Category Archives: Work

Since I started at my social media job, I’ve pretty much had the same title and responsibilities. Things have changed a bit, but I’ve been focused on the same work for the most part and I have been focused on the customer care/customer service side. But for the past few months, I have been slowly transitioning into doing more of an administrative role, focusing on workflow and systems. This isn’t necessarily something I have a background in doing, but I have seen where things needed to be done and that there wasn’t a dedicated person in that role.

The transition to doing the admin role has been slow, and things have changed due to the needs of the company. I was supposed to be almost fully in the new work this month, but due to some changes in the company, I’m needed in customer care for a bit longer. But I’m only doing that work for a few hours a day, so I am able to start focusing more on my new work. Things haven’t officially transitioned, but I know things are in process.

So when I had my mid-year review with my manager, I knew we would be discussing my new role and the transition that will be coming. I still always fear that I’m going to hear bad news such as I’m going to be fired, and I don’t think I will ever get over that. But I also knew that would be extremely unlikely based on the communication I’ve had with my manager and the executive team.

And I’m glad I was right that it was all good news. There are things that I’m able to get done now that I’m not in the customer care role as much during the day. There are things that I’ve been working on that will make things for the entire company much better, and I will be taking over a few more things in the near future. There isn’t an exact timeline for when I will be doing only the new work because that is based on hiring a few more people. But I know things are in the works and that it will be coming up.

But even though I still do some customer care work, I was told that I got a promotion during my meeting. Instead of being a customer care specialist, I’m now going to be a senior growth administrator and be a member of the senior team at the company. And while most raises are discussed during the reviews in January for the start of the new year, I also did get a small raise which will be nice. Any additional money I bring in is so helpful for getting me back on track with my budget and working toward saving more and being able to spend money to do fun things. Also with my promotion, I will also be eligible for paid time off, which is something I haven’t had yet. It would be so nice to take a random weekday off to go to Disneyland, which I still haven’t done since they reopened. Or eventually, take a few days off and go on a trip. I’m not planning for time off just yet, but knowing that I will have that is something I am looking forward to.

I know I have talked a lot about my work and not that much about acting, so it might seem like I’m not focused on acting anymore. But that’s not accurate. I am focusing on acting still, but I have focused on other things for a bit and I need to get back into the acting world more. I want to get some new headshots and maybe get into class again, but I have focused so much on moving and getting things stabilized lately. And I do write about my work a lot because I feel pretty lucky to have a job that understands that I am focusing on another career as well and that I have the ability to be a bit flexible with my schedule. And with my promotion, I hopefully will have some more time and money to put toward the things I need to do for my acting career to get back into things in full swing again.

I have always been grateful when I have gotten day jobs that allow me to focus on what I love and don’t require me to only focus on that particular job. And I’m lucky that I have not only found a job that lets me do that but has allowed me to grow with the company and find the perfect role for me.

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I’ve been at my customer care job for almost a year and a half. And in that time, there have been a lot of changes for me. I started part-time and doing 2 different types of jobs. That transitioned to just doing one of those jobs. And then that went from part-time to full-time. And while this isn’t a job change, I did also recently go from hourly to a salary which also came with a bit of a raise. All of these changes have been positive things and have been connected to me being better at my job and some increasing responsibilities.

And one of the good things about the company I work for is that it is growing very rapidly. When I started, we had a fraction of the clients we have now. And with more clients, there is a lot more work. But as I’ve been working, I’ve noticed a lot of things outside of working directly with clients that needed to be handled by someone and I couldn’t necessarily take on those tasks because of my regular work. So at the end of last year, I put together a job proposal for a new position at the company that would be more administrative focused and less work directly with customers. And I was told at the beginning of this year that I was going to start transitioning to that job.

Originally, the idea was that I would split my time up and do the administrative work for part of my day and my regular customer care work for the other part of the day. But I think the executives at the company have realized how much more work the administrative side would be if we wanted to be as efficient of a company as possible. So this week in a meeting, it was discussed that hopefully within a month or two, I would no longer be doing any direct customer care work and just the administrative tasks. That would still involve helping the clients, but it would be more of the back-end work setting up systems and less of directly answering their questions. Once I transition into the administrative role fully, I probably won’t have any direct interaction with clients other than possibly sending them some of our standard onboarding follow-up messages.

This will be a pretty drastic change, but I’m excited about it. While I have liked working the variety of customer service type jobs that I’ve had for a long time, it can also be a bit draining. It’s tough when a customer is upset with you over something that is outside of your control. Or have dozens of people ask the same thing and have to find new ways to say the same answer. I have this same issue at my box office job, but I’m only working that job a few hours a day compared to full-time work with this job. And I have been able to handle the stress, but I think it will be nice to have work that isn’t as time-sensitive and I can find the best workflow for me to get the work done instead of having to be extremely mindful of doing everything in an order that may not make sense to me.

And as I have said before in other aspects of my life, I like to feel helpful and that gives me a purpose. And the tasks I’ll be doing in the administrative role will be things to help the customer care team to be as successful as possible in responding to clients as they ask them questions directly. These are things that I wish had been set up for me to have available as I’ve been working. And I will also help in creating some new systems we are having made for the company to make things easier for us. I’ve never worked a lot in these behind-the-scenes types of positions, but I have always had ideas of how we could change things to make them better for us. And soon, I’ll have that exact opportunity and be able to be a voice for the rest of the customer care team to make sure they get what they need out of the sites we use for work every day.

I’m not fully doing the new job yet, but I’m only doing an hour or two a day right now of the old customer care work and then the rest of my day is starting to do the types of tasks I’ll be doing for the new job. Right now, it’s focused a lot on correcting and updating things that were never done before. And I had wanted these things to be fixed but I couldn’t step away from helping clients to do them. So I’m glad I have this time to do them now.

And once I’m fully in the new job, I do hope I’ll have a bit more flexibility with things. I haven’t needed that flexibility yet, but I do want to start planning to do things like go to Tahoe to see my family or maybe have a weekend away with friends. And I just haven’t felt that freedom yet (both from my work situation and being worried about the pandemic). But I hope that this new job responsibility will be the perfect thing to help me get set up for what will be my full post-pandemic life.

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Even though I have been working the same 3 jobs pretty steadily for a while now, I’m always aware that things can change. Most of the time, the change is a good thing like getting more hours or a better contract with a job. But sometimes it’s not good news, like when my box office job shut down at the start of the pandemic. But with the exception of the pandemic when I was really working less than I could survive on, I’ve been very lucky that for quite a while I’ve been ok with my job situation between the different jobs I work. And for the beginning of this year, I had changes for 2 of my jobs.

My box office job is the one that had no changes. I’m still only working a few hours each day, and maybe that will change in the future but for now I’m ok with that. I have to work those hours around other job stuff, so I don’t know when that might change. And they have hired new people so it’s not as bad for my co-workers as it was before, so they aren’t as in need of me working more. So that job is only a portion of the hours and pay that I was getting before the pandemic, but that’s ok.

I did get some good news with my other customer service job. I recently submitted a job proposal to change my position a bit. This would move me away from customer service and more into administrative and systems work, although I would still do some customer service work. Because of the workflow we have at that job, someone to do this type of work is needed. My job proposal was considered and I will be transitioning into that new position over time. There isn’t an exact date that I will be fully splitting my time, but it will be a process. And I expected that because they will likely need to hire someone else to help out when I’m not doing the same things I have been doing.

But, with this new position I’m getting a raise. And because this will be a transition over time and not an exact start date, my boss decided that I would start at my new pay rate during this pay period! And I am going to be transitioning from hourly to salaried, which is also a change I wanted to see happen for a few different reasons. I wasn’t expecting the raise, but of course I am so grateful for it and making more money is always a good thing when you want to try to be able to save more.

And it turned out I might need that extra money more than I thought. My data entry job is a contract position and normally my contracts go from July until June. But for my most recent contract, it was only for July until the end of 2021. I’ve had this happen before and I just got a contract extension. So I wasn’t too worried about this when I signed my last contract. But as the year came to an end, I realized that I didn’t have a new contract yet and reached out to my boss to check in.

I had a meeting with my boss right after the start of the new year and got some not great news about my job. The job has been paid through grants with the state and county, and they have decided to outsource the job elsewhere. So essentially where I have been working was no longer the contractor for the job. I have a lot of thoughts about this and why I’m not happy about it, and it’s not just about my job. I’m not sure what I’m allowed to share and what is still not public, but the main point is that job is no longer one of my jobs and I don’t have another contract.

I am luckier than many of my co-workers at that job because I was part-time and many of them were full-time there. And maybe things will change and new contracts will be offered. But as far as things look now, I won’t be returning to that job since it’s being outsourced.

I’m glad that I had some good job news at the same time as some bad job news so it wasn’t as bad. And I do wish that I only had good news about my day jobs. But as I have learned over and over again, my job situation can always be changing and I just have to adjust with it.

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