Tag Archives: quit

Being On Hold With A Job (or Not Quite A Quitter)

Posted on January 16, 2015 | 1 comment

I’ve talked about my day job situation a lot in the past. I’ve got my main day job doing the box office work and that’s the only one with regular hours. Everything else is as-needed status and nobody seems to need me right now.

For babysitting, personal organizing, and substitute teaching; I don’t mind that I don’t work right now. I know that clients for babysitting and personal organizing will come and it’s a situation where I am my own boss and I don’t feel guilty when I’m not working.

And for substitute teaching, I’ve spoken to my boss there about how right now I don’t have the time to work but I wanted to stay on the roster since they aren’t hiring. I’d be scared if I left the roster and then needed the work and couldn’t get my job back. So I’ve been honest and they know my situation. That’s fine with me.

But for my data entry/survey coding job it’s been a different situation. I worked a lot for them at first, but once I started my box office job, I could no longer do graveyard shifts (or I could, but I found out that my body does require sleep so I don’t want to do them). And while I thought at first I could do the work from home in between my customers for the box office job, I never knew what to list as my availability. I didn’t want to say that I was available the entire time because they might assign me a job that takes 5 hours when I only have 3 hours in chunks.

And because my availability was so limited, the company wasn’t using me for work. In the past few months, I worked about 2 or 3 hours for them. And while some money is better than no money, I felt like I was leading the company on.

So yesterday, I sent an email to my 2 bosses at that job. I explained my situation and gave them the two options that seemed right to me. Either they could keep me on as an employee and understand that I have extremely limited availability and perhaps one day that would change and they could use me again. Or we could end our work relationship.

I don’t want to quit, but at the same time I felt so guilty about not being honest to my bosses about my situation. I don’t want to quit, but I would understand if they didn’t want to keep someone on staff who couldn’t work as much as they would like.

I heard back from one of my bosses within an hour of sending the email. She thanked me for my honesty and decided that she’d like to keep me on in case my schedule changes and I become more available for her.

I’m so grateful that that is what her decision was. It was exactly what I was hoping for by sending that email. I haven’t heard back from my other boss, but he is the one who runs the graveyard shifts and technically I’m only on that schedule as a backup (my main job is the work from home part).

I still need to find something else to do, but at least some of my guilt that was associated with this job is gone. And hopefully with less guilt, I will be able to focus more on finding the perfect job to fit into my schedule.

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Getting Too Comfortable (or Getting Ready To Quit)

Posted on November 19, 2014 | 2 comments

I’m in a very comfortable spot right now with my day jobs. The national box office job is going really well and I just got a raise. While customers are still mean to me all the time, I’m getting used to that, and my co-workers experience the same things so I know it’s not just me.

I’m getting babysitting jobs most weekends now too. While I don’t make a ton of money all the time babysitting, ever little bit helps. So many of the jobs I get are only 3 or 4 hours, so it’s not too hard and many times the kids are already sleep when I get there so I spend my evening reading on someone else’s couch.

The survey coding job is the weird spot in my life right now. I put in my availability every week, but I’m averaging 1 hour of work a month for them right now. That’s nothing (especially since that pay seems to be cut in half by taxes).

Obviously, I need to move on from the survey coding job. They don’t need me when I can work and some of the emails they’ve sent to us employees have been pretty rude and condescending.

My boss had asked me if I could work an overnight shift on a particular evening. I said that I was only available until 11pm because I had to be up early the next morning. The next email was a mini-rant from him about how he never asks for overnight shifts unless he’s desperate and I better have a good excuse why I can’t work. I sent another email explaining that I had to work early the next morning and I would be willing to come in until 11pm. I never got another email back after that and I didn’t show up for that shift because I was never told that I was scheduled.

They are using me so few hours each month that I could probably quit that job now and not see a financial hit in my life. I’m still struggling because I make very little money, but that extra $8 a month isn’t going to affect me too much. But I’m choosing not to leave that job until I have another one lined up.

What that other one might be is the issue. I have no clue what types of jobs to look for next. I know when I can work and how my jobs are structured, so I have some idea of the time that I can devote to another job.

It’s just too bad that this survey coding job isn’t going to work out for me unless something major happens. I really thought that it would be a great match for me, but it turns out that either they are not getting the amount of work that they were expecting or they don’t need work done when I’m available.

The one thing that irks me about eventually leaving this job is that this will be the second time I have left work with this company. It’s the same company that did the movie recruiting, and I quit doing that pretty quickly as I realized that it was not the right job for me. I’m not going to leave this job this time because it’s not a good match for me, but I need a job that will give me work. And I can’t keep keeping hours free for a job that doesn’t use me.

My time is worth more than that and I know that there is another job that will fit into my schedule that will be just right for me.

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Is Giving Up After A Week Ok? (or How I Lost Money Doing My New Job)

Posted on March 10, 2014 | 1 comment

The film recruiting job hasn’t been going so great. While I’m making minimum wage, the majority of the income is supposed to come from people attending the screenings that I’m recruiting for. So far, of the 3 screenings I’ve worked, nobody has gone.

That’s tough. I also know that I don’t pass out as many passes as other recruiters do. But that’s because I don’t want to be a pest. I know that for the over 12 years that I’ve lived in LA, I’ve always been annoyed by the film recruiters bothering me when I’m rushing somewhere. There have been recruiters who have bothered me to the point that I think it could be considered harassment (including one recruiter I remember from years ago who put a pass inside my purse after I said “no thank you”).

I don’t want to be that person. And that’s probably the reason I’m not making money on people going to screenings.

I’ve also been told by people at the company that all the screenings I’m recruiting for are really tough ones, even for experienced recruiters. And if I had something easier that I might not feel this way. But then they continue to give me really tough screenings.

Since I haven’t made any money on people going, I’m not making that much at all. And when you add in driving time, driving costs, and parking costs I’m barely breaking even (if you don’t include yesterday, I averaged making $3 for the week). I do get some money for driving, but it doesn’t cover the time it takes me to get there.

I talked to my mom about this this past weekend. I’m really wondering if I should let them know that this 30 day trial showed me that this is not the job for me. I’m not enjoying it. And I don’t expect to love doing whatever I do as a day job, but I shouldn’t be regretting having to do it either.

I had a really great job interview last week where the employer basically told me to not accept any jobs until they got back to me. That is making me very hopefully that they will hire me. If they do, I won’t feel too guilty about giving up on the recruiting job.

If I don’t get a new job, at least I know that I have my NYC trip coming up in just over a week so I won’t have to work then.

I’m not sure what I should do, but at least writing it on here and sharing my thoughts is making me feel a little better.

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