End of My Current Job

While I was working on posts for Mental Health Awareness month and graduation, my current job ended at the beginning of last month. I did mention that when I got the job offer, it was only going to be a temporary position, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that it only lasted for a few months. I am going to share updates on the last few months of the job as well as my overall thoughts, and what is next for my career. I already talked about the first 30 days in a previous post, so if you haven’t had the chance, go check that out. Hopefully after I publish this post, I will have a new permanent job, and I won’t have to worry about being “unemployed.” To give a very, quick recap: I worked in a document center processing documents for the state government. There wasn’t much to it as the position was very self-explanatory.

The one major thing I did not mention in my last post was about my manager. For the most part, my manager was very chill and very supportive when we had to do our work. Even though they worked at this certain company for a while, this was actually their first year working at the document center like all of us. At one point they even said that they are a member of our team even though they are the manager, and that they do more than just sit in a chair. That really stuck out to me because that is what leaders are supposed to do especially for a manager role. Even though they are one of the top people in the corporate ladder, they have to help their team succeed by offering their support and working with them. However, I did run into a couple issues with them. There was one time that a document came in and I had to log it in by handwriting. I wrote down the date and time, and that is when my manager criticized my handwriting. Like, for god sakes; no one is going to see that and writing is the least amount of my concerns in this job. If it was a different position where I would have to do a lot of handwriting then I would care a lot more. Plus, hardly anyone handwrites since we all type everything now. There was also this other time where my manager had to leave early all because it was her niece’s birthday. Okay, what made you think your niece’s birthday is so important that you had to leave work early?! Our manager always stressed the importance of deadlines and attendance that we had to be here all the time. The only exceptions were if we were sick or had some appointment. If that were me or my other coworkers in that situation, they wouldn’t approve of it. The rest of the time that my manager was not there, it was really chaotic and there was no supervision to guide us (it was also a last-minute announcement to us). Even though I only had a couple of those issues with my manager, I would say they weren’t a bad manager compared to the previous managers I had. I got along with them for the most part and never dreaded their presence every day. I am just glad they never found out that I got fired from my last job.

As I mentioned earlier, this job did not allow me to take a day off except for state holidays. However, as soon as I published my post about my first 30 days, my manager allowed one day off for everyone even though it wasn’t allowed. The reason for it being was that it was very slow for a couple weeks so why not? As soon as that was announced, I quickly updated the post, and that was the only time that happened. However, there was also one time where we had to work on a Saturday because of a very busy deadline where we had to prepare our documents to be sent over to another department. This was very surprising because I wasn’t told about this during the interview. Luckily, I didn’t have any problems with this, but one of my coworkers had an issue with this which I will explain later. Fortunately, I didn’t have to work that long on that Saturday, and that was the only time during my entire job that I had to work one weekend. Originally, we also had to work on Good Friday which is a state holiday for everyone, but we didn’t end up working that day.

The department I worked in was a very small team with only 4 of us including our manager. Most of us were all young except for this one senior citizen who is a Vietnam War Veteran. However, they used to work in a printshop at another bank, and just came off of retiring from there. Therefore, they had a vast knowledge of how the printers worked at our place, and knew most of the guys that came in to fix the printers when necessary. However, there was this issue where he tried to suggest a method that involved printing something to the manager, but they wouldn’t buy it. Then, it turned into a big argument until they gave up and told the manager to do whatever they want. I could tell after that they were very upset, and I thought they were going to quit, but I saw them the next day. If they only showed my manager their idea, maybe things would’ve gone differently. They did end up leaving before the last week of the job, but that was because they were going to Las Vegas for a high school reunion. There was another one of my former coworkers who actually lived down the street from where we worked, and they came to work every day riding their one-wheel hoverboard. They also liked Marvel, and we did talk about their latest films and Disney+ shows. The only thing was that they also worked another job during the weekends at a local bakery. That caused an issue when we all had to work on Saturday, but they couldn’t because of that second job. My manager was not happy about that because it wasn’t brought up during the interview that they worked a second job. Once again, my manager never told any of us about working on the weekend sometimes. At one point, they told my coworker they were wasting their f****n time. Excuse me, but we are all sacrificing our time working for the state including you so how is it that any of us are wasting YOUR time?! I did think that it was unprofessional that my manager reacted like that to my coworker. Unfortunately, he quit at around 3 months in due to “unforeseen circumstances.” I did find out later that they now work for the city as a typist? Anyway, I really liked them and it was kind of unfortunate that they had to leave the job. However, I am glad they made the decision to leave for a better job even though I don’t know exactly know why they quit. After they left, I had to take over their task of filing all the documents that we processed, and no I still did not go back to my original task of scanning and sending documents over to the printers.

Even though this job wasn’t as bad as the last one I had, there were still some issues that I or other people have encountered. Luckily, the company welcomed feedback from the employees, and we were welcome to submit it anonymously. Therefore, I wrote an anonymous letter and slipped it under the door of the HR office. In the letter, I included feedback such as better pay (we didn’t get paid overtime), renovations in many parts of the building, and better use of supplies like printer paper. The most important thing I included in my letter was to care more about employees’ mental health. If you read most of my posts and seen the stuff I share in the IG stories, you know that I care about mental health in the workplace. The department that I worked in wasn’t that stressful, but I heard that other departments were more stressful to work in. For instance, there was this employee who used to work with my manager that came into our office crying to them. It turns out they had a stressful weekend working non-stop. Plus, there is also the night shift from my department that have to work very late sometimes due to deadlines. I also suggested having days off that are not state holidays just so we wouldn’t waste our time sitting in the office all day doing nothing (and some of us could use that time to rest after working a late deadline). I am glad I was able to be a voice not only for myself, but for other employees as well, and whether the company decides to implement my feedback is solely based on their decision. I don’t think I had a chance to submit feedback at my last job due to getting fired before the end-of-year performance reviews. Therefore, I think every company should welcome all employees to submit feedback regardless if they get fired or quit the job. However, there are websites like Glassdoor and Indeed where anyone can write reviews about their jobs for any company. I did try to write my review on Indeed about working at my last job, but it wouldn’t go through due to specific guidelines.

Those are my final thoughts on my current job. Overall, I think I enjoyed this job more than my last job. The reasons are that it was very casual, it wasn’t as stressful, and I was able to pick up on the skills quickly. I wouldn’t say it is very stellar because this is something I don’t want to do for the rest of my life. However, the work environment wasn’t toxic, and I am happy to say that I survived. As I mentioned earlier, I am once again looking for a new job, and it hasn’t been that easy (I literally wrote an entire post on the difficulties of job searching). Hopefully, whatever my next job is that it is like this job where it is less stressful, and not a toxic work environment. For the current job I had, they encouraged everyone they can reapply for next year, and quite a handful of people do that. However, I don't know if I want to come back next year for a few reasons. One, it won't look good on my resume that I have to wait 6-7 months in-between and work again for only a few months. Two, if I come back to the exact same position, I might have to work the night shift since I am a returning employee. I don't think I would enjoy that because I have to stay up working late, and I would be very tired. I still don’t know what I want to do for my future career, but hopefully I figure it out soon. Maybe something from working on this blog will lead me to that dream job, but who knows?! Until then, I will be back to writing two posts twice a month, and I will keep you updated on when I get a new job. Until then, please wish me luck and fingers crossed.