dilemma

[derien]

Okay, I've bored everyone at work with my angsting over my dilemma, so now I'll unload on you.  Because what is LJ for if not making you all listen to my whine.  Except you really don't have to because you can just skip on to read the next person who's not whining.  But, hey, it's my LJ and I think it might help me think if I write it all out, and you can feel free to give me your opinion if you like.  I'd like to hear it. 

So here's the deal.  I like mentoring.  I've really enjoyed it when I've gotten to do it.  So I signed up and was trained as an official mentor, months ago.  Now, there's a guy who came in after I took that training who's already getting put on the Lead position and I have yet to be given a trainee.  Everyone else has had trainees.  When I ask I get told that it has to do with scheduling - that because I have Saturday and Sunday off I'm not available for when they want to put the new trainees on.  Now...  given that people who've been here longest are going to have the weekend days off, and that therefore people expect the newbies to start in a good schedule and get moved to the crappy schedules when they get out of training...  I'm unclear as to why my schedule is a problem. 

I tend to think that they haven't been giving me trainees because I was doing other collateral duties, which they wanted to keep me on because there's few enough people who want to and can do those other duties.  Thing is, I really would much rather be doing mentoring.  It's just much more interesting to me. 

Now, these other duties that I do, there's been a rumor for ages that we might expand that out to other places - bus terminals, the port, etc - and that would become a separate group and get a raise.  And then they're tossing out other lures.  Yesterday one of the trainers said to me and Reverend Ricco: "You're in on the ground floor, you're some of the first people trained in this, and it's about to take off big time, so you might be able to transfer to some other airport and become a coordinator or something - get a regular nine to five job."  (I wasn't sure at first why the 'transfer to some other airport' part of that equation, but just as I was typing it out I realized that would be because we're all at the same training and experience level at this airport, right now.  Our absolute first group has already moved on to train other people all over the country.) 

...

(I took a break in my whinge to get a shot of tequila and talk with Eor about what kind of engine to put in our van, Jadzia Dax Ex Machina [She who is known as Dragon, Destroyer of Vacations].  I think we've come to a decision.  And the few sips of tequila that I've had have helped me feel a little better.) 

So, where was I?  Transferring to get a better job, right. 

The way I see it, if I want to transfer, I want it to be because I want to live in that other place, NOT because I can have a decent job, there.  Also, if I make more money I'll get hooked on that money and be more trapped as far as if I want to look for another job.  Furthermore, I like to have a job that I can leave at work.  Not that I manage that all the time as it is, I worry and frustrate over a lot of crap when I'm not at work, but if I had a nine to five office job I bet I wouldn't have that luxury of just checking out at the end of the day.  People have been encouraging me, with all the best motives in mind, to take the challenge, do something that uses my brain and allows me growth, etc etc, but I'm seeing this as potentially getting in the way of my concentrating on writing and genealogy and whatever else I might want to take up.  (Belly dancing, oil painting, whatever.)  I want my growth and learning to be something I do on my own time.  And people are telling me that I can do all that 'later,' at some unspecified point in the future.  Perhaps when I retire?

I wrote to the person who assigns trainees, this afternoon, just a quick email to let him know that mentoring is my priority and I'd like to be considered, next time there are new trainees to dole out.  But trainees always come in at the beginning of summer (it's a stupid, backward government way of doing things) and people keep urging me to stay with the other program that I don't like until the news comes out as to whether it will go full-time and be a separate entity from traditional screening.  And I'm thinking that will be August, after all the trainees are done. 

I'm also feeling guilty.  If I quit tomorrow I've just wasted all the training I was just given over the past three days.



I think that's about it. 

Comments

[mizzmarvel.livejournal.com]

I think you should do whatever makes you most comfortable. It seems like you're iffy about this 'better' job already.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Yeah, iffy isn't the half of it. eor is so completely sick of me talking about it. He summed it up today pretty concisely: "They keep dangling a carrot out there - doing it full time and having a partner. But it's a carrot you don't want to eat ... no more Upstairs (Checkpoint), no more Downstairs (Baggage), just the same thing, day after day, with the same eight people. You'll have to [invent work] or you'll just go crazy."

The other thing which I neglected to go into in my post, but which does weigh on my mind, is that I've seen several of my teammates get relieved of this duty without any explanaition. If you screw up you're gone, and you don't get to even defend yourself as to what happened. That might be different if laying you off meant actually firing you, but I don't trust it would be much different. Which makes for absolutely no job security. I can't deal with that at all.

I just need to summon the intestinal fortitude to place my resignation, and to stick to it. I think I'll write a formal letter. If I CC it to several people I won't be able to back out of my decision.

[slicesmissus.livejournal.com]

Go with what your heart tells you. Sounds to me like your heart is saying mentoring over this other stuff. You don't seem the type of person to be satisfied by salary - you need to enjoy what you do and have a well rounded life outside work.

[derien.livejournal.com]

I need to at least not hate what I do. And I might not hate it quite so much if I had a partner, but I think the possibility of a partner is slim, and even so, if I basically don't really like the job, the novelty of having a partner might wear off after a couple of weeks. Especially if it's usually the same person. And the team is so small that I'd get tired of ALL the people on it pretty soon, I imagine. Some of them I like, but some really grate on me. A couple of the women on that team are also among the clique which I personally can't stop blaming for driving that one woman to suicide a few weeks ago, and having a thing like that simmering in the back of your mind when you have to see these people every day is really hard.

[dances-withcats.livejournal.com]

If it were me, I'd begin looking for another job while I still had one. When you are offered another job you want, then tender your resignation.

I've been in the situation of being offered a carrot I don't want in order to keep me in a job I hate and that stresses me out. I found that looking for work I wanted kept my spirits up (or at least, kept my depression down to a low-grade dysthymia) because I felt like I was doing something to get out of the situation that was making me miserable but at the same time keeping the level of security I needed in order to deal with my life (a paycheck and health insurance).

And then of course there are always going to be the people who say "OMG you don't wanna work for the GOVERNMENT?!?!?! What's WRONG with you, that's a lifetime GIG@!!!!!!1111oneoneeleventyone!!!" We both know that this is exactly the problem with working for the government--it's a life sentence. :-)

But that's just my $0.02.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Both the different things I was talking about are actually part of my duties as a screener - they're what's called 'collateral duties.' The more collateral duties you take on, SUPPOSEDLY the bigger your potential raise might be, someday in the future if they decide to give us a raise. Although actually when I volunteered to get trained for extra stuff it was just to keep myself from going bugshit from boredom.

And, the gov't is no longer a lifetime gig. Although the other day someone got a five-year award, and someone else teased him "That's like a lifetime achievement award!" For lasting five years with the gov't. Because these days you have to be completely insensitive to not go off your freakin rocker. In fact... I wonder? This just occurred to me. I wonder if they have instituted a policy of trying to drive people crazy so they can get rid of them? Because it's not so easy to fire people from most gov't jobs.