Tag: work

Whimpers rather than bangs

~ e.v. ~ 3 Comments

Boss and HR lady had a meeting this morning. HR lady was very animated. I was with someone else at the time and commented that I’d never seen her animated before. She’s usually very stoic. I think my resignation took her by surprise and she took it a bit personally. Which shows some self-awareness, I suppose…

Then my boss spoke to me. He was quite conciliatory, but he didn’t ask why I was leaving (probably sensible), and didn’t make a counter-offer. He was feeling his way around it a bit though, but when I said I had accepted the other offer, he seemed to consider the matter closed.

I feel like… my boss seemed disappointed, HR lady was surprised… this was not an outcome any of the three of us wanted…

…therefore I should have done more to avoid it…

No no no. This is me all over. I can’t feel guilty when other people treat me badly. I can’t think “if only I’d given them more opportunities to treat me well”, especially when I did give them opportunities! This is not healthy.

Anticlimax

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

I gave my notice this morning like I intended to. It turns out Boss was working from home this morning and going to visit a client later, so wasn’t in the office (I didn’t know this). He didn’t reply but I’m sure he saw it. I CCed HR lady who is usually in the office on Monday, but she didn’t come in either and she also didn’t reply.

The last time I quit a job I remember the experience being liberating. This time has been a bit flat so far. It’s a bizarre experience really; you announce you’re quitting and everyone just ignores you!

I wish I could see into HR lady’s head. I wonder if she’s happy with how she’s handled things. I wonder if she foresaw this as being the only logical conclusion of the last meeting we had, and I wonder if now in retrospect she understands that it was.

ANXIOUS II

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

I’ve received and accepted the job offer formally now, so tomorrow I am handing in my notice.

Tomorrow is significant for a number of reasons. Tomorrow marks:

7 years to the day since joining the company
1 year to the day since moving desks to get away from Becky
4 weeks to the day since initiating a salary negotiation, which, as yet, has not yielded any results

Under normal circumstances I would have started moving to leave this time last year. I remember saying as much to my counsellor. The moment I moved desks was a signal that things were seriously broken and I felt annoyed with myself for putting up with it. But I was also experiencing some severe emotional trauma outside of work – hence seeing a counsellor – and adding the stress of a job search into the mix would probably have killed me (literally).

I have felt some regret today over what tomorrow will bring, but then I remembered all the times over the past year that Becky has been rude to me, and suddenly it feels a lot easier to leave. The truth is that I’m doing a lot better handling this on the medication than I was, but as the reason I eventually caved in and starting taking it was to manage workplace stress, it would be completely inappropriate to allow my employer to benefit from my medication. I promised myself two months ago when I started taking it that, if it helped, I would use it to help me manage the stress of a job search to find a better workplace. I’ve had a lot of self doubt and I wasn’t sure I believed myself at the time. I was having serious self doubt last week when I wasn’t sure I could handle all the interviews. But the thing is that although I still feel anxiety (and far more than I’d like), it doesn’t cripple me.

But I followed through on my promise to myself, and I am proud of that. I stood up for myself, and it’s important to do that every so often. Just to remind yourself that you can.

So, it’s one year overdue, but here we are. I’m resigning tomorrow. I won’t say I feel happy about it, but I am completely confident it’s the right thing to do.

ANXIOUS

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

I’m trying to be relaxed at the moment but it’s not really working.

Stuff I need to do:
1. Reply to the job offer letter and properly accept it
2. Reply to HR from a different company and tell them I won’t be proceeding any further
3. Draft and send a resignation email to my boss, which I think is just going to be a short “I’m giving my one month notice, I’ll leave on [date]” with no further explanation. We’ll go through that verbally anyway.

Other stuff I’m nervous about:

1. There is a fair chance that my boss will make a counter-offer. So, although I’m expecting to leave, there is a lot of uncertainty.

2. I’m running a half marathon tomorrow. I want to do it in 1 hour 35 minutes. I did it 1:48 last year, but I’m in much better shape this year. 1:35 seemed so realistic in training. That’s 4:30 per km. I do 5ks at slightly over 4:00/km, 10ks at about 4:10/km, so 4:30/km for a half is very achievable… isn’t it?

Now it’s the night before and I’m seriously wishing I’d done more long runs. Well, not more long runs, but longer long runs. I’ve been doing 15-18k runs at least twice a week for months and my training volume has been pretty heavy at about 70km/week. But… 18k… is that enough? That’s three kilometres I haven’t touched! So I’m expecting to get to about 19-20k and then fall apart. But… that’s not really how distance running works. I haven’t gone past 18k because I didn’t think I needed to with the otherwise heavy volume, and I felt that the risk of injury outweighed any potential benefit. I stuck to my plan. I’ll be OK. I just need to sit here and eat my delicious brioche (55% carbs) and then go to bed.

Now the fun starts…

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

So I now have a firm offer letter and contract which I’m going to accept this weekend and then give my notice on Monday morning.

But what happens then?

Will I get a counter offer? Probably – my employer is supposed to be reviewing my salary anyway.

Then what?

The problem is this: Mostly, I quite like where I work. The problem is Becky. I don’t know if she is a solvable problem, but I do know that my employer really hasn’t tried. This in itself is an additional problem because it says they don’t consider my well-being important.

The last time I spoke to HR lady, she told me “bullying isn’t legally defined, so we can’t do anything about it” (she used the word ‘bullying’, not me) and said I needed to “take more responsibility” for my own happiness at work. So I did, in the only way that I could, though I suspect this isn’t what she had in mind.

Any counter offer I would consider accepting has to put forward a plan to either improve Becky’s behaviour towards me or to reduce my exposure to it. I don’t know how that’s going to work, but if they want to keep me it’s up to them to figure that out.

Interesting times. I’m not quite out of the door yet.

Offer

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

So, I had an interview last night. I was kind of interested, but they wanted me to do a homework challenge and return it by Monday morning, and, after looking at it, I realised I just didn’t have time. If the challenge’s requirements came in at work I’d have estimated at least a week for it, and here I am with only four days, two of which I’m at work, one of which I’m running a half-marathon(!) and the other I don’t really want to spend in front of my PC working… because I’ve spent a lot of energy on interviews this week and I need space to relax. I decided after much deliberation (at approximately 3:50AM, which is of course the optimal time to solve your life issues) that it just wasn’t going to happen.

This morning I had another interview, which went really well. I knew it was going well when, after the technical interviewer left, instead of the first interviewer coming back to wrap up as he said he would, the HR lady came in. And then at the end of that, she said “I really want you to meet the managing director”. It was supposed to be approximately one hour involving two people, and it became two and a half involving four.

The managing director was a touch eccentric and after giving me a broad overview of everything, offered me the job there and then(!). I said the answer is almost certainly yes, but give me a day or so to think about it. So there we go. I’m intending to accept it tomorrow.

The one thing that concerns me is that I had quite a lot of time off sick last year and that may show up in a reference, but I would like to think that won’t be disclosed. ANXIETY.

Staying afloat

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

I had an interview yesterday and it went ok. I don’t know if they’ll offer it to me, but that in itself is positive.

I have a phone interview this evening.

I have another face to face tomorrow too.

I don’t know any more on the salary negotiation front.

I’m feeling slightly overwhelmed at times, but I’m trying to not place too much importance on any one of these things. I’ve shown myself that I can get interviews, that I can do at least okay at them, so eventually someone will offer me something.

I still feel very stressed though.

Demand

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

I had another call with a recruiter this morning who’s now put me forward for two jobs, both of which sound like possibilities. On top of that, I have three more recruiters who want to speak to me about relevant looking opportunities. I’m a bit overwhelmed to be honest. I can’t realistically do more than two interviews a week because it involves working from home or taking time off work, so next week is fully booked. Normally I would have replied to one of those three recruiters today, but I’m trying to throttle things a bit.

So I think, realistically, for the first time in my professional life, the employment market seems good for me and I should find something else quite quickly.

In related news, since I worked from home on Wednesday my boss has suddenly started being very nice to me. I think he thinks I had an interview (I didn’t – it was a GP appointment), which is going to make next week interesting…

Progress?

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

It’s all happening! As of today, I have:

2 interviews scheduled for next week (both face to face)
1 application that has been has been deemed ‘a match’ by the recruiter and forwarded on today
1 application that’s been forwarded that I’m really pretty pretty sure I should get an interview for. If I don’t, then either they’re not still hiring or the hiring manager already knows me and really hates me (lol).
1 application that has been deemed ‘a match’ by the recruiter, but he wants to call me first, as recruiters do (I have asked him to call me tomorrow morning)
2 recruiters wanting to speak to me about about roles, one of which looks very relevant

In related news, when I got to work I had an email from my boss apologising for the delay on the salary negotiation business and saying that any increase in salary I gain will be backdated to 1st October. But I think he’s missed his chance. I’m actively looking now and I don’t think I’m going to stop until I find something else.

Mood: Improving.

Pathways

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

I saw my GP today about anti-depressants. She suggested upping the dose, but I decided to leave it for the moment. She said that she would have expected me to feel a bit more level, but equally, finding another job might be a better course of treatment.

So there we go – medical advice: Quit my job.

I chose to leave it for the moment because I’ve set a lot of wheels in motion and due to the unpredictable nature of job-seeking, I might have an offer by the end of the week. Or maybe I won’t get one for four months. It’s worth getting a better feel for the market before deciding to make any adjustments, I think. I’ve sent off two applications today, and responded to another recruiter who emailed me asking to set up a call with me.

I figured out what I wanted to say to HR lady when the opportunity arises. It goes like this, and will also be CCed to my boss (and hers):

The last intervention the company staged to this situation was in March. In absence of any management of the situation since then, it unfortunately became necessary for me to begin taking anti-depressants.

You will understand therefore that I no longer trust the company sufficiently to feel comfortable in pursuing this matter further.

And that last line just says it all, doesn’t it? It’s something that keeps tripping me up in relationships. People lose my trust, and then I spend months circling around that fact and trying to work out how to rebuild it, when in reality… I can’t. It’s up to the other party. They caused the problem, they have to resolve it. I can move on, I can forgive them, I can go on without resentment… but I can’t rebuild the trust so the relationship can’t continue.