New Jobs!

I am not normally as opposed to change as some people are wont to be.  However, I will say switching jobs is very very painful for me.  I really like to have a handle on what my job entails, how to do it, and where/who to go when I encounter issues.  I feel very scared and insecure when I don’t, and I tend to take that fear home with me on nights and weekends and it makes it very hard to relax.  I thought this job change would be slightly easier than some, because it was a new position and I was taking on a mishmash of tasks from existing employees, as opposed to replacing someone who was no longer there.  However in this case the first person I’ve been meeting with and learning from is very much not a natural teacher.  Adding to that issue is that she’s a bit older, so any system change or excel troubleshooting wildly throws her off, and they just started on a new system this January that she is still coming up to speed on.  She has also been at this company for 13 years, so there are dozens of aspects about this company that are so second nature to her that she does not thoroughly explain.  Where I sit is the headquarters for the world’s 2^nd largest staffing company, and I have never worked at a corporate level before that is responsible for many other divisions / business units.  It is a huge company with a lot of moving parts that are completely foreign to me, and this woman does not start with “this is the task you’ll be responsible for and why, and here are all the pieces that go into it.”  It’s just “pull up this spreadsheet, enter this number here, this number there” etc. without any slowing down to explain what the endgame even is.  She speaks very quickly, which is normally the way I like it, but she never pauses to let me write anything down.  I have about 3 lines of notes on this two day project because I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen!  Making matters worse is that this woman is a workaholic who stays late and comes in on weekends, so while learning this task for the first time I was expected to stay late.  Previously I have just refused jobs that advertised monthly overtime, but this was too good a role to pass up just for that.

Anyway, that is a specific example but it really intimidated me my first couple weeks here.  With past jobs, just like past boyfriends, it is sometimes very tempting to just want to go back to the familiar after trying something new.  I have to keep reminding myself that this is a promotion, and a very good step for building corporate skills on my resume.  Apart from this being a solidly good opportunity, it also is a horrible market out there and I know I need to be grateful for any job I have, but especially one that really was a godsend.  They gave me a very good bump in pay, the commute is shorter, it’s a bigger (therefore more social team), and I stand to learn a lot of good skills here.

The overtime and planning my week nights around the close will definitely be an adjustment for me, but my boss has hinted that I am a  more effective worker than the woman training me so hopefully my hours will decrease once I learn my way around my duties.  I am very sensitive to having a work-life balance, and believe incredibly strongly that I spend 40 hours a week at work solely to pay my bills and all other time belongs to my family and friends.  I think life is way too short to spend it in an office, and I simply don’t believe a department should be short-staffed enough that they can’t close every month without severe overtime.  They do seem to be relatively amenable to comp time, and I definitely will be using that as well as all my vacation time here.  I have a bad habit of leaving companies right when I get off the “beginner plateau” of two weeks off, and I am definitely bummed it has happened again.  I often wonder if I would care so much about set work schedules and vacation time if I loved what I do, but what can you do? J  I’m good at this job, and I’ve worked my way up so I think I’m past the point where I would switch careers, provided of course I could even figure out what I want to do with my life!!

In summary, it’s been a very rough couple weeks for me emotionally because I don’t like feeling incompetent but I am trusting it will pass, like it has with every other job I’ve started.  I know I am very lucky this position fell in my lap, and it was definitely a better career move than I thought I’d be able to land in this economy with no accounting degree.  Hopefully it doesn’t take long for me to be able to look back and laugh at how nervous I was!