Proletariat Ego

by eric at 03:00 PM on April 27, 2002

Two nights ago my boss called while I was at a, uh, meeting. I fretted and stewed over this voice mail from him all evening. Despite the fact that after a decade of being a successful magazine and Web site editor, I still have the ego of a 11th grader who knows he'll be turned down when asking a girl to the prom. I constantly tell myself things like "What if they realize I'm not that great and fire me?" (I blame some of this self-doubt on a former micro-manager boss because I seem to recall that before him I had an ego the size of the Hindenburg. Now I only have a gut that size.)

When I got my boss on the phone yesterday, it turned out he wanted to give me a whole different kind of (good/bad) news: more responsibility. It turns out they like my work so much, they're giving me another Web site to be in charge of. These new duties will not necessarily double my work load, but it's probably just shy of that. And they aren't offering any more money (at least not yet). Upside: I work from home and no one bugs me (though I suppose the potential for that increases with the new site).

Later in the day, I got a call from another company that I used to work for that I've been talking with (see the "uh, meeting" reference above). They have offered me a job. More money, too. Downside: I'm back in the care for 10 hours a week. And the hours are noon to 8pm.

Usually, when one has a job at A, and gets a job offer from B, one would go to his boss at A and say, "hey, boss, I just got a job offer that pays more money. How about you pony up some more cash?" Having been laid off about five times in four years, I'm always the first to say I don't owe the company a thing outside of my 40+ hours of eye bleeding drudgery, and I always say we peons are will worth the extra scratch.

Well, I'm not the brightest guy in the world. I didn't ask my current boss today for more cash. If I stay at job A, I probably won't, because they've treated me right. Just goes to show you, I'm filled with great advice, but I never listen.