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A while ago the college where I work sent me to locksmith school. The whole thing started with me joking that fixing the locks at the college would cost more than sending me to school for it and I laughed and instead of laughing, they looked intrigued. I went in with very little knowledge other than my tendency to take things apart when I'm bored and have tools nearby and a general understanding of how tiered key systems work. I didn't expect to discover my dream job but I did and coming back to work being able to do this was amazing. It wasn't even just that locksmithing was my dream job, doing it at a community college where I was mostly on my own with it and not having to go out to strange houses or cars. At the time, I had a boss who would get in moods and suddenly decide things. He decided that a college that hadn't had it's doors maintained for ages and didn't have the locks up to date to match the system (why is admissions using a marketing key, etc) couldn't possibly have need of this much work. I started having to radio in everything I did and send emails at the end of each day. It didn't matter how much I explained why things took as long as they did, he decided I was wrong and that was all there was to it. It doesn't help that this place has a tendency to have work orders come in that should take me 5 minutes and instead take days because of all the weird, unlikely factors and lack of communication (I just spent a week on what it turns out could have just been me making copies of a key and this was a problem that had been going on for a month before I found out about it). Once he got tired of trying to win using my logs as proof that I didn't have enough actual lock work to do, he decided he didn't care and I was done anyway. Getting told that I was going back to working the desk sucked a lot. I have trouble sitting still and being so active at work and being able to work with my hands was soothing for my ADD and generally calming for me. I went from being amazingly happy to feeling like I was trapped and chained to a desk. I know it sounds dramatic but it's what it felt like for me especially seeing as how my boss wasn't exactly pleasant to work with and I suspect he wished he could fire me. It didn't help that after the dispatcher retired, I was stuck doing that job (I'm the backup dispatcher along with my other duties) until we hired a new person and then in between the various people who we hired but didn't work out. When you're working dispatch you really can't leave the desk without someone there to cover for you.
I dealt with the whole thing but it wasn't fun. If I didn't do projects at home often enough, the lack of hands on stuff at work would build up and effect my mood. It got bad enough that I decided at one point that if I didn't get locks back in a year then I was going to start looking for a different job. I was just too unhappy to justify staying if I could help it. He ended up having a minor heart attack that required surgery within that year and was out for that and the recovery. When he finally came back, he was barely here and ended up retiring earlier than had originally been planned. Having him officially gone was amazing. The whole department was a better place for everyone. I didn't have a whole lot of hope for the locks but I figured I'd do what I could to make my argument including looking into how much we were paying a local locksmith for service. I got amazingly lucky and the new boss is so much better. About a year ago, out of nowhere I was given the locks back and I spent a while being incredibly happy and nervous that it would be taken back away and having trouble feeling like the whole thing was real, all at once.
The subject came up after a while about me having my own space down in the basement with the maintenance workers rather than all my stuff being shoved into the carpenter's office and it's been slowly in the works but mostly it's been slow going due to not having a budget to build me walls. This last month I finally got impatient and successfully made the argument for not needing walls so long as I locked up certain items because the area itself was secured at night and just as accessible as where the stuff had been previously during the day. This last week I finally got nearly everything into my area and I'm so excited! It's awesome to have my own space and have it sorted out though I have a decent amount of bruises to show for my stubborness about just jumping in and doing it myself
Not only that but my supervisor talked to me about how some of the stuff had built up (the college decided to play musical offices big time and there was a lot of rekeying to be done) and rather than concern about me doing the locks, she said that I needed to cross train people on some of the stuff I do at the desk so that more could be delegated to others because I need to be able to spend more time on locks! I'll add photos once I have them because I managed to get a fairly nice setup. I still find myself having moments of feeling giddy about the whole thing even when it's driving me insane.
I dealt with the whole thing but it wasn't fun. If I didn't do projects at home often enough, the lack of hands on stuff at work would build up and effect my mood. It got bad enough that I decided at one point that if I didn't get locks back in a year then I was going to start looking for a different job. I was just too unhappy to justify staying if I could help it. He ended up having a minor heart attack that required surgery within that year and was out for that and the recovery. When he finally came back, he was barely here and ended up retiring earlier than had originally been planned. Having him officially gone was amazing. The whole department was a better place for everyone. I didn't have a whole lot of hope for the locks but I figured I'd do what I could to make my argument including looking into how much we were paying a local locksmith for service. I got amazingly lucky and the new boss is so much better. About a year ago, out of nowhere I was given the locks back and I spent a while being incredibly happy and nervous that it would be taken back away and having trouble feeling like the whole thing was real, all at once.
The subject came up after a while about me having my own space down in the basement with the maintenance workers rather than all my stuff being shoved into the carpenter's office and it's been slowly in the works but mostly it's been slow going due to not having a budget to build me walls. This last month I finally got impatient and successfully made the argument for not needing walls so long as I locked up certain items because the area itself was secured at night and just as accessible as where the stuff had been previously during the day. This last week I finally got nearly everything into my area and I'm so excited! It's awesome to have my own space and have it sorted out though I have a decent amount of bruises to show for my stubborness about just jumping in and doing it myself
Not only that but my supervisor talked to me about how some of the stuff had built up (the college decided to play musical offices big time and there was a lot of rekeying to be done) and rather than concern about me doing the locks, she said that I needed to cross train people on some of the stuff I do at the desk so that more could be delegated to others because I need to be able to spend more time on locks! I'll add photos once I have them because I managed to get a fairly nice setup. I still find myself having moments of feeling giddy about the whole thing even when it's driving me insane.
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