“The reward for a job well done, is usually a harder job.”
-Lois McMaster Bujold

For all of my supervisors’ shifting and sorting in order to keep me steadily busy (which, by the way, is absolutely impossible with police work: you’re either swamped or drooling on your keyboard while the minutes laugh at you as they snail on by) I still managed to finish my jobs months ahead of schedule and can now apparently recommence drooling undisturbed. 

Obviously, I’m having another bout of feeling frustrated by my job.  They come and go.  Each attack gets less vitriolic and more resigned, but the feeling still boomerangs, and probably will continue doing so until J.’s done with school and we move, I finally toss off all restraints and throw myself into writing professionally (bankrupting and starving us both in the process), or until I succumb to the idea that resistance to my fate is futile (never!).

If ever I’m not outrageously busy, somebody wanders by and makes snarky comments about how they’re paying me and Hennessy to sit on our bums and do nothing.  Regardless of the fact that I do all of the department’s customer service, or whatever it’s referred to in police work, maintain all department records, do all the mindless projects they dump on my desk simply because they don’t want to do them, keep the office clean, maintain all of their schedules, have attended all the trainings and obtained all the certifications, skills, and accesses they’ve required of me, manage all our 150 student employees, work with courts, lawyers, and insurance companies constantly, and still do their bloody laundry three days a week!  I’ve also identified and fixed procedural problems of my own volition and been commended for it!

Obviously this deserves punishment, scorn, and snark from my co-workers/supervisors.

If I’m capable of keeping up my normal duties and still managed to clean, resort, restock, and reorganize our huge office supplies/police gear/self-defense class items/parking equipment storage closet in three days, rewrite the entire procedure manual in four, and set up Chief’s email contact sheets in ten minutes…shouldn’t that mean that I can go to the vending machines for a snack without someone getting in a snit?

I deeply apologize for being a fast and thorough worker.  I’m even considering stopping it.  Because apparently all it gets me is frustrated in the long-term, and lectured and punished in the short.