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Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Could the end of Temporary Insanity be Nigh?

It appears that things are wrapping up where I've been working. While I am sad to see the paycheck go, I can't say that I will miss the people I've been working with and I'll be glad to get my life back.  I have several things that have been on the back burner, so hopefully something will come up and everything will work out alright.

I'd love to say that I learned some big, valuable lesson from this job, but really, all I have learned that I am not a fan of group working situations (where you don't have any space of your own) and I'm not a huge fan of working that closely with a big group of women.  Maybe that means that there is some issue with me, but I guess that I am used to being a lone wolf and while I can certainly step up and be a team player, I like my team to not be less than a fingertips length from me.

The odd thing, though, is that the supervisor who had been really friendly and giving me all kinds of extra tasks is now no longer even speaking  to me.  I don't know what the hell to make of that, but... whatever.  I was trying to provide her with some insight and utilize my experience to her advantage and I guess it backfired on me because she has completely shut down and won't even LOOK at me anymore.  I sortve wonder if, since she had hinted that some of us might be kept on long-term and now this is perhaps not the case, if that might be the issue.  Not necessarily that she feels bad about it, but she is just backing off being friendly to people who aren't going to be around anymore.

Of course, it could be that there WILL be people kept on and that I did not make the cut, for whatever reason.  And I guess I have to be ok with that. Business decisions are made without regard for relationships cultivated and that's just how the business world works.  I could spend a lot of time trying to figure it out, but I won't.  I just need to get ready to move on and do what I need to do.

Resume is updated and I'm ready to "pull the trigger" when I need to do so.

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Continued Temporary Insanity

So, I am still working the temp gig that started back at the end of May. The one what was supposed to be for four days.  I think the first week of August will be the end, but more than once the end of a phase has not meant the end of the job, so we shall see.

The reality is that this is not a permanent position, though, and eventually it WILL end.  Even if it became a long-term opportunity, it is, in reality, extremely simple data entry work, for $5 an hour less than I need to be making to really be "ok" financially and it would pretty effectively set my career path back at least a decade.

Now, I can hear you saying "but you NEED a job".  And you're right. I do need a job. But if you keep stepping backwards and then getting laid off every time you make even the smallest step forward, you end up working a series of jobs and never have a career. And then you get asked all the time about why your job history is a BACKWARDS progression more than FORWARD progression.  And "because that was the opportunity at the time" isn't going to cut it.

The other thing is that this job has had me working very long hours, sometimes 7 days a week. My apartment is filthy, my housemate is extremely unhappy with me, my cats aren't speaking to me and I am pretty sure that they are on the internet at night placing ads for people to adopt them.

I think that the worst part of this job is that I have nothing in common with my co-workers and I honestly dislike most of them with a passion. I know that probably makes me a really bad person, but it's the truth. Even my "work friend" is someone I really, really don't want to be friends with outside of work. Between the fact that she is obnoxiously perky in the morning and that she nitpicks every single thing to death (and distracts me while doing so) makes me just want to smack her and tell her to shut up some days. So far I have been able to restrain myself, but I don't know how long that will hold.

I think if I owned a car, I'd be actively looking for another opportunity. But I don't have that luxury and so for now I am stuck having to put up and shut up.  I am dreading what I'll end up having to do once this ends, as most of the good jobs, the ones that pay decently and the ones I want, are not somewhere that public transportation can get me.