Paid Members BomberPat Posted October 29, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted October 29, 2018 I've got a (most of the time) decent job that I enjoy, at least when I'm able to just get my head down and get on with it. But managerial/administrative changes have made it an absolute chore lately. I've been separated from the team I support - and enjoy working with - to be part of a "centralised admin team", that effectively (in the eyes of management) reduces our role to being a glorified call centre/typing pool. It's a miserable environment, and means that after nearly three years of being told I was overworked, and my department needed admin support, I'm now being expected to cover for other departments, take irrelevant phone calls every ten minutes, and be a general dogsbody - on top of having to do my actual job, which is largely time-sensitive Quality Assurance stuff. So I've gone from being told I was doing too much, to apparently having "spare capacity", because the metric they use to determine an admin's workload is the number of students in their department, not the work they actually do - again, because management have a "one size fits all" view of what administrators do, when it's actually quite a diverse job description, depending on the department. Because of all that, I'm not able to work to the best of my ability, and it's immensely frustrating. I'm also the only curriculum administrator to work full-time - it's our half-term at the moment, so no one else is in. This was fine when I was back in my old office, and able to just put the radio on and get on with my work, catching up on time-intensive jobs without interruption. Now, though, in the "Central Admin Area", I'm having to take phone calls all the time, and get roped into doing busy-work for other departments. Or that's how it's gone so far, I've only been here two hours today, and got none of my own work done. I'm dreading being here over the Summer break, when the place will be close to empty for 6-8 weeks, with me being expected to do God knows what, rather than having time to focus on the complex (and important!) jobs that I'm supposed to do at that time. So I don't really want to still be here by then. Perhaps more significantly, there's industrial action pending. The pay offer that all public sector workers here have been offered is considerably below what we were promised last year, and for 2019 would be a good 2%+ below cost of living rises. And not for the first time. So the Union have rejected it outright, and the government aren't budging. So that's going to cause all kinds of chaos whenever that kicks off. It pains me to say it, but I just want to get out. But I have no idea what to do if I leave here. There's no equivalent role I can apply for - we're the only FE/HE college on the island, so it's not like I can go and negotiate elsewhere - and while I've got decent experience, my qualifications aren't up to much. In an ideal world, I'd want to remain either public or third sector - though remaining in the public sector might remain a problem depending on how that industrial action goes, and third sector would almost certainly constitute a pay cut. I don't have any family in Jersey any more, so lack the safety net of their support if the worst happens - I wouldn't be able to move back in with them to tide things over if I got desperately short of cash, or anything like that. The only major employers here are in the finance industry, which isn't a direction I want to go in at all - and definitely not at the moment, when the whole future of that sector is uncertain because of Brexit. I've contemplated trying to save up over the course of next year and move back to England, but that would be a very long-term plan, a major risk, and I don't know what I'd be aiming to do there either...and there's still potential Brexit complications. So...yeah. I have no idea. Just needed to let off steam a little, while I try and figure things out. Fuck knows what I'm going to do yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Accident Prone Posted October 31, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted October 31, 2018 https://www.openstudycollege.com/courses/it-cyber-security-training-bundle Does anybody have any thoughts on this cyber security course and the possibility of it just being a waste of time/money? Is an employer going to be impressed by these qualifications or is it all fluff? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Accident Prone Posted October 31, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted October 31, 2018 That's fantastic, Johnny! I'll have a look at the CompTIA IT Fundamentals. Silly question; but does it matter that the course is based out of America? Or is there a UK counterpart? I'm sure online certifications transcend countries but I'm just making sure. Honestly, and this was naive of me, it's a tad overwhelming to see so much on the subject. I also never really thought about employers looking at the experience/qualifications balance but it does make a lot of sense. This is something I'm going to invest time looking into. The Fundamentals course/exams seems like an excellent first step and quite affordable (the next course is $249 including the exam, $500 for the next course). Thanks again, Johnny! This is a big help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Accident Prone Posted October 31, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted October 31, 2018 Bloody brilliant stuff! I'll be soaking all this in tonight and digging deeper. Thanks again Johnny, it's very much appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Statto Posted October 31, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted October 31, 2018 @BomberPat Yeah, doing ‘admin’ in education sucks balls. I ran the Exams & Achievements function at my local FE college for nigh on 8 years, soul destroying stressful stuff. Got to the point earlier this year where I just had to get out, which I did in April by taking a maternity cover post at the local university. That had always been my employer of aspiration and thought that would be a good ‘in’. Turns out, HE is even more mental so I straight up quit it after about 8 weeks. I’m now doing admin stuff in the insurance industry. Earning a fair bit less than I was this time last year, but a damn sight happier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members I Bent My Wookie Posted November 5, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted November 5, 2018 Just finished my first day managing in my new job. I'm bloody exhausted but I've never been so hyped to get into my own store tomorrow and go absolutely OCD with sorting out the shitstorm that is our stock room. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Carbomb Posted November 5, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted November 5, 2018 Great to see you meeting this job head-on with gusto. Have at it, man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members I Bent My Wookie Posted November 15, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted November 15, 2018 I sign off company emails as Jolly and told one of my big bosses by email that I 'ho ho hopes he enjoyed' our shops Christmas displays today. I love this job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted November 16, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted November 16, 2018 14 hours ago, Shy Dad said: I sign off company emails as Jolly and told one of my big bosses by email that I 'ho ho hopes he enjoyed' our shops Christmas displays today. I love this job. My old boss once signed off an email with, "As they say in Nigeria, 'good luck Jonathan'", and I still sometimes catch myself chuckling about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Wretch Posted November 19, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted November 19, 2018 Has anyone just jacked in what they were doing for whatever reason and took up a new career? Brief background on myself - started at rock bottom in the first job I walked into after finishing secondary school. A few years in I'd moved up the ladder a couple of steps. Got offered a position in our Nottingham office so moved there from Dublin in 2007 when I was 20. 2010 comes around and the office shuts so I take up a job stacking shelves at night in a Tesco. Just something to tide me over for a little bit says I. Still here eight years later. I don't wanna go back to what I was doing before, which was supervisor for an inventory company. I was good at the interviewing and training side of things, but really really hated the disciplinary side of things. Sacking someone is the worst thing in the world. Has anyone thought fuck it and trained up in anything new? I'm only 32 so still young but nervous at stepping out of my comfort zone, especially now with a mortgage to pay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members I Bent My Wookie Posted November 25, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted November 25, 2018 Sadly had to take the decision to resign from the job and look elsewhere. Between an area manager who makes my anxiety disorder ten times worse, the stress of running an entire shop and just the multitude of issues I have I ended up having a full blown two hour anxiety attack black out yesterday morning which meant the shop didnt open until 11 and realised that trying to stay in the job and please everyone would just end up making me very ill. I'm alright though, gutted because I did enjoy the role but at least I know I'm doing it for my health which takes the hit off a little. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slapnut Posted November 28, 2018 Share Posted November 28, 2018 After thinking I royally fucked up my interview, I was told today that I’m being promoted! Absolutely chuffed to bits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members I Bent My Wookie Posted November 28, 2018 Paid Members Share Posted November 28, 2018 3 hours ago, Slapnut said: After thinking I royally fucked up my interview, I was told today that I’m being promoted! Absolutely chuffed to bits. Thats great news Slapnuts! Congrats Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simonworden Posted November 29, 2018 Share Posted November 29, 2018 On 11/20/2018 at 12:09 AM, Wretch said: Has anyone just jacked in what they were doing for whatever reason and took up a new career? Brief background on myself - started at rock bottom in the first job I walked into after finishing secondary school. A few years in I'd moved up the ladder a couple of steps. Got offered a position in our Nottingham office so moved there from Dublin in 2007 when I was 20. 2010 comes around and the office shuts so I take up a job stacking shelves at night in a Tesco. Just something to tide me over for a little bit says I. Still here eight years later. I don't wanna go back to what I was doing before, which was supervisor for an inventory company. I was good at the interviewing and training side of things, but really really hated the disciplinary side of things. Sacking someone is the worst thing in the world. Has anyone thought fuck it and trained up in anything new? I'm only 32 so still young but nervous at stepping out of my comfort zone, especially now with a mortgage to pay. I did, I wont bore you with the details as i've written about it one here before. I'd recommend getting involved with the national careers advisory service (not sure if I got the name correct). I had a meeting with one women who made a few good points, I had kind of figured it out on my own before the meeting so it didn't go too far but she was really helpful and followed up on me. My advice before going to a meeting though would be to do their online quiz thing to get the suggested career paths from your preferences as otherwise they will push you to that in the first meeting making it a bit of a waste of time. Go in with it done and printed an you'll skip a good step. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LazyMcLopez Posted November 30, 2018 Share Posted November 30, 2018 (edited) On 11/19/2018 at 5:09 PM, Wretch said: Has anyone just jacked in what they were doing for whatever reason and took up a new career? Has anyone thought fuck it and trained up in anything new? I'm only 32 so still young but nervous at stepping out of my comfort zone, especially now with a mortgage to pay. I have, sort of. I went to university to study drama, but a bout of depression in my third year meant that I mostly sat around in my pants at home for about 6 months and emerged at the end without a degree. After the rest of my classmates graduated, I bummed around for a bit doing temp data entry and admin type roles until I got a job in the civil service. As one of the few young men in an office full of middle aged women, I ended up being the de facto IT "expert" because I was "good with computers." This mostly meant that people would come to me and I would use the help function to find out how to change Outlook settings or Google Excel functions. Eventually, this kind of innovative thinking got me promoted to team leader and I started to think that I could make my way higher in the Civil Service, enjoying the flexi time and generous holiday allowance before retiring on a pension which would go some way to making up for the uncompetitive wages. Along the way, my continued Googling began to edge me closer to actually being quite good with Excel, and not just by the low standards of the office. When I realised that my team were having to make the same amendments to standard letters dozens of times a day, deleting sections of text and either pasting in new sections or typing them by hand, I started to learn how to record and edit macros, allowing me to partially automate a few things here and there. Unfortunately, a few factors meant that at the same time, I started to get more and more dissatisfied with the job. The government's austerity measures meant that our pay was frozen and yearly incremental rises became a thing of the past. Changes to the pension scheme made a long term civil service career seem less appealing. Recruitment bans meant that the prospect of promotion seemed remote. At the same time, I was having to manage several people who mainly seemed motivated to get away with doing as little work as possible. Depression took hold again and I started to neglect some of my responsibilities, but I was still well thought of by management because of my previous good performance. When my manager moved on, however, she was replaced by someone else who hadn't been around when I'd been doing well and couldn't see why I had a good reputation. In my first monthly performance review, in November 2015, she told me that from what she'd seen, I wasn't pulling my weight. I knew that she was right, but I couldn't imagine a future where I was motivated enough to turn things around. I suspected that there were other duties which I'd not been properly attending to which would eventually come to light as well. The situation was probably salvageable if I'd been in a healthy state of mind, but I wasn't. A few days later, I handed in my resignation and went back to sitting around in my pants at home for a few months. After a while, I ran out of money and went back to working for an agency, who got me a job in July 2016 working in the warehouse of an engineering company. It was a reduction in pay compared to my Civil Service job (17K instead of 20K,) but I wasn't in a position to be too picky and it did at least seem like the kind of company where progression was possible and where they were keen to develop their staff. I got a couple of opportunities to show that I knew what I was doing with Excel and that I had a bit of potential. When a new materials planner role was being created on the materials/purchasing team, I was moved from the warehouse into the office for a couple of weeks to be an extra pair of hands and cover until they could bring someone in to do it. They ended up offering the job to me without having to interview. It came with a 5K payrise, and soon after, I was handed a further 3K payrise. I couldn't believe it- I was now on 5K more than I had been in the Civil Service, I was enjoying work a hell of a lot more and my boss seemed genuinely interested in helping me to progress, with a view to eventually succeeding him. On top of this, I was now being actively encouraged to pursue my interest in Excel and VBA and to build up my skills in that area. In Summer 2017, I got a message from a school friend of mine who knew what I was doing, asking how much it would take for me to consider moving jobs. I told him that I was happy where I was and that I'd only been there for a year, but that a significant pay rise of 5K or so would be something I'd struggle to turn down. He brought me in to interview for a couple of roles and the company ended up offering me a 40K a year contract as a data analyst! I was astounded, but kind of apprehensive because I'd been treated brilliantly where I was and thought a lot of my boss and the company, but I would be a fool to turn down a 15K salary uplift. When I went to my boss to explain the situation, he came back from senior management with an offer of a 35K contract. I would have stayed, on the basis that starting somewhere new would be a risk and that I wasn't really sure I was qualified for the job my friend had put me up for, but the other company counter offered, adding another 5K to the salary and that was that. Looking back on the past 3 years or so, it's crazy to think that I went from what had basically become a dead end, low paying job that I hated, to earning more than double in a job I find interesting. I've been so incredibly lucky that I ended up somewhere it was possible to progress, lucky that people there saw some potential in me and that I happened to have picked up some skills I could develop and which had some value in the job market. I'm not sure what advice I can give as I know that it doesn't work that way for everyone and that I'm particularly fortunate as these things have more or less fallen in my lap, but my experience since jacking in my Civil Service job has been hugely, hugely positive. Previously, I could never imagine having a job that I actively enjoyed. I used to try to work out what the absolute minimum I could live on was and so how many hours I could reduce my working week to. I am so much happier now that I'm not spending my working week making myself miserable. That sounds obvious, of course, but I always used to see work as just a necessary evil to survive. Don't get me wrong, it's still not the highlight of my week, but I don't dread it now. I know that at some point, depression might strike again and I'll have to find some way to deal with that, hopefully without sabotaging my career, but for now I'm happy. Apologies for all of the salary talk. I know it's a little bit vulgar, but I thought the details were necessary. Edited November 30, 2018 by LazyMcLopez Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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