For so many of us, this past year has been a crazy one for work. Some of my friends went from going into an office every day to working at home. Many of my friends lost their jobs and either have been working hard to find a new one or have made major adjustments in their life (like moving to where they could find work). My job situation has been a lot of ups and downs over the last year.
When the pandemic hit, neither of my jobs were affected at first. Then, my box office job cut back my hours. Then the box office job cut back the hours even more. And in August, my box office job had to let me go. I was still working my data entry job, but it wasn’t enough work to cover my expenses, so I had to balance how many hours I worked at that job with my unemployment (so I wouldn’t lose my unemployment). And I was very lucky that job was willing to work with me and understood the situation that I was in.
Then at the end of last year, I got my new job doing customer service with the social media company. I was so grateful to get that job and it’s been great working with them. Once I started working with them, I increased my hours with my data entry job and switched my job responsibilities to fit my skill set better. And more recently, my hours at my new job are being reduced a bit (partially due to something that was my choice and partially due to new employees being added to the schedule). But even with the reduced hours, I was still able to make everything work for me.
And then last week, I started back at my old box office job! I have known this was coming for a while, but I wasn’t sure of the exact start date. A lot of it depended on how safe it was to do shows in different locations. And when they asked if I wanted to come back, they asked me about my availability. I let them know what hours I could do around my other jobs since I don’t feel I could overlap my 2 customer service jobs. So they worked with that and asked me to start back with 2 weekday afternoons as well as the Saturday shift.
Going back to my box office job was a little odd. Things are familiar since I worked that job for so many years. But they are also different because some of the backend systems have changed and there are different rules to be aware of with new safety and health guidelines. I don’t feel like a total newbie at the job, but I had to ask questions about a lot of things that I knew before. Sometimes I had a complete blank on something simple, like accidentally forgetting the work phone number. But I know it’s just a matter of time before things come back to me and it’s easy again.
I know the long plan is for me to be working every afternoon plus on Saturdays, but that might take some time to get to that point. A lot of the locations aren’t open yet or can’t be open to full capacity. There are a few that could do that because they were doing the shows outdoors or for other reasons. But it hopefully will just be a matter of time before everything is up and running again. For now, I’m just glad to be back at work so I can ease into things as they get busier.
Even with working 3 jobs right now, my work schedule isn’t too overwhelming. I’m very lucky with the hours I work and how nicely my schedule fits together. And I’m grateful for any and all jobs I have. I would love to get myself into a better financial place so I don’t have to have the stress and worries I had before. There are some more expensive things that I’d like to be able to save for, like a new computer in the next year or so.
Every time something from before the pandemic is back in my life, I feel a bit more hopeful that things are finally normalizing and that this time will soon be in the past. And getting back to my old job, even if it’s not the same schedule as I worked before, is a big sign to me that we are getting back to normal again and I love that feeling.
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