A Bump In The Road...

Hi everyone. Hope that you're all having a great weekend.

It's been a bumpy last few days for me. I've wanted to blog about this all for a while, but in all honesty, I've tried not to really think about it, but now that "the time" is right around the bend, well, I'm forced to think about it a lot more. The "it" is a reassignment action that my senior management is soon to take on me (and has already taken on one of my colleagues) outisde our office. The basic contention for this is that the work has changed significantly in our office (which is true, I can't lie), and yet another part of our agency's HR family (which just happens to be located at the KC office) is drowning and in dire need of help. That's all well and good. This "other HR office" that needs us so badly is our Delegated Examining Unit, or "DEU." I've blogged about DEUs before. In sum, they handle almost all external recruitment actions for our agency as well as the handful of other DoD agencies that have contracted with them. It's a tremendously valuable service...one that our agency (and undoubtedly the others as well) couldn't survive without. The kind of work they do is very different than the kind of HR work I'd like to do. It used to be that I was an "HR Generalist" - I did it all. Staffing, classification, employee relations, training...you name it, I did it. I had a business line that I was responsible for, and anytime they needed anything, I was their girl. Need a new secretary because yours got promoted and left? Great, call me. Oh, you have new work but need position descriptions? I'm your girl. Wait, did you just say that your employee spent the day gambling online? I'm your disciplinary Donna. Then our agency decided to consolidate all of that work in another geographic location. So we became a different kind of HR office. Instead of functional, day-to-day operational work, we had a direct tie to a member of the Senior Executive Service (or "SES") and the business line for which he was responsible. I managed their agency-wide intern program. If they needed to do contingency planning or strategic planning or any kind of mass change (restructure, realignment outside the agency, mass early retirements) we were their folks. And we LOVED it. Loved this SES, loved his staff, loved working for and with them. As is the nature of the beast within the Federal government, things changed AGAIN. And not for the better. Now our office is left without that support assignment, and it's my true and honest belief that our senior HR management (who is not co-located with us) absolutely has no idea what we're doing. It's thought that we're not busy. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We are a BRAC site. We have taken it upon ourselves to get down and dirty with the States of Missouri and Kansas as they find ways to use Federally appropriated funds to minimize the impact on all of us. There's so much to do and never enough time to get it all in. And now there's this DEU reassignment. DEU work is not of interest to me. It's rote. It's continually looking at and analyzing words on paper. There's not a human tie to it. They keep their doors shut, they don't take incoming calls. Gone will be the days of my interns and being called by anyone asking for my help. God, even though it's been several years since the operational work we performed was absorbed from the central sites (i.e., us and a handful of others) to one big "mega center," we STILL get calls from people asking us if we can "just do this one disciplinary letter" or "just help us this once." They love and trust us, and that feeling is more than mutual. That all changes next Wednesday. I am going to be unofficially reassigned to the DEU then. I won't be able to "do" anything until I receive DEU certification training next month, but I believe they'll have me doing lots of preliminary work (i.e., learning the system) until such time as OPM has approved me to do DEU work. Let me stop myself here because I want to make a few points clear before I continue. Yes, this is still "a job." Yes, I am going to be paid at a very handsome salary (GS-12, step 03...if you're so inclined to figure out how much I make, well, have at it) to do intern-level (hell, clerical-level work). Yes, it's a wonderful new opportunity to gain a brand new "hard skill" to put in my "HR toolkit." But it's not the KIND of work I want to be doing. It's not open...not personal. And, quite honestly, I am worried that I will find it boring. I do need to give it a shot, and my colleague who is already down there promises me that it's interesting. But it's just a hard wall right to my face that my professional life as I now know it is dying. This reassignment is the first official step to the end of my time with my agency. This is it for me...well, until I get something else or the BRAC kicks me out the door, whichever happens first. I so, so wanted that intern coordinator position. That ICTAP match really hurts. STILL. I was a wreck at the office Friday, and in all actuality, I am dreading tomorrow. Everyone keeps telling me that this is all going to be OK...that it's part of a bigger plan. And I know they're right. God laid an extraordinary set of circumstances on my path that led me straight to Kansas City, to my GS-12, to my husband, and to this precious life that I love so dearly. He'll take me to where I am supposed to be...where my work and my energies can make other people happy and better their lives. I just hope that it's sooner...MUCH sooner...than later. In the meantime, I just have to try to be open-hearted and open-minded about the DEU. I keep hoping that I'll be pleasantly surprised. We'll see.

If you read that entire paragraph, may warm, delicious cookies fall straight from Heaven into your lap.

Have a fantastic rest-of-the-day, everyone.