Tag Archives: work

Continuing With Positive Work Days (or Sometimes Speaking Up Is Necessary)

Posted on November 9, 2021 | Comments Off on Continuing With Positive Work Days (or Sometimes Speaking Up Is Necessary)

For several years, my day job situation was very stable and things rarely changed. Occasionally I had updates with my data entry job with new tasks, especially when I had to sign a new contract. But most of the work was very similar from year to year. And with my box office job, there have been very limited changes. There can’t be much changed since it’s a pretty basic job. I have gotten raises over the years, but my day-to-day work is the same it has been since I was hired.

But with my other customer service job, I feel like I’ve had the most changes. I’ve almost been working with this company for a year now. And while a majority of my daily work is still the same, I have taken on a lot of other little jobs as I have had time between helping clients. I’ve been working on how we can automate some of the work so that we can focus more on what we need to work on directly. I’ve been helping to design new systems that can make us more efficient. I’ve helped to gather information so we can present changes that we think need to be made. And for the most part, my ideas have been heard and considered.

I do think I have a slight advantage with this job because one of the executives at the company is a friend of mine. So I can speak up without too much fear of him being upset. We text each other about so much most days, so adding in a little bit of work isn’t that much. And I think that he appreciates that I can be this open and honest about work systems. I know for almost any job I’ve had, I have been terrified to speak up because I didn’t want to be seen as trouble and risk losing my job. And I know that I have to be careful with boundaries for this job. But having such an open line of communication where I know I can be very truthful has been great.

There have been some aspects of the job that really were taking up too much of my time and I wasn’t able to get most of my work done each day so it was left for others to complete. By automating some of this work, most of this issue has been eliminated. This could have been automated before, but I don’t think anyone has spoken up the same way that I did. I was honest and said that I felt like I was drowning in work because these things had to be done manually. It took time to change, but now things are so much better.

So I’ve been trying to take this idea of speaking up more to my data entry job, which is the only one where I can really have things change. And they are starting to change again. My job responsibilities continue to change as things are being done differently with this contract compared to past contracts. I hope that eventually, things will normalize again so I have a consistent job responsibility that I can plan ahead for. But right now, things change as I finish one task and move on to another. And I have to occasionally speak up when I’m done with one project because I don’t always have something new to work on. And if I don’t have something new to work on, I don’t have hours to work and I don’t make money. So I have to not be scared to ask what I should be doing when there is a gap between tasks.

I’ve been doing a lot of work with social media for that job, and that continues to grow. Now, I’m almost exclusively doing social media work. I’ve been doing a lot of content creation, which isn’t something I have done a lot of. But it’s a good challenge for me and I have been trying to get better at it. I finished a big project that is for social media through the end of the year, and because of how it turned out, I’m now starting to work on some content creation for the new year. I haven’t officially heard that I have had my contract extended, but those can often be last-minute updates and I know they want me to have a full contract.

It can be scary for me to speak up for myself a lot. But lately, it’s been resulting in a lot of positive things for me. I have made sure that I have work planned for myself and I have helped to make my work better when there are systems that I think need to be fixed. And hopefully, I will continue to have good outcomes when I do speak up for myself and I will continue to have good things happen for me with my day jobs.

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Default ThumbnailAnother Work Meeting (or Starting To Plan How Work Will Go For Me) Default ThumbnailPositive Thinking And Putting It Out There Worked (or Working For Another Old Boss) Default ThumbnailGearing Up For Another Temp Job (or At Least It’s More Work) Default ThumbnailWorking On Speaking Up For Myself (or Finding A Balance Between Confident and Bossy) Default ThumbnailSeeing How To Make My New Schedule Work (or I Have A Better Idea Of My Free Time Now) Default ThumbnailAt Least A Little More Work (or Getting My Contract Extended Again)

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Working In A Social Media Outage (or There Were Some Good Things That Happened)

Posted on October 7, 2021 | Comments Off on Working In A Social Media Outage (or There Were Some Good Things That Happened)

As probably everyone knows, Facebook and Instagram went down on Monday for a very long time. And considering I work with social media in my day job, it was a really tough day for me. Most of the questions clients had were only able to be answered by saying that we were sorry but we could not look that up at this time as Instagram is currently down. It was a very frustrating day, but I’m glad that the system was back up during my work day so I could get to my work before I was done. And by some miracle, I was able to prep things during the outage enough that I could push through and get almost all my work done by the end of the day. I didn’t get everything done, but everything that had to be done that day was completed.

I know that the issues I had with the outage weren’t as bad as what other people dealt with, but it was a lot of stress when I was already under a lot of stress for other reasons. And in a way, it was good because I figured out some new ways to organize my work. Hopefully I won’t need to use those ideas during an outage in the future, but it is nice that I was able to be creative in the middle of so much frustration.

While work was frustrating during the outage, the other issue I had was not being able to communicate with some of my friends. I have a Facebook message group with some of the women who are in Movie Club with me. We just message each other a lot of random things throughout the day. Sometimes it’s getting support for tough stuff and sometimes we are sending each other TikToks we like or things we find funny. But since it was done through Facebook, we couldn’t message during the outage.

So as soon as I was able to message my group again, I said we should find a way to get off of Facebook to make sure this doesn’t happen again. The only issue is that not everyone in the group lives in the United States. But fortunately, we are all Apple users, so we can use iMessage with no issues with international texting! So we got a regular text group set up and have been using that this week.

I have talked about Movie Club and the women in that group several times before, but I still find it so interesting that I have bonded with people that I have never met in person. But it also somehow makes so much sense. And I feel like where there are tough or negative things going on in the world, that’s when our group comes together. We really bonded at the start of the pandemic when we started Movie Club. That never would have happened without a pandemic. And Movie Club really helped to keep me sane during such a crazy time.

And even though it wasn’t bad messaging through Facebook, an outage got us to exchange real phone numbers so we can text and it’s a bit easier for all of us to do that instead of using Facebook. Somehow, texting makes the friendship that we’ve all created seem more real. And that made me happy during a really crazy day.

It’s nice to know that some good things came out of a social media outage and the frustration I was having that day. And the good things that happened put me in a much better mood when I was able to work again. And I guess I’m more prepared now with how to deal with this if it happens again. But I hope it doesn’t!

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Default ThumbnailAnother Union Holiday Celebration (or Being Social And Working Social Media) Default ThumbnailSocial Media Reminders (or Another Thing To Celebrate) Default ThumbnailFinding More Ways To Help Via Social Media (or Continuing To Share Good Things) Default ThumbnailA Social Media Monthly Challenge (or Wanting To Put Some Positivity Into The World) Default ThumbnailA Frustrating Morning At Work (or Working But Not Working) Default ThumbnailFinding A Social Life Where I Can (or Virtual Parties and Distance Hangouts)

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Feeling Appreciated At Work (or Sometimes An Email From My Boss Is All Good News)

Posted on September 28, 2021 | Comments Off on Feeling Appreciated At Work (or Sometimes An Email From My Boss Is All Good News)

In some ways, I’m close to what my day job life was like from before the pandemic. In many other ways, things are still so different from before. Different isn’t always bad and in fact, I think many of the differences from before are positive. While I am working significantly more hours than I was working before, I’m also making more money which is nice. And I am doing different things now that challenge me and make me have to think of new solutions. It was nice to have very little work and a lot of free time between clients, it is also nice to not have as much boredom during work as I did before.

It’s not just my jobs, hours, and responsibilities that are different from before. Since I started back at my box office job, my pay has been different too. I knew that I was going to have to make less money when I was asked back because things were slowly coming back. But since I was working my other jobs (and getting raises at those), I wasn’t too bothered. I knew I was being underpaid, but having my job back and knowing that it would get better soon helped. And it took a while before I finally got a raise that got me close to what my old pay rate was. But a raise is a raise and I was very grateful for that. It wasn’t that long ago that it happened, so I figured that might be it for a while. But then I got an email from my boss the other day and I was nervous to open it when I saw it in my inbox.

Fortunately, the email was only good news and let me know that I was going to be getting another raise starting this week! And this raise is going to bring my pay rate above what I was making before the pandemic! I am still working less than half the hours I used to work (that is my choice based on my hours with other jobs), so from that job alone I’m not back to my pre-pandemic income. But I’m not relying on that income as much as I used to. It’s only a portion of what I make each month, not a majority of it. And every extra money that I can make is helpful, even if it’s not a huge change in my weekly pay.

I’m seriously so grateful for this raise. My box office job can sometimes feel like my work isn’t fully appreciated because we only send messages out and don’t get a lot of feedback. But the raise is proof that they see my work as valuable and helpful to the company. And I feel like it’s a sign that they understand how hard we do work and how much we do have to juggle, especially considering that we cover over 70 different locations and they all have their own details to answer.

I’m not expecting a raise for any of my jobs any time soon. I’ve gotten a lot of pay or hour increases recently and there isn’t much more I can except for now. But hopefully sometime in 2022, I’ll have another raise or two in at least one of my jobs. Even though I’m making much more than I did before, I’m still not making a lot of money considering how many hours I work. But I do know that I’m doing better than a lot of people and I’ve been lucky even with losing work during the pandemic. So I’m always grateful for my work and for making the money I can.

There have been a lot of surprises the past year and a half with my day job situation, but getting an unexpected raise is definitely one of the best ones and it made my week last week!

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Default ThumbnailWork Begets Work (Old Bosses Possible New Jobs) Default ThumbnailPositive Thinking And Putting It Out There Worked (or Working For Another Old Boss) Default ThumbnailDay Job News (or Things Are Getting Better) Default ThumbnailOn Hold With Work For Now (or It’s Now A Waiting Game) Default ThumbnailFinally Back To A Full Work Schedule (or I Really Do Like Having A Stable Schedule) Default ThumbnailUnderemployment Is Frustrating (or Trying To Find The Balance Of Flexibility And Work Hours)

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Still Figuring Out Time Management (or Little Changes Do Make Big Differences)

Posted on September 17, 2021 | Comments Off on Still Figuring Out Time Management (or Little Changes Do Make Big Differences)

When I started working full-time at my customer service job, I didn’t think it would feel that different from how my hours felt before. Before I was working full-time, I was working the mornings at that job and the afternoon at my box office job. So I was working from 9-3 every day between the two jobs before taking on the full-time hours and I knew that was close to what my schedule would be like. I would only have 2 hours more each day and that didn’t seem like a lot.

From the start of working the new hours, it really did feel like I was working a lot more every day. I never knew how much of a difference working 2 hours later a day would feel. I don’t know why working until 5 felt so different from working until 3, but it affected what I was willing to try to do after work. I feel in a way that I lost a part of my afternoon and free time and for a while I was staying up later at night to fit in that time into my day. But I can’t stay up late since I get up early. So I’ve been working for a while on figuring out more time management plans since I’ve been feeling a bit out of control lately.

This is still a work in progress and it will continue to be that way since things never are stable in my life. But I’m slowly figuring out how to manage my new hours and my life again. And it’s good I’m working on it now while things are still not really back in my life because of the pandemic. I’m putting everything into my calendar now, including the drive time to get places, so I make sure I don’t end up doing work when I need to drive somewhere. I am working on blocking off time in my calendar to cook when I plan on cooking because there have been too many times that I wanted to cook and the next thing I knew it was late and I was hungry. I almost have to over-schedule my day in order to have free time again. And I’ve never had to do that before. But then again, I’ve never worked this many hours.

I know that some of my jobs overlap when I work (and all these jobs know that I do that). But I can’t always overlap my hours. And when you look at my hours combined, in my 3 day jobs (not counting stuff like union service), I’m currently working 60-62 hours a week. I know there are a ton of people who work more than that, but I have never had that many hours before. Even before the pandemic, between my jobs I was working only about 38 hours a week. And yes, I’m grateful for every job that I have and I’m happy that I’m in a better financial place than before. But working more hours does make me hyperaware of the potential for burnout. And that’s why I have to schedule free time into my day. It’s far too easy to get up at 5:45am and be working almost non-stop until 7 or 8pm. And I do take little breaks in my day when I can, but I don’t take too long of a break because I don’t want to slack off in my day.

Since I’ve been scheduling more into my day, I am slowly seeing some improvements. But I haven’t been doing it as much as I should, so I know things can get better. And I’ve said this before, but I really want to figure out a good place with balancing my work and my life while I don’t have much happening in my life. When I start to add more to my life, I know I will need the skills that I’m working on building now. And hopefully the work I’m doing now will help prevent me from feeling as overwhelmed and as much burnout as I know could happen.

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Default ThumbnailMissing Out On Some Fun (or Flexible Time Management) Default ThumbnailSeeing How To Make My New Schedule Work (or I Have A Better Idea Of My Free Time Now) Default ThumbnailBack To An Old Job (or It Feels New and Familiar At The Same Time) Default ThumbnailFitting It All In (or Getting Better At Time Management) Default ThumbnailFinally Back To A Full Work Schedule (or I Really Do Like Having A Stable Schedule) Default ThumbnailGetting Myself Back On Schedule (or At Least This Is A Slow Transition)

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I Got To Practice My Monthly Challenge Early This Month (or Still Working On Not Worrying About Job Things)

Posted on September 3, 2021 | Comments Off on I Got To Practice My Monthly Challenge Early This Month (or Still Working On Not Worrying About Job Things)

When I set my monthly challenge this month to be about not thinking too much in the future about things that may go wrong or right in my life, I assumed a lot of what I would be using that for would be related to things I already know are going on. I didn’t want to stress about moving. I didn’t want to worry more about the pandemic. I didn’t want to overthink dating. But because my life is like this, I had an unexpected curveball right at the start of the month!

Things at my customer service job have been crazy lately, but most of the crazy has been good. I’ve been working more hours, taking on more responsibilities, and helping with projects that will help the company continue to grow. But whenever things change in a job, mistakes can be made too. And while I haven’t made any really bad mistakes, there have been things that weren’t communicated as clearly as they could have or procedures that are in the process of being changed and it’s unclear what is supposed to be done now.

So on Wednesday, my manager asked me if I could have a Zoom call with her the next day (which was yesterday). There weren’t any specifics on why we were having the call, so my brain went to all the horrible things it could be. Because of my work history, I am always terrified that I’m about to be fired. I know that’s now what would be happening this time (right after this meeting was set up I was invited to 2 other meetings that are for my entire department). But I couldn’t stop thinking about all the negatives that it could be. I hate that that’s how I think and that’s exactly why I set my challenge to be this for September.

So for the time between knowing about my meeting and when it started, I really worked on focusing on what I did know and what was not speculation. And I went into my meeting a bit nervous, but not nearly as stressed as I might have been if I wasn’t working on not overthinking the future.

And of course the meeting wasn’t a bad thing. There were some communication things to work out so we had a better line of communication when discussing clients so there wouldn’t as many back and forth emails and texts. And we clarified some things that led to the miscommunication that both of us weren’t able to realize in written communication. Those things needed to be worked out and will only make work better for me going forward.

And then we started to discuss things that aren’t happening yet that we might want to change. I can’t go into too many details about it, but we discussed how to manage client communication better so anyone could help clients without needing access to as many things as we have right now. Also, how to make sure all new clients have everything they need in order to understand the company. Some of this would be about what my role might be like in the future, which is good to hear when I was worried earlier that I had done something really wrong and wondered if I was going to lose my job.

I’ve said this so many times before, but I wonder when I will stop worrying that I will be losing my job every time I have a meeting about something. I’ve gone a significant portion of my life since I have had that happen to me. And I haven’t had any quick turnaround with jobs like I did the year that things were the worst for me. I’ve been with my customer service job for about 9 months, and that’s the shortest time of any of my jobs right now. I’ve been working with my box office job for 7 years already! But I still have this stupid irrational fear of being fired for no reason.

Maybe because I am purposely working on fixing this way of thinking, things will be better for me in the future. At least now I know that some of the tools I wanted to use to test this challenge do work because this wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Just like when I set my monthly challenge, I guess I’ll see in a month how I feel. But I got a little idea now of what it could be like.

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Finally Doing Some Job Training (or I’ll Find A Way To Add In More Hours)

Posted on August 18, 2021 | Comments Off on Finally Doing Some Job Training (or I’ll Find A Way To Add In More Hours)

When I signed my contract for my data entry job for the second half of this year, I knew my job was going to be changing up and I’d be doing something different. I was excited to try out something new and learn new skills. But there were a few delays in getting trained for the new responsibilities, so I’ve only been doing work with social media (which also changed from what I was doing before, but not that much). I knew I’d be trained eventually, but there were other things that I knew had to come first so I was just waiting and that was fine.

But I finally got to train on my new quality assurance check role this week. I’ve never done this type of work before, but I had an idea of what I would be doing. I knew it was mainly work looking at the website and looking for any glitches, errors, or issues. I’ve reported things like that while doing my data entry job as I saw them, but I never had to seek them out. I just reported what I saw as it happened. So I knew that having this as a regular job was going to be different since I needed to make sure I wasn’t overlooking errors.

Fortunately, when I did my training it wasn’t that different from what I was expecting. There are different ways I need to track things so that others can follow up on the errors I’m finding and I have to track what sections of the website I have checked and what still needs to be done, but the things I’m looking for are similar to what I was reporting before.

The way my hours are broken up between this work and the social media work is about 2/3rd QA work and 1/3 social media work. And I’m working on figuring out how I’m going to manage it. I’ve done this many hours for this job before, but never while working as many hours for other jobs. And my newer customer service job has significantly less downtime than my box office job. So while I can overlap work a bit, I can’t do what I was used to doing before the pandemic. I’m still so grateful to have all the work I do have because I am putting myself in a much better financial spot than before, but time management is becoming a big focus.

If I am not careful, I could see myself working close to 12 hours a day on my craziest days. I know I can have burnout if I’m not taking care of myself. And I feel like the risk of burnout is higher when I don’t have much to do outside of my house. I don’t want to be going great for a month or two and then have a huge crash. But I also know that there are plenty of people who work more than 8 hours a day, so it’s doable. And I don’t have to worry about a commute so that makes my long day shorter than what others might experience. But it’s a work in progress for sure.

I am excited to have a new adventure with my work. Having things change up helps to keep things from feeling too routine in my life. And lately, things have been very repetitive in my life, so I’ve been welcoming change. I just have to figure out how to make this change work. But I know I will because I always do.

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Getting Used To A Full Time Schedule (or I Didn’t Think It Would Feel That Different)

Posted on August 12, 2021 | Comments Off on Getting Used To A Full Time Schedule (or I Didn’t Think It Would Feel That Different)

This week is the first week that I’m working full-time at my customer service job. While I’ve had full-time hours in the recent past when you add up all the hours I did for all my jobs, I never was working 8 hours a day at any particular job. Even before the pandemic when I was working full hours for my box office job, I only worked 7 hours a day and I was always done by 3 pm each day. Now, I’m working  8 hours each weekday for a single job and I’m working until 5 or 6 each evening. Obviously, working more hours is putting me in a better financial spot. But when the extra hours were offered to me originally, I was a bit hesitant. So right now is a bit of a trial period to see how I feel working so many hours.

I was able to negotiate some things with my hours so I’m only working until 6 pm one day a week (for some reason, being done at 5 seems so much better than being done at 6). And my co-workers and I are testing out how to split up responsibilities so I’m not feeling overwhelmed by doing one task for too long. Working in customer service can be a lot, but I’ve been lucky that for the most part the customers are kind and have questions that were easy to get answers for. But there are the occasional situations where it’s very stressful and I am grateful my job is mindful of how that can affect any of us.

And I do know one of their concerns was if I would feel burnt out because I was doubling how many hours a week I was working. I figured it wouldn’t be too bad since I was working until 3 since I was working my box office job. So working until 5 was only adding 2 more hours onto my day. And I have worked 40 hours a week before, so I thought it would be easy enough for me to adjust to it. Technically now, I’m working closer to 60 hours a week when you consider my other jobs, but there is overlap with my hours (all my jobs are aware of this and have approved of me doing so). I’m only a few days into working my new schedule, and I’m already noticing how things feel different for me. And I’m trying to make adjustments so I don’t feel like I need to reduce my hours in the future.

Most of the things are related to time management or comfort while working. Time management has always been a struggle for me. Fortunately, right now there isn’t a lot going on in my life outside of work and my workouts. But I do want to plan time to relax and decompress from my day. I eventually will have more happening in my life, and I need to know how to add that in when I have the chance. But if I’m always exhausted after work, then I won’t be doing much in my evenings except being lazy at home. So I need to find a way to manage my time so I’m not feeling so tired. And that might have to include things like taking more stretching breaks and other things like that so I don’t physically feel exhausted after work.

And along the lines of stretching breaks, I need to find ways to be more comfortable while working. My desk setup hasn’t changed much since I set it up when I built this desk. I have added little things like a better desk chair and a footrest (which sadly broke so I need to replace it), but I want to see what else I can do so my body isn’t hurting after working for so many hours. I do have a cushion on my chair that is supposed to help, but I think I need to either get a better cushion or a better chair. But I also might want to add something on my desk so my arms and wrists don’t hurt after working. Also right now, because it can hurt for sitting for a long time, I take breaks and bring my computer into my room, lay on my bed, and work. I know that’s not the best way to work and I’m sure I’m straining or stressing some part of my body. But sitting at my desk for so long isn’t great for me either. So I have to figure out what I can do so I don’t have other issues while working.

I know this work setup is new to me and I need to still figure out what to do. But I also feel pretty supported by my job in having flexibility if things change or I need to figure out a better situation for me. But hopefully I will get it all figured out and this will just be a blip in my work history before being settled into a new routine.

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A Busy Birthday (or I’m Not Sure What I Expected My Birthday To Be Like)

Posted on August 10, 2021 | Comments Off on A Busy Birthday (or I’m Not Sure What I Expected My Birthday To Be Like)

Yesterday was my birthday, and I knew it wasn’t going to be anything too crazy. It was on a Monday, we are still in a pandemic, and I had to work. I figured it would be a bit different from my birthday last year since things are a bit better right now, but I still wasn’t going to be going out and celebrating. At least not on my actual birthday. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to enjoy my birthday however I could.

My day started off with my workout. I’ll do a recap of my birthday workout next week, but it was a good workout.

I don’t think I ever believed that I would be someone who would do a workout at 6:30 am on my birthday, but that’s exactly what I did! I’ve done birthday workouts before and it’s always a nice way to enjoy the day. And this time is was the perfect way to start off my day!

Then I had work for my day job. Monday was the first day I had my new, longer work schedule. It’s not too bad so far, but I know that it might be adjusted if it becomes too much. But at least for kicking it off, it was ok. I had a lot of work I had to get done, but it’s what I’ve been doing before and now I had more time to get all my work done.

And while I was working, I was getting texts and messages from friends and family wishing me a happy birthday. Even though I wasn’t going to see any of them, I still love getting messages from them. And my friend Dani, who moved away from LA a few months ago, messaged me and also asked when I’d be home because something was going to be delivered to my house. I let her know when I had a break and I thought that she was having food or something delivered to my house.

I was so shocked when my doorbell rang, I opened the door, and it was Dani and her new puppy!

I was speechless. All I could say for a few minutes was “oh my god!” and other exclamations like that. She was in LA for some work stuff and decided to not tell me so she could surprise me! And it was the best surprise! I was not expecting to see her or any of my other friends on my birthday and it really made my day! And I’ve missed our hangouts since she moved away, so it was nice to have a little time to hangout and chat before she had to leave and I had to get back to work.

The rest of my birthday was pretty low-key. I worked a few more hours, I did some stuff for my union election, and after work I ordered in some dinner (I figured I should do something nicer for dinner) and watched some tv. Nothing too crazy after work since I didn’t feel like trying to go out to a restaurant or organize anything else. I will have a birthday dinner coming up this weekend, but it didn’t feel right doing much else since things are still not that safe.

Overall, this was a great birthday. I didn’t do a lot, but so much of it made my day feel so special. I didn’t have a plan for what my day would be like, but I wouldn’t have guessed this. But it was exactly what I needed and besides wishing we weren’t in a pandemic, I don’t know if I would have changed a thing. It was the perfect Monday Pandemic Birthday.

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Default ThumbnailAlmost Free Birthday Dinner (or Spending My Birthday With My Birthday Twin) Default ThumbnailAlmost Getting My Lazy Birthday (or Staying In And Staying Busy) Default ThumbnailA Birthday Celebration (or An Orangetheory Reunion) Default ThumbnailMy Birthday! (or Laundry, A Bike Ride, and Dinner!) Default ThumbnailContinuing The Birthday Celebrations (or A Birthday Twin Adventure) Default ThumbnailGrandma’s Birthday Dinner (or One Of Our Thanksgiving Traditions)

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Back To Back Job Changes (or Unexpected Good News)

Posted on July 29, 2021 | Comments Off on Back To Back Job Changes (or Unexpected Good News)

After my job news for one of my day jobs earlier this week, I didn’t think I’d have any other day job updates or changes happening anytime soon. Things have been pretty stable for a while. I know I had the option to add more hours to my old box office job, but I didn’t want to since I was balancing everything with my schedule. I was back to working a similar number of hours to what I was doing before the pandemic and I was making about the same that I was before. That seemed to be a big accomplishment to me and I was happy being back in my routine that felt so familiar.

But then on Tuesday, I got an alert at my social media customer service job about a call with the owner of the company. This was to set up a meeting and the subject was something similar to “Your Future With The Company” which basically sounds like the job version of “we need to talk” in a relationship. Fortunately, I was also messaged that this was going to be a positive talk so I wasn’t too stressed out. If I didn’t know that, I probably would have spent the entire day worried I was about to be fired. I still was a little worried about what the news would be, but I tried to focus on the idea that it was going to be good news and that I didn’t need to worry. It didn’t help that my phone meeting ended up being much later than the expected time, so I had extra time to stress a bit. But I stayed calm and tried not to think too much about it all.

And as I was told, it was all good news. I am very aware that the company is growing at a very fast rate (I see all the new clients come in and add most of them to our database). And because of that, the company is growing as far as staff and workload goes. When I was hired, it was part-time and I knew it would possibly stay part-time. Working full-time was briefly discussed when I was interviewing, but it wasn’t a focus of what we discussed. Also, when I was hired about 7 months ago, things weren’t growing as fast as they are now. So things are changing up and the owner of the company wants me to grow with the company too.

So I was offered the opportunity to work full-time starting next week. The owner of the company is aware of my other jobs (the job I was writing about yesterday isn’t really a concern since those are my own hours) and my schedule with my other customer service job. And I said I wasn’t comfortable necessarily leaving my other job for now. We do have new employees who are in training, so maybe in the future I’d consider it, but for now, I know that I’m needed and I do like my work and my co-workers. So I had a very honest and frank conversation with the owner of the company about not feeling ok leaving my other job, and after discussing it more he said he’d be willing to let me try working both jobs at once during my overlap. It would only be an overlap of 8 hours a week (2 hours a day for 4 days a week), so it’s not like it’s a huge chunk of time. I think it would be possible, especially since I have explained what portions of my job I felt ok overlapping with (for example, not doing both customer service chats but doing the customer service chat for one job and emails or data entry for the other). I know that this will be something I have to try and re-evaluate, but at least I’m being given a chance to try.

And even though I have essentially worked full-time hours before, this is a little different from the past. But I’m really happy with how things have been going and seeing where I could see myself in the future. My focus is still on acting, but I like having a more stable day job situation. And I should still be able to have some of the flexibility I need for auditions and other acting-related things. But this is going to put me in a better spot financially and even though it’s doubling my hours at one job, it’s only an extra 2-3 hours a day when you consider the hours I already work my other job. So not the biggest change ever.

Like I had been told ahead of my meeting, this was all good news. And I think it is just the start with good news for this job since I do see ways that I can grow and change within the company. And for a day job, that is an amazing feeling.

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Getting Ready For Changing Up My Job Tasks (or Same Job New Responsibilities)

Posted on July 28, 2021 | Comments Off on Getting Ready For Changing Up My Job Tasks (or Same Job New Responsibilities)

When I had my meeting about my contract ending at my data entry type job, we discussed what things moving forward would make sense for me to do for my job tasks. I’ve been doing the same type of work for a long time for that job, but it hasn’t made sense over the past year. My job was mainly related to posting information regarding events, and there weren’t really any events happening. We did shift to posting virtual events, but it wasn’t the same and I was struggling to find events in time to share.

I was starting to do a little bit of work with social media for that job (funny enough, similar work that I was doing for my social media job so I had lots of ideas about what to do). But there weren’t a lot of things I was doing with social media because it wasn’t something that was being done before so plans were being created and not just followed.

I’ve also occasionally had other tasks with that job, like doing research for annual updates. But for the most part, I was always doing event work and only recently started to do some social media work. And when my contract ended, the meeting I had about what my next contract would like went into what new tasks I might take on as well. And it was pretty clear that it was time for me to move on from the events work. It may be done in a different way now, and I’m actually excited by what the website might look like when that is completed. But since I won’t be doing what a majority of my job has been, I have been getting ready to train on my new tasks.

The majority of my work with my new contract will be doing QA-type work. This won’t be a huge difference from what I was doing before, but I’ll be checking information already on the site and not adding new information myself. I haven’t trained on that just yet, but I should be getting trained in August once a few things are set up for me to be able to access the sections of my work website that I need to be in to work. But this week, I did some discussion about the new plans going forward for the work I’ll be doing in social media.

I have been doing social media work for this job this month, but it’s been a bit limited. I’ve been sharing posts that other accounts have created and promoting events in the community. It’s similar to what I would have posted before on the website, but I’m now sharing it on social media instead. But there is more work that I can do and that’s what was discussed in my meeting this week.

I’m excited about the new opportunities I’ll have soon. I’m going to work on some content creation and also setting up templates so others can do the work. This is work I’m familiar with from my union service, so I’m glad I have the opportunity to use those skills for another job. And it will give me the chance to build on what I already know how to do and I’m sure I’ll learn things that I might not have tried in my union service work. And of course, I’m excited when any of my day job work lets me be a bit creative and that’s something that I haven’t always gotten to do so it makes me really happy.

I’m slowly going to be transitioning into my new tasks with my job, but I think this is all positive steps moving forward. I’ve been with this job for so many years and it makes sense that things would change over the years. And the pandemic might have sped things up a bit with how quickly they changed, but I’m ready to adapt quickly. And maybe things will change when I get my next contract or I get this contract extended. But for now, I’m ready to see what I can do and what other things will come my way.

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