Take This Yob And Shove It
Nothing quite like two straight months of job stress! Especially when it's pretty much self-imposed. Allow me to explain:
Late May of this year I came across a job on the Interweb for which I thought I was qualified and that was close to my house. Since at the time I was driving almost 30 miles each way to work, it was a no-brainer to apply for the job. But you know how it is in this market&emdash; you apply for jobs, but really only one out of every hundred or so ever yields a return phone call. Plus I figured that I was one of several hundred applicants for the position.
So I never really expected it to amount to anything. But to my surprise, I got the call-back two weeks before our wedding. The wedding was on a Saturday, and I went in for an interview the preceding Monday, then accepted the position that Wednesday. Then I had the displeasure of giving notice at my then-current job. I gave them three weeks notice, but added that I'd be on my honeymoon for two of those weeks. My boss was pretty shocked and freaked out to find out that I was leaving, so naturally I felt quite a bit of guilt about the situation. But with all the hubbub surrounding the wedding (the actual wedding itself wasn't that stressful, but just being around a bunch of relatives and being the co-center of attention is pretty out of the ordinary), I didn't really have much time to worry about it too much.
So anyway, I started the new job the first week of August with all of the usual creepiness that goes along with starting a new job. That whole hyper-deference thing, you know how it is. Being the new person sucks shit. But the job was going great. For two weeks I did nothing but write code, which was a dream come true for me. I'm a technical guy and I don't like a lot of personal interaction, especially when I'm the new guy, so to be able to just absorb myself in programming was very happening.
But then I started getting asked to work directly with clients, hounding them on the phone and so forth. Talking on the phone is one of my least favorite activities anyway, and having to cajole people and follow up on stuff is just torture to me. But I thought I could handle it for a while anyway, and hopefully I'd get back to writing code (or "jamming code," as they used to say on the Edulog website). But I was getting every indication from my new boss that there would be a lot more of this sort of non-technical jive coming down the pike. (What the hell did anti-social types like me do for work in the days before there were anti-social computer jobs to be had? Maybe agriculture served that need, I don't know.)
I started really dreading going into work. In fact, I would drive about five miles out of my way every morning just to put off going in there for another ten minutes. And I would spend all weekend dreading the next Monday. So after a couple sleepless nights spent agonizing over the situation, I finally decided that I was going to bail on this new job and ask for my old job back. I called back to my old job and said I wanted to come back, and they were very gracious about it and excited to have me back, and it was all very flattering.
Then the unpleasant part: About a week and a half ago I summoned up all my available courage and told the owner that the position wasn't what I had in mind and that I was quitting. He seemed taken quite aback and went on a lengthy diatribe about this and that and then had to leave for a meeting. When he came back, he called me into his office for another lengthy diatribe, this one even more unpleasant. He was taking it very personally, I could tell, but he also seemed to want me to give a better reason for quitting after six weeks than the one I gave. Since I didn't really have any better reason, we seemed to be just going in circles. Then he asked if I could stay for four weeks to help with the transition. I said that I could maybe stay for three, but four weeks was not gonna happen, and that in this market I didn't think it would be difficult to find someone every bit as qualified as me. I kinda secretly wanted him to get pissed and dismiss me on the spot so that I could have a couple weeks off and just hang out at home and so forth.
No such luck. I'm there until next Wednesday, and let me tell you, being there is a stressful situation. I feel guilty enough as it is, but then seeing people have to come in on their day off and scramble to find someone to fill the position just makes me feel like a complete asshole. I've apologized about six hundred times, but I just feel quite resolute in the belief that the job wasn't going to be a good fit for me.
So that was all pretty stressful. But this here is wicked funny: SkyHigh Airlines
Here's some recent photos taken by my ass:
The singer at a wedding last weekend cajoling everyone to clap and wave their hands in the air. I'm proud to say that I did not participate in any such monkeyshines.
Downtown Denver, Colorado: Queen City of the Plains
A hilarious wall hanging sighted outside of this Vietnamese store called Truong An where Glenda likes to shop for herbs and other miscellaneous curios (I like to go along to look at the squids and eels in the neighboring Vietnamese grocery store). The frolicking pandas add a lot of poignancy to the message, huh?
Second wall hanging at Truong An. Interestingly enough, the trippy little plaza where Truong An is located is most likely gonna get razed very soon to make room for a... uh... Wal-Mart I think it's called. Boo.
Yale's Record Collection: Sole Source of His Virility (Note the freaky painting on the wall. It was a gift for my 19th birthday.)
Fall colors on aspens near Conifer, CO yesterday
More purty colors, these near Sedalia, CO, yesterday
Weird boarded-up hotel in the middle of nowhere, kinda near Sedalia
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Universal Congress Of- The Eleventh Hour Shine-On (review)
So the choice was a 30 mile commute or a gig you felt was not a good fit. Thats a tough one man.
What was it like asking for the old job back? Do you think you will be stigmatised at all there when you return?
Did you really feel like you gave the new gig all the time you could to adjust?
Take me through the process.
- stets September 29, 2003 11:03Dude, the very last thing I'd ever feel guilty about is bailing on a job that stressed me out on the weekends, when I wasn't even there. This is supposedly a free country, right? If what they're giving you isn't worth it, AND you have options, why the fuck should you stick around? Over the past 20 years or so, employers haven't demonstrated anything that resembles loyalty to their employees, and that shit runs on a two way street.
I quit a job about 14 months ago after 3 weeks, and they had to talk me into coming back for even one more day. Man, that place really sucked.
- mhaze September 29, 2003 11:34For the record: I've never made it past 18 months at any post college gig I have had. Job loyalty is dead.
- stets September 29, 2003 12:02What was it like asking for the old job back?
Actually remarkably easy. Before I left, they kept saying, "if you ever change your mind..." I was kinda thinking it might be like that one Simpsons where Homer has to go beg for his old job at the plant, and he goes into the office and there's one door for "Applicants" and another for "Supplicants".
Do you think you will be stigmatised at all there when you return?
That's kind of a big worry actually. It's understandable that they might be thinking, "well, he's just gonna bolt again in six months." But a) my time away has kinda shed new light on that job, i.e. the structure and nature of the work (and the work environment too) is really a good fit for a dude like me. And b) I am seriously ready for some stasis in life, since I have never, in my professional era, had a job for more than 14 months. So I think I'll hang out at least until I get my gold watch.
Did you really feel like you gave the new gig all the time you could to adjust?
Not really. Glenda was lobbying hard for me to give it more time, but when shit is stressful and I know I got another option, it was mighty hard to bring myself to prolong the agony.
the very last thing I'd ever feel guilty about is bailing on a job that stressed me out on the weekends
That's what I tell myself, and I think I'll feel a lot less guilty once I get the fuck out of here. Man, next Wednesday can't come soon enough. You're right about the two-way street. Most employers wouldn't think twice about downsizing your ass, so why should I worry about looking out for #1? It's all just bid'ness.
I quit a job about 14 months ago after 3 weeks, and they had to talk me into coming back for even one more day
I wouldn't mind hearing some more details about that situation, eh...
- Yarl September 29, 2003 12:0309/29/2003 at 12:02 AM
I've never made it past 18 months at any post college gig
09/29/2003 at 12:03 AM
I have never, in my professional era, had a job for more than 14 months
Whoa Synchro-think!
Guess I better fix the timestamp too. 12AM is midnight, right?
- Yardell September 29, 2003 12:14Conversely, I'm more the long-term employee. I swamped the Eagles Lodge in Msla for 8.5 years, granted it was part-time employment. I worked at Zimorino's for 5.5 years and have been at my current job for almost 4 years. The shortest period of time I've ever held a job was for 4 months and I felt HORRIBLE about giving notice so soon.
Although it looks good on a resume to be able to show that I've worked for my employers for quite some time, it has occasionally been a detriment to my mental health! There are places that I should've quit much, much earlier.
- Amy Jo September 29, 2003 20:12I wouldn't mind hearing some more details about that situation, eh...
Well, I got this gig as kind of a office manager/go-to guy for an outfit that packaged news particular to a certain industry and sold it in an online subscription to people in that industry. I really only applied because in the want ad, the model of the company seemd close to what they had in mind when I worked at Fodor's in New York. In this case, though, it seemed like they had info people were actually willing to pay for online. That, uh, is NOT the case with travel stuff.
There were two interviews, one with the guys I'd be working with in Century City, and we all liked each other fine. The next day, I talked to this "publisher" gal in San Francisco, whom I would be working long-distance with daily, on the phone for about an hour. She told me she'd been waiting forever for the kind of answers I was giving her, but she would ask these weird things like what my desk looked like, etc. Had to be straight out of Interviewing for Dummies.
She asked me one long question about a hypothetical situation where there was a dissatisfied customer, and it's getting late on Friday night and I'm the only one there, blah blah. I figure someone who plunks down $200 for a service should be taken care of, and said so, and she was happy.
Eerily, that hypothetical actually happened on the very first Friday after I started. And when publisher girl was unable to straighten things out for our customer, she instructed me to "just lie" to this person and tell her we'd fix it on Monday. Well, the owner of the company and I were able to take care of the customer before we quit for the day, and then publisher girl told me, behind our boss's back, that she hated being shown up by him.
After that, I had some real difficulty taking direction from this person. She had been utterly disrespectful to me and the customer. And she was also treating me like her assistant from 350 miles away, which is not what I thought the job was goig to be. There were other things that made me quickly realize that I wasn't a good fit. It sucked. So I told them they needed an accountant and an assistant for SF girl, and I wasn't either of those. I figured the quicker I left, the quicker they could find the help they needed.
On the upside, the owner was from Lebanon, and he had this Saudi Arabian brother-in-law/silent partner who would come in to use the office phone and whatnot. He was a really cool middle-aged guy, and insisted on discussing world events with me at length, which I was totally into. On the last day I was there, he gave me a very warm handshake, told me how sorry he was that it didn't work out, and wished me luck. Too bad he wasn't the one I had to actually do work with there.
- mhaze September 30, 2003 11:51Well, I got this gig as kind of a office manager/go-to guy for an outfit that packaged news particular to a certain industry
What certain industry was that, and how did you feel catering to it?
- stets September 30, 2003 12:52What certain industry was that, and how did you feel catering to it?
It was the Forest Products Industry. And I was unconflicted, cutting down no trees myself. A brother's got to eat, after all.
- johnny "mhaze" paycheck October 01, 2003 11:40