getting bumped

It seems that we, the R&D department, are going to get moved out of our current room—probably to smaller digs. I have mixed feelings on the subject, but it's not a surprise: because our staff dwindled from a high of about eleven people to our current skeleton crew of only four (including our temporary supervisor), and because we're currently in a large room with plenty of empty space, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic have regarded this office with envious eyes, and slowly and surely have drawn their plans against us. This amount of open space is going to be the envy of teams currently in overcrowded offices; even a month ago, speculation was that we'd end up trading spaces with the SIS team down the hall.

It's not 100% definite that we'll be moved: it could well be that other teams will move some of their members into our space, but if I were a betting man, I'd bet that I'll be boxing my possessions up and hauling ass down the hall sometime within the next couple of months. Tonight, it was the native-speaker teachers who told me that a bunch of executives came into our office late last night, around 10PM, just after I had left. These executives had apparently been talking about how our space was to be divvied up, so as one native teacher put, it sounds as if our fates have already been decided. Same goes for the native teachers themselves: they heard that they're to be moved out of our room, too, and they don't sound completely happy about that prospect.

One way or a another, radical changes are coming. Our team had been working on projects dreamed up by our original boss, but he's out of the picture, and those projects are now being nixed in favor of what the Koreans want us to do, which amounts to a bunch of bonehead work on mediocre material. It's a step backward, I think—a step away from creativity and innovation—but hey: I'm being paid well, now, and if the work is intellectually dull, well, I don't take ownership of anything I do for this company, anyway. No emotional investment. So long as I'm not saddled with a dozen extra (and stressful) responsibilities, I'll be a happy camper, futilely chipping away in the mines with my pickax, so to speak.

More news as it happens.