Bit of a weird one this but I want to know if I'm just being ridiculous or not.
I work for a big city firm in a job that is transactional, project based and usually fairly fast paced and busy. Sometimes it's too busy to be honest but I don't complain as I like the job. I work hard and I want to work. I have a fairly short attention span so I do struggle with lengthy periods of down time and most people in my industry see this as a good thing.
I am currently seconded to a huge corporation on a contract through my firm. I agreed to this as they requested me personally after a transaction we did for them last year and to be honest these opportunities are few and far between - in my industry it's actually a great CV booster to do a secondment. I started in September last year for 6 months and before that I had been quite quiet at work as the market I work in was a bit slow. It was expected to pick up from October and did so for my firm but not necessarily at the place I am currently seconded to.
Since I started here it just hasn't been busy at all. I started at around the same time as they hugely expanded their team and so I'm not the only one with not much on. But they've made no move to suggest that they stop paying for a secondee or that they try to utilise me (or even their new permenant staff for that matter) more. I am unbelievably bored. I can't work for my firm as the secondment is paid and exclusive, and I have tried everything to ask for more work, suggest ways I can help and to make it clear that I have plenty of capacity. But it's having no effect.
Part of the secondment is building relationships with the business team but I've had so little exposure to them as I've had so little work to do with them that I am really struggling with this. I am not a massive extrovert anyway and I am very anxious in situations where I don't know people (my firm know this) so I had hoped to get relationships off the ground through work and then to follow through with events etc. I'm haven't been able to do this as step 1 has been a disaster with no work to do. I have arranged a few upcoming things but they were a struggle and I can't do much more on this front now.
My firm have listened and been supportive to a point but the general view is that removing me would be a PR disaster. They hate that I am being under utilised in this way but they haven't done much about it. They haven't even had the usual standard catch ups with my line manager at the secondment as they should have done in any event. I've got 2 months to go and I am struggling to get up in the mornings. I cannot fill 9 hours a day in an open plan office any more and the length of time to go is making me very depressed. I told my Boss today that I want them to remove me and bring me back. AIBU or should I just suck it up and "enjoy the downtime" as so many people have patronisingly suggested?