ENOUGH!!!!

I've really had enough. I've come back to work this morning after a measly 4 days of leave to find that stuff that I'm responsible for has been "played with" (read: stuffed up) and changed by my colleagues while I've been away. Then I go to do one of my normal daily tasks, and find that I can't, because one of my colleagues is currently doing it. My boss assigns me to spend the day today in a computer lab helping staff who are doing their class reports, but also sends me a meeting request for tomorrow at 8am for which I need to setup a computer with software I have nothing to do with, that we don't have enough licenses for, and requires a rather complicated phone activation process. Where on earth am I going to get the time?

So anyway - there's this job opening I've been told about by a friend of mine. It's a long way from where I live, but not out of reach. It would mean sacrificing time with my family, which I really don't want to do. However, I'm wondering if I could perhaps leverage this to my advantage. If I could get an offer on another job that I would be happy to take, then I could give the management here a bit of an ultimatum about me and my position here. See without me, they're completely stuffed, and they're starting to know it. I've become aware that although no one is saying anything, more and more staff have become aware that I'm really the brains/brawn behind the entire IT department. This includes a number of the executive, who have asked the question "Why can't our IT manager fix this problem?" when I've been away on leave. At least one staff member I know of has answered this question with "because only Justin actually knows what he's doing" on more then one occasion, so I think there's sufficient knowledge of this fact for me to make use of it.

Anyone who knows me knows that I probably won't do any of this. But while I'm dreaming, what I'd really love is for them to make me IT Manager, and relegate my boss to something like "Head of Hardware Infrastructure", because that's realistically as far as his skills go. He can setup cable networks, and configure a managed switch, but as far as being an IT professional goes anything much above that is just beyond him. He assigned our work experience person to manage an ASP.net application we have running, and when I complained he said he'd done it because this guy has "web design experience". Now, our work experience guy is probably more cluey then my boss, but he doesn't have ANY programming experience, and has never seen ASP.net before. Actually, I was talking to him, and he doesn't even have a handle on the concept of what you'd use ASP.net for.
You know - I wouldn't mind if they didn't demote my boss. Just as long as they elevated me to equal or above. That way, I could actually make decisions that have to be respected, rather then having them meddled with whenever I go on leave.

OK, I'm done. I've got to help a teacher turn an hour and a half long MovieMaker project into a DVD. This should be fun... :P