My Final Payday?

Well for a couple of months at least I guess.

I received my final pay-day from Verizon today which should see me comfortable for a little while without a job but I must admit I am getting itchy feet and hands at the moment and don’t really want to be unemployed for much longer.

I haven’t actually been unemployed since I left university in 2000, every time I got a new job I just started the week after leaving one.

So this is quite new to me.

When I was offered redundancy…well it wasn’t so much of an offer, I could probably have fought it but I didn’t really see the point of potentially risking a pay-out, to stay in a job that I quite frankly hated, albeit in a company that I did for some reason love working for.

I started there back in 2007 straight after a week in Ibiza (I somehow recovered in time), and I was employed by who I quickly recognised as the best manager that I had worked for, and that still stands to this day.  To actually be trusted, respected and given responsibility and for my ideas for improvements and how to resolve issues and negotiate, to be listened to, was something quite new.

I was working in the Debt Recovery team and I grabbed the trust and responsibility that I was offered and impressed greatly, in the first half-year, and in the second year (first full calendar year) I achieved the highest possible performance rating which very few employees get.  I loved my job.  I loved going into work.  And I worked with some really nice people.  And had a good bit of banter, especially on a Friday afternoon.

Then I was given the manager from hell as my team-leader, as my good manager went off to do projects.

It was horrific to work for her.  I don’t wish her any malice as a person, as on an out-of-work basis I got on fine, but the accusations she levelled at everyone in the team and some of the bizarre decisions she came out with and instructions which I knew from experience went against company policy, and sometimes legality, was all so frustrating, some people left, some people suffered from stress and I went from loving my job to hating it within 6 months.

Eventually someone in higher management grew some balls and found a way to get rid of her, for want of a better phrase.  Had she worked at my previous company then she would have lasted two months tops before being sacked.  At Verizon almost 18 months.  Crazy.  But such are the machinations of the 35th largest company in the world that things change slowly.

Anyway, my brilliant manager came back, things got back to normal but after 3 years of success, most of the more challenging cases and more interesting debts had been resolved or were just stuck in limbo for years, so I looked around for a new challenge and took up a role in the Commissions team in Finance.

Shortly after accepting the role, I had a feeling that I had made the wrong decision, and within a month of starting, the amount of work and particularly the queries to be resolved which was the main reason I was employed, dropped off a cliff.

A lack of work meant a lack of opportunity for training on the job and it soon became clear that the amount of staff they had was way too high and last one in is usually first one out and this was no different.

I was delighted when I found out, as I was so fed up of not having much to do and it was only a matter of time.  And it was quite a miserable team to work in at times, some days would go by and nobody would actually say a word.  No hello’s, no goodbye’s, no how are you’s.  The whole department in fact was silent.  Quite a depressing place to work.  Though I had an excellent view of the junction 11 traffic system.

It was, unsurprisingly a surprisingly long time before I was made redundant.  Perhaps if I didn’t play Cityville on Facebook one Friday afternoon then I might not have been noticed.  But then again I doubt they had any clue.  I’m not the only person to play Facebook games at that company!

No regrets though on joining that team – if you don’t try, you don’t succeed.  Next time I accept a job though I will thoroughly think about it, I think I was perhaps a little too impatient for progress and success.  And I had spare time to develop my Six Sigma knowledge and also start learning Web Design, so all is not lost at all.

I have to say that since I left, I have been so much happier!  Unemployment doesn’t really suit me but I am making the most of the opportunity.

Just need to find a job…once I have bought some decks and learnt how to become a proper fake wannabe DJ of course, or unless my art career takes off.