with his arms spread and staring directly into my eyes, saying, "we have our new Manager, don't we?" I was forced to hire Ken White. He was the second colonel moved from ROTC to Facilities Planning and Management. This time, though, Ken White had absolutely NO training, experience nor education in performing the duties assigned to my office...

In the meantime, Jim Shaub's directorship of the construction function had taken a dive--big time. He and his project officers had lost control of the multi-million capital budget allocated by the Board of Regents.

Instead of dealing with this problem himself, Jim merely assigned me the responsibility under my new title of Associate Director. Specifically, I spent an entire year going through every single budget transaction, specific allocations received, all disbursements, et.al. In order to complete this task, I had to use my former personal secretary and have her assist me in setting up a completed computerized capital budget cost accounting system!

I'd like to add a personal note: I do not have a degree in relation to my assigned duties. I studied, and worked on the job under Bill Campbell to handle and build onto the original position for which he had been hired...All of the others in facilities planning have a degree. Yet none of them were required to deal with tracking the financial costs for their assigned projects...

During my lost year of having to be totally dedicated to creating a new financial system, Ken White took over the Facilities Analysis Unit. Fortunately, I had already trained my classroom management staff and they were able to function on their own for the most part. Three other areas resided in the Office: Facilities Analysis, Facilities Inventory, and Facilities Data Reporting.

I had hired a competent computer specialist, but with White sitting back having discussions with his two ROTC comrades, there wasn't much of anything getting done in the unit that I had developed and had functioning effectively. To "conceptually" build the new system, Terry was unable to move ahead. However, he was trying to help out as much as possible with those in the unit, but when he came to me one day and said, "One of your staff members is banging her head up against the wall (literally) and I've tried to help, but don't know enough about the reporting..." I knew another catastrophic situation was underway...

To be Continued...