18 March 2010

Trying for Positive Thinking

It is difficult to maintain a positive thinking environment when you feel as if it is made out to be your fault that your company has not had business in the last 3 months due to the website change. I need to increase the search rating of the site, which hopefully will get the desired effect. This can be either very simple or very time consuming. I have a feeling it will be the latter.

But what I need to figure out is how not to feel attacked for the decisions that I've made in regards to the website. I've worked very hard on updating the information to suit the boss. He is even willing to take responsibility for allowing me to post it up without it being ready. He was just impatient for the new information to be put up. Well it's up, but what good does that do if no one is looking for us.

But really does a website make sales? Especially one such as ours? I think it is highly possible we have too much information (read box text) on the website without a very easy way of seeing what exactly the customers may want. I have done whatever it is that I could, but there is little I can do when the information that is provided to me is pretty much lots of large paragraphs as opposed to bullet points. What is it that customers really want though? I'm no marketing expert and apparently neither is my boss.

Maybe appealing to people's emotions or pity is not the way to grab sales. "We are at the end of the road" or "we may not make it next month" are not the most positive things to hear. How does that make us feel about our job security in this festering economy? Oh did I mention, I've never once heard him say anything to the employees about this. Only on the phone to old friends or potential customers.

But I thought last week's meetings were successful. I know he's been working hard to garner some sales. I don't see how my putting up a new layout and website was as catastrophic as he's making it out to be. But what do I know. I'm just the technical editor going above and beyond what I was originally hired for to attempt to make the website better.

In other news, I think I have allergies or a cold, but I am so glad the blizzards are gone and done (please no more... for a while... 100 years?) I've been looking into other employment, for example sending out 7 applications on Tuesday alone. I'm trying to remain positive. I'm trying to do what I can for my job. I'm trying not to get stressed out by everything.

Is it too much to ask for one week without feeling attacked for doing my job?

03 March 2010

Oh and...

Really sorry about all the rants about work. I'm feeling that I need to blog more and get things off my chest because it may help me in the long run. Planning to let the therapist read this as well for our sessions to give an insight.

Other than work and finances, I'm doing pretty good and am fairly content... I've been spending time with the hubby, reading good books, knitting again, and back to playing the game (hobby not addiction).

Take Initiative - but not that Initiative

I have worked very hard on this website. Is it all for nothing? It feels as if its my fault we have not gotten any new inquiries for our products, at least this is the impression I am getting from the boss figure. He rushed me to get the project up and done and updated, even though I had told him I had started a brand new layout from scratch. He told me when it was ready that it looked good and to go ahead and upload it.

And now he's talking about needing to probably put the old one up for these folowing reasons:
It doesn't work properly in IE6.

A browser that only 10-11% of the internet traffic even uses and is over 6 years old and Google themselves are phasing it out...
No "search page".

We have a site map and sheesh the code for a search page is complicated.
People cannot find our site on the first page of searching for one of our products.

I've done the "keywords" thing in the code, but apparently that's not enough. We're (other guys and me) not even sure putting the old page will fix this problem.

Part of me wonders if my boss really only wants to undermine something I spent so much of my time perfecting. Perhaps that is not the case. I don't really know. What really peeves me off the most is that the meeting talking about the webpage was held without me... and I only found out about it walking by.

I really should document how this makes me feel for my therapist. It's really causing some "bad thoughts" that are not helping me at all.

01 March 2010

Following Up

I survived this past week, barely, but I survived. Now to actually implement to myself that gaming should be a hobby not an addiction.

I sit here today while working on submitting a very late report thinking to myself, do I really not "follow things up" like my boss says I do. I'm not totally sure honestly. Sure I didn't follow up this particular thing, but it was late and I think there as a HUGE SNOWFALL between the last time he asked me to try to submit (only to find out I couldn't cause the CCR hadn't been fixed yet) and now. Perhaps no excuse.

So, I failed again. And it's taking me all I can to not wallow in my failure and just pick up and keep going. Not to mention my desire to actually work for a company that cannot afford to pay its employees is very low. But here I am scrambling to try to remember which document this is that I need to submit and get it submitted sooner rather than later.

Speaking of not being paid, I only got an advance check for this past month because we could not make payroll. Please don't ask me how this happened, I only look at what comes in and goes out, I do not get us loans or jobs. I have a theory that Snowmaggedon, Snowpocalypse, and Snowverkill may have had something to do with this, but that's all it is, a theory. Since learning this little fact, I have been working together my resume and looking around for other places to apply to.

Unfortunately there is another step that must be completed before i can submit a report. I probably should investigate what else needs to be done before we run into problems due to the late report, that was late because our CCR expired and I had no way of knowing it was going to expire, and then I didn't realize we could still submit the thingy even after it is late. I expect many more lectures over the one "failure" to occur and no thanking me for finishing that one thing that saved us over a million dollars. And people wonder why I get depressed sometimes.