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short-term job
Apr. 26th, 2009 01:46 pmWhen the census offered me the job, they said I would need to commit to "1 week of full-time training, and then at least 8 weeks of working at least 20 hours/week." Sure. I thought I would keep looking for engineering work, and walk away from the census job if somebody offered me another job. The week before the "full-time training" (we were informed on Monday that it would only include Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and part of Friday), several recruiters had been very enthusiastic about job prospects. "When are you available to interview? They want to move fast on this!" I hadn't wanted to say I was busy with another job. It turned out not to matter...all those job prospects evaporated without interviews (it's not even that they hired somebody else. They decided not to hire anybody at all. I don't know if that's better or worse.)
Anyhow, after the training, work time was supposed to be flexible. One is assigned a block of work, which could be done at one's convenience (subject to other constraints, only some of which I had previously anticipated.) Everyone on the team was urged to work more hours, if at all possible. "Yes, I know the policy is that you're supposed to work 20-25 hours, but really, 30-35 would be better for the next few weeks." The first week, between storms and Passover, I managed to work 11 hours. I was told I wasn't working fast enough; that it was ok because I was new, but that 21 units/hour were expected and I was only doing 8. This caused enormous anxiety and a little under-reporting of hours. I'm not sure what they were trying to accomplish...probably exactly what they did accomplish. EVERYBODY was new, that week.
It didn't matter, because the work was finished in a little over 2 weeks. The first week, I took days off for the holiday and bad weather, and worked slowly because I was working a dispersed neighborhood with steep hills. The second week, I scrambled to work as much as I could, as fast as I could. It came to 26 hours, and completely wore me out (with hand and shoulder pain, not walking.) Then, whoops! Somebody realized this is not a very big town, and we were almost finished with it. I hate losing jobs. I worry that I might have kept it if I'd been better at it (even though it's obvious that the job we were hired to do is *finished*, and doing it well just meant it was finished sooner.) I hate feeling so relieved that I don't have to go out and do a job that hurts so much, and I didn't even have to identify as a wimp and a quitter.
Anyhow, after the training, work time was supposed to be flexible. One is assigned a block of work, which could be done at one's convenience (subject to other constraints, only some of which I had previously anticipated.) Everyone on the team was urged to work more hours, if at all possible. "Yes, I know the policy is that you're supposed to work 20-25 hours, but really, 30-35 would be better for the next few weeks." The first week, between storms and Passover, I managed to work 11 hours. I was told I wasn't working fast enough; that it was ok because I was new, but that 21 units/hour were expected and I was only doing 8. This caused enormous anxiety and a little under-reporting of hours. I'm not sure what they were trying to accomplish...probably exactly what they did accomplish. EVERYBODY was new, that week.
It didn't matter, because the work was finished in a little over 2 weeks. The first week, I took days off for the holiday and bad weather, and worked slowly because I was working a dispersed neighborhood with steep hills. The second week, I scrambled to work as much as I could, as fast as I could. It came to 26 hours, and completely wore me out (with hand and shoulder pain, not walking.) Then, whoops! Somebody realized this is not a very big town, and we were almost finished with it. I hate losing jobs. I worry that I might have kept it if I'd been better at it (even though it's obvious that the job we were hired to do is *finished*, and doing it well just meant it was finished sooner.) I hate feeling so relieved that I don't have to go out and do a job that hurts so much, and I didn't even have to identify as a wimp and a quitter.
