"Secret skimping is out, like false bosoms." - Marjorie Hillis, Orchids on Your Budget, 1937.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

New Job Beefs

I thought I had cracked the code to accepting a lower-paying job: overtime. I would just work a few teensy little hours of overtime each week, and viola, I could force them to pay me my asking price.

As good as I felt about logging those extra hours, after a few weeks in a row, my new employer was not amused. Apparently, they don't "do" overtime. Uh oh.

My first beef is that it's incredibly hard to even come close to completing all the work that needs to be done in any given day, even when I work overtime. I've only ever held a salaried job before, wherein I would work until the work was completed. Yes, at times I felt that I was being taken advantage of, but at least shit got done. Now, there is a completely different kind of pressure in the form of the office manager needling me out of the door as I approach 40 hours. What to do in this situation? Sure, I'll get better and faster as time goes by, but in reality, this job probably requires 2 people. We're looking for some part-time help, but until then, do I just let my stacks grow and hope that they recognize that I'm working my ass off, NOT slacking off?

My second beef really isn't on-topic at all, but is necessary for me to vent before it crushes my soul. So I work at the front desk. I understand the front desk needs to look presentable, and that it's semi-shared territory, as someone may need to sit there to check people out in my absence. I am completely fine with that, and I am not one of those people who latches onto the THIS IS MY DESK notion. ...HOWEVER, I do work there everyday, and 99% of time time, I am the only person using that desk, and yet I don't even get ANY drawer-space. I have one box of tea and a chapstick, yet there is no room to be had!

And don't even get me started on the TOP of the desk. When I leave 2 neat, staggered stacks of papers at the end of the day as a reminder for myself, the next morning it inevitably has transformed to 1 solid stack in the file tray in the corner. When I leave a few post-its in a neat row in front of my phone as a reminder to call certain people in the morning, they are moved to the corner, stuck one on top of the other, right next to the to-do stack. The office manager's fascist tendencies are going to drive me insane.

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