Wednesday 29 February 2012

Surprise!

I'm back! (Not sure for how long, probably only very sporadically) 

So I got that job I posted about all those months ago. And it was really not for me and I spent my evenings and weekends tired and in a bad mood and definitely did not fancy writing about it. I didn't move thousands of kilometres away from my family and friends to be miserable. So I quit.

That was scary. After five years of being officially a student I couldn't cope with being a call-centre robot for a billion dollar company that considered 7 minutes per day adequate for "personal" time (but would then pull you up if you used all of this allocated time).  We were given "positioning statements" for almost any situation so that we could promote the company's position. I didn't necessarily feel that this was in the customers' best interests but the company assured us it was. I think the moment that really did it for me was the lecture on tones of voice and how to use different tones for different call types to make the customers trust us. 

I quit because I wasn't happy and the search for a job more suited to me had ground to a halt since money started being deposited in my bank account. Now, after several weeks of writing letters to companies that interested me (whether or not they were advertising a position), meeting people, demonstrating enthusiasm and independent thinking and as many skills as I could come up with, I may just have found something very interesting and well suited to me.

I'm supposed to start tomorrow and I don't want to jinx it. I'm being a bit cautious because during these weeks of unemployment this is the third job I thought I was getting and the other two haven't come up with any work yet. I'm also feeling uncharacteristically superstitious as the way this job came about seems very much to have been some sort of fate. Just as I was starting to think I might have to give up on trying to start a career and seriously look for another just-a-job (funds running low) I got a call, for a job I applied to in November. I met with the executive director (ED) yesterday. This morning I bumped into an employee who said she was looking forward to working with me (my mind is going "I don't remember being offered or officially accepting a job offer"), I met the ED again today and she bought cake to celebrate my joining the team.  She also felt like it was fate (her words) as she very suddenly needed someone just about exactly like me and I just happened to be available. From the news I'd had leading up to this week, I had been expecting to have other work at this point but the people promising the mythical work didn't come through. 

The job is all sorts of things that interest me and is for a non-profit organisation (unlike the billion dollar telecoms company of before). This means the pay is less but the guilt is non-existent. The ED is also a Lindy Hopper. This makes everything more awesome.


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