I thought this was supposed to be temporary?

Last year our company decided to use our available employees in Disability Claims to work Dental Claims for the first quarter of the year. I had volunteered, thinking it would be interesting to see another side of the company, and to change things up a bit with my work. I wasn't picked last year because I was too "green" at my current job, and my supervisor wanted me to focus on my Disability work.

The reason they did this was because at the beginning of each year, there is an influx of Dental claims, and instead of hiring new or temporary employees for the three or so months that there are too many claims, and not enough Dental employees. Instead, someone determined that the Disability department was overstaffed, and pulled two people to work half days on Dental from Disability. At the end of March, those two people were done.

This year was the same story. They needed two people to work half days from January through March. I volunteered again, even though the people who did that volunteer work last year had complained about it and how unorganized the whole thing was. I thought they were exaggerating. Turns out they weren't exaggerating, not even a teeny bit.

Training started off rocky, when we were set loose on our own, we had more questions than it seemed were possible, and it was tough. But we managed. And just when we finally got used to that, they changed the work we were doing, and it all started over.

Then they announced (with only two days of warning), that we would no longer be doing Dental half days - they were so far behind, that they would need us to do Dental full days, and it wasn't just through March anymore, it was through April, as well. Then we would go back to doing Disability claims again, just like normal.

Then today, with one more day left on my countdown calendar, which I'd been carefully "X"ing off each day that passed, a bomb was dropped on me. I was called into my supervisor's office, expecting to hear something about "thanks for all your hard work in Dental these past four months, here's how things are going to go on Monday when you start doing Disability again." Instead, it was more like, "So, your last day of Dental will not be tomorrow."

Me: You're joking, right?
Supv: No, I'm afraid I'm not.
Me: This is a REALLY bad joke.
Supv: I wish it was a joke, I'm sorry.

So not only is my last day of Dental not tomorrow, but the duration of Dental is indefinite. The Dental department is currently understaffed and not hiring, and the Disability department is currently overstaffed - so of course it makes sense to take people from the overstaffed department and have them work in the understaffed department, especially if they're already trained to do the work.

I suppose I should mention that this is mind-numbingly boring work, and the constant data-entry (about 5x more than when doing Disability) is wreaking havoc on my shoulder due to repetitive motion strain. I am getting an ergonomic chair at work and a slide out keyboard tray, which should help out. Since I don't know how long I'll be doing this now, I'm working on keeping the pain to a minimum. Before, it was "oh, I'll be done in two months, so I'll just suffer through it, and it'll go away when I start Disability again."

We'd planned a Happy Hour at one of the local bars tomorrow. It's still on, even though it could be considered an Un-Happy Hour. Either way, I'm drinkin'.

Yeah, this was a big bitch-fest, but I needed to get it off my chest and complain about it. Because there's nothing I can do that's going to change it, aside from finding a new job at this point, and I'm just not ready to do that right now. I just have to hope that it doesn't last too much longer, and deal with it.