I have just found out (through the rumour mill), that a further 3 colleagues have resigned since I handed in my resignation, which makes 5 of us in the last month. Only the first of these has so far been announced, but with varying notice periods there’s only so long that it can be held off (for the purposes of morale).
This tickles me and reinforces the fact that I made the right decision. Is that water lapping around my ankles?Â
I’d say that I’m a fairly organised person (the house may be a tip, but it’s an organised tip). I’m a fan of planning out what I am doing and when. When I’m going to be living somewhere temporarily (be it a tent or a hotel room) I prefer to unpack immediately so that I can relax (but am not OCD about it).
www.ravelry.com is great in this regard. I have the majority of my stash allocated to future projects in my queue, and my queue is in order of things I am going to knit. It’s great. I’ve just had a bit of a tidy up and removed myself from a couple of groups that I wasn’t really contributing to and generally pared things down a bit.
Compare this with my work life. I plan out what I want/need to get done which is all well and good until the e-mails start coming in. The external ones are fine and I’ve got time set aside to deal with these, they all get dealt with appropriately and there’s never a panic surrounding them. The issue comes from the internal e-mails, which tend to be of the “has this been done yet?” variety. I think that the people sending them can’t have enough work to do (or enough grey matter to look at their own e-mails/the tracking software) to work these things out for themselves. So I’m getting chased for stuff that came to me yesterday. Um, hello, this is busy season, I’m working on 48 hours as a response timeframe, so no, that thing that came in 12 hours ago hasn’t been handled yet.
I’m thinking of setting up an automated reply system, similar to telephone calls: Your e-mail is important to us. You are currently sat in a queue. There are X number of e-mails in front on you. Please be patient whilst we deal with the preceding messages.
Hey, unless someone’s shouting it can’t be that important, right?
Most used phrase at the moment: Bite me! Closely followed by: Oh fuck off.Â
I have to keep reminding myself that I have less than 10 weeks left in this job, especially when I get e-mail after e-mail asking for status updates. Considering that the person involved was copied in on all correspondence, maybe they should consider checking their own e-mails before adding to my workload. Then again, they would rather send me an e-mail to do something when in the same time they could have done it themselves. Evidently they don’t have anything to do. Meanwhile, I will be working over Easter, and if I wasn’t already booked up, over the weekends too (I will be working all weekends in April.
Have I mentioned I don’t get paid overtime? Oh, and my resignation hasn’t been announced either.
Still no sign of that other job offer (and it’s Cheltenham this week, so it won’t be turning up any time soon).
In other news, car passed its MOT and has had the wing-mirror replaced, yay.
I’ve just been running some numbers (back of the envelope stuff) and it looks like I’m going to be having a particularly lean May and June, what with having to pay back my season ticket loan to be soon to be ex-employer, and further solicitor’s costs for having a consent order drawn up (if the proposed settlement is agreed).
I’ve managed to turn one firm job offer down (I never saw the actual offer letter as it was handled by the recruitment agency), but the other one I was given verbally hasn’t had the written offer arrive yet in the post which is starting to worry me. Fingers crossed I get an offer I can accept soon so that I can start earning again (cat food costs money), though it looks like I won’t get much of a break between jobs if I want to live on more than bread and water. Of course, if the proposed settlement isn’t agreed then I’ll have to find more money from somewhere, both to buy out the house and to pay the accompanying legal fees.
At least I have my ipod to comfort me, even if it hasn’t been paid for yet, and luckily I get home after the shops have shut, so can’t spend any money there. I can always temp to meet the bills.
Normally people bitch about you after you leave a job, it’s to be expected. The recently absent person is always blamed for things not being as they should be (whether it is their fault or not). After a few comments I’ve received today it seems like the bitching may start early. Just as well I’m getting out, then.
Following the blocking of sites such as Youtube, Flickr and Livejournal (still accessible but all activity is supposedly monitored), my own little website has been completely blocked by work – can’t even look at it.
Rather entertainingly, whilst the majority of my colleagues do not know that I have resigned (the senior managers had a scheduled meeting on Thursday at which they were told), I got a text from my ex-boss on Friday morning from halfway up a mountain where he’s on holiday, offering me more money to go back. Something that will need thinking about, but my word, the grapevine works fast.
This weekend’s excursion was up to just north of Nottingham. I spent the weekend watching the rugby in the pub (I’m now not allowed to not watch since we won) and playing with the ferrets. Entertaining little creatures, but really stinky. I think I’ve got the smell out now. Back up to Nottingham again this weekend for a juggling convention. The miles are quickly stacking up.
I got the news I wanted before I left to drive up Friday night: all of the divorce papers are now with the courts so it’s a waiting game for trial dates.
Just checked my contract and instead of the usual 12 weeks, my notice period is 13 weeks, which would put it slap in the middle of Bungay. I may have to do a bit of reading up about what happens when you’ve already got holiday booked, but I may have to delay the resignation by a couple of weeks.
Update: checked all the HR policies and stuff, spoken to my partner and it’s been agreed that I can still have the holiday I’ve already booked for Bungay (since I’m entitled to it anyway), so yay. I can start the countdown to both leaving here and going to Bungay (a stunning combination). Throw in a divorce (fingers and toes crossed) and it could be a very good May.
Well, that was an experience. just back from my performance meeting with HR. Yes, I’m rubbish, here are some reasons why (some to do with me, some to do with others). I managed to avoid completely breaking down under questioning, and got some (in my opinion) good witty/dry comments in.
Most importantly, whilst saying that there are outside influences which may have affected my morale over the last 12 months, I managed to dismiss them as being a primary cause of any issues as well as not actually divulge them. So yay me! If they were that interested about my life outside of work then maybe they would have asked about it. As it is there’s nothing anyone at work could have done to reduce the stress of any of that and I did make the point that work stress far outweighed any other.
I also have a draft resignation letter pulled off the intermeweb for submitting tomorrow.Â
Now to pull myself together and prepare for this afternoon’s job interview.
*This statement may not contain 100% truth
Cor blimey. Just got off the phone with my recruitment agency. Remember I had an interview yesterday morning? I thought it went OK, nothing spectacular. They’ve only gone and said today that they’ll make me an offer tomorrow (not sure what offer). They need to check some things out as I had some unusual requests (which I can’t go into here) which it seems like they may be able to accommodate, or at least work with me on.
Rah. Someone still values my work. Fingers crossed that it’s something damned spiffy and I can go into my HR meeting on Monday saying “Screw the lot of you, I’m going somewhere where I’ll be appreciated”.Â
My CV also seems to have been sent out to someone else, but like here, there’s a bug going round that means lots of people are out of the recruiter’s office ill.
Marvellous. Just spoken to my performance manager again. It seems that I am being put into some sort of extraordinary measures following my “areas for development” grading back in December (which, remember, was a surprise to me since my feedback to that date hadn’t indicated anything out of the ordinary). I am due to get an e-mail tomorrow “inviting” me to a meeting with HR and A.N.Other. These meetings will continue for up to three months depending on whether I improve or not. As we all know, additional stress aids performance, so this should work well.
I was planning on resigning next Thursday (21st Feb) so that my recruiter would get the bonus for me not having resigned within the first 12 months, and then my last day would be 15th May, just in time for Bungay. I may just have to bring that timescale forward. I suppose I should be seen to be making an effort, but considering what else is going on in my life (divorce, family illnesses, etc.) I’m pretty sure work shouldn’t be causing me the greatest stress. There doesn’t seem to be much point in any event.
I’m going to have to resign on health grounds even if I can’t/don’t want to get a GP to sign me off with stress. I’ve somehow developed a tremor in my left hand that takes a good two to three hours to go away after leaving work, and it’s interferring with my knitting (and we can’t have that). I had wanted to resign saying that I was going to take a break following the divorce, but since that’s been delayed by two months it’s not an option either. I don’t know why I’m covering for them, I guess because I will have to work out my notice period and three months can be a looooong time.
Oh well. I know I’ll get blamed for everything as soon as I resign and once I leave, but that happens no matter how you leave.