I left my old group at work 6 months ago. In the year or so before leaving, I did a lot of things and none of them very well — except one. There was one project that was mine, I was involved, I felt like it was important, I knew it was important. I developed procedures, helped plan and execute sims, educated a lot of people on something that previously no one had known we needed to be concerned about, and generated a lot of actual flight-specific data that was used during the landings of STS-114, STS-121, and STS-115. Two months after I left the group, I did it again for STS-116 because of scheduling conflicts among the people that had taken over for me. This wasn’t a huge deal at the time, because though I left the group, I’m still in the same division and I was still in a transitional phase.
Almost five months after that, however, I find myself doing it again for another sim, again because of scheduling conflicts on the part of the person now supporting the task. I know that I could’ve said “no, I can’t.” It would’ve meant that someone would’ve had to come in over the weekend, or someone else would have had to start from ground zero and figure everything out. Still, I could’ve said no. But I didn’t.
It’s frustrating.
On one hand, it is not my job anymore and I shouldn’t have to keep supporting it. It’s not fair to me because I have other things to do now. It’s not fair to the customer because they need to know that they can’t keep relying on me. It’s not fair to the person who has theoretically taken over from me because that person needs to learn how to do things for themself without falling back on me, knowing that even though I’m not in the group anymore, I’m just down the hall.
But on the other hand… The work associated with this project was one of of the few things in my old group that I really liked doing, so it’s hard to say no. The project was my baby — one of the few really helpful, important, and positive things I did in my old group — and so I’m also sensitive to how I see it being treated now that I’m gone. My perception is that it’s getting brushed under the rug, that the person who took over doesn’t want to do it and doesn’t care about it and is looking for ways to pass it off, and that the agency we’re cooperating with is getting poorer treatment. I worked hard to help build those relationships and get everyone to the point they are today, working together and communicating well and getting the data they need to take the actions necessary. I don’t want to see all that get flushed down the toilet.
So I’m creating another data package and supporting another sim, six months after I left my old group. And I don’t know how I feel about that.
What would you do?