5 lessons from 3 bad jobs

LONG POST AHEAD!

So now that I have officially resigned, it’s time to evaluate what went wrong with my career journey for the past 5+ years. No, it’s not a deliberate exercise in torture - I believe all jobs, good and bad, teach us something. If I don’t learn from my experience in Crazy Co and other companies, I’ll be doomed to repeat them.

After all, most project managers have a session at the end of each project to evaluate what went wrong in order to prevent such things from happening again.

It’s tempting, however, to lay the blame entirely at the employer’s feet. I DO have some responsibility over my situation as well.

NO.

Lesson 1: When the job changes on you, and you hate it, don’t stay too long

Ye Olde Company was my longest employer, and there’s a good reason why so many of us worked there for decades. However, over the years, the company morphed into something we could no longer recognise.

Many of us old timers hung on because we remembered how it was, and sometimes we relate to it as if it had not changed. It’s like having a second husband, but treating him like he was your first husband.

I returned to Ye Olde Company after years abroad. The job was something I swore to myself I would never do again, but I took it on because of practical reasons. I needed a job to get me back on my feet at home again and I needed stability. Ye Olde Company offered both. Besides, I could transfer out to another department in the future, I reasoned.

It turned out to be a great decision. At least for a year. I was recovering from bad burnout when I accepted the job and I knew I couldn’t handle a high-stress job. I could do the job’s tasks in my sleep and there were long down time periods during our 8-hour working period. Meaning, I could actually spend hours at work doing nothing! I was even encouraged to “read a book” during those times!

We could also shift around our off days, so sometimes I would work on public holidays, then use those off days to work 3 days a week and take the rest of the week off. It was a neat arrangement for most of us. I used this to take regular, 3 to 4-day mini holidays monthly without having to touch my leave entitlement.

Also, the unusual working hours (I worked the afternoon shift) enabled me to do chores in the morning and engage in my passion projects. I also paid off my biggest debt - my mortgage - during the stint at Ye Olde Company because the odd hours enabled me to run to banks and lawyers’ offices. Also, the steady income enabled me to handle the bills I had to pay.

Then, in Year 2, the job changed for the worse.

I was put on more and more night shifts. Being a morning lark, the night shifts were unbearable - I would take days to recover. Once a month night shifts became nearly every week. Then it became twice a week. My 3-4 day mini holidays became sleeping marathons.

My health deteriorated. I had gastrointestinal issues so severe that I could not eat anything other than soup. My weight actually plummeted. It’s actually very tough for me to lose weight!

I also had shooting chest pains. (It turned out to be muscle tension from bad posture at my work desk, fortunately!)

Don't wait till you lose it. Trust me.

As the company came under severe financial pressure, management became more and more callous and calculative. It’s famed empathy and compassion for its staff became a thing of the past. People were shamed for minor mistakes (we actually had a shame board where they showcased people’s errors!). Older, experienced staff were coldly let go and replaced by younger, cheaper staff.

My health issues and the company’s cultural shift made it difficult to keep my dissatisfaction with my job at bay. It was a job I didn’t enjoy doing - I found it uninteresting and repetitive - but I tolerated it due to the benefits of the job. However, with my health suffering, I knew that whatever benefits I had enjoyed was no longer enough.

I also knew that if I stayed longer, it would stunt my career prospects - I was learning no new skills that would make me more marketable.

There were so many strikes against the job by mid Year two, but I hung on because I loved Ye Olde Company. Or rather, what it used to be.

I stayed on until my body completely broke down. On hindsight, I should have left by mid Year-Two. I would have had more strength and energy to explore more job options and reflect what I really wanted in my day job.

Because I hung on until I couldn’t hang on anymore, I became desperate and took the first job that came along - Company A - despite it’s financial problems.


Lesson 2: Can you tolerate the risk that comes with the job? If not, don’t take the job!

While researching Company A, I discovered that it was in the process of being sold. That meant that if I did accept the job, there was no guarantee that the new owners would keep me around, especially since the job was an experimental, non-essential one - a “good to have”, not a “must have”. Most companies would outsource my job.

It would be a good job for someone who wanted to have a brief stint or who was willing to take on the risk of being jobless without warning.

But I wanted a steady, reliable job to depend on so I can work on other things the side.

So, naturally, my gut screamed, NOPE.

But I was desperate, burned out from Ye Olde Company. I reasoned that the worst case scenario won’t happen as it was said that the sale won’t happen for many years yet.

Unfortunately, it did - three months after I started the job! My department was restructured. My tasks were given to someone else and I ended up twiddling my thumbs for weeks. It was a matter of time before Company A retrenched me. I knew it was time to move on.

Lesson 3: Listen to your gut

After Ye Olde Company and Company A, I was determined to be more careful with my job search. I actually turned down a couple of jobs which I deemed an ill fit before Crazy Co came headhunting for me.

As a person whose emotions led me down a not-so-great path far too many times, I tend to not trust them too much. But after ending up in two back-to-back “bad” jobs, I’ve come to realise that the fear and anxiety I felt before accepting each job was valid. These emotions were telling me something.

None was clearer than with Crazy Co. I knew something was “off” when various managers regaled me with how bad the previous staff was and that the company lacked “mature” people. My gut clenched with distaste at what I was hearing.

If your gut is screaming, RUN FOR THE HILLS

Big lesson: How a person speaks of colleagues/staff is a big indicator of how they treat them. It was a huge clue that Crazy Co viewed their staff as children who needed to be disciplined and shepherded. That meant a top-down, do-as-I say style of management. It also highlighted the company’s culture of disrespect since they viewed adults as immature! Crazy Co felt that people should be honoured and lucky to even work with them.

My gut was telling me that I would not fit there, and I would probably be treated with disrespect.

My gut was 100% spot on.

Lesson 4: Do not be swayed by the company image or benefits

But I chose to ignore my gut because Crazy Co was prestigious, fought for a cause I believed in and I was entranced by the company benefits, which included remote working priveleges. There was a good chance that I could segue the job into part-time work.

A few people even came to me and told me not to accept Crazy Co’s job offer. “Everyone is trying to get out,” said a friend. “Don’t do it!”

But the Glassdoor reviews seemed largely positive, I thought.

I can handle it, I thought to myself after all. After all, no job was perfect.

I couldn’t, in the end - for very good reasons.



Lesson 5: Set firm boundaries

Because I had such a short stint at Company A, I felt really pressured to make Crazy Co work eventhough I knew by Week 2 I had landed in cray-cray land. I was determined to stay at least a year - the length of my contract. So this determination and the fear of losing my job before the term was up made me put up with things I shouldn’t.

As a result, I often avoided as much confrontation as I could.

What I realised now is that my ex-boss was testing my boundaries. X wanted to see how far she could go. A little cutting remark here, a put-down there. With each word, my self-confidence was chipped away. With each boundary breaking behaviour, she grew bolder.

Nowhere was my boundaries more broken than with my workload. I was given the work of 3 people - many of the tasks I was given were not the tasks I had agreed to do when signing the contract. Each time, I told myself, “I can handle it”. I said yes, when my mind screamed no. I didn’t tell her the truth. I didn’t set firm boundaries.

I also didn’t set boundaries for myself.

I allowed work to creep into my personal space. I worked on weekends just to catch up. I worked after hours. I checked my phone all the time. I ate crap food. I reasoned that these sacrifices were worth it as it will help me keep my job.

It wasn’t worth it, of course. I ended up with eczema, my IBS flared up and I became insomniac.

No job is worth your health. No job.

After my bad experiences, I decided to do things differently during my job hunt this time:


How I applied my lessons:

• By month six, I knew Crazy Co was a lost cause. I didn’t wait too long and began applying for jobs. Six months was enough time to deem if it wasn’t for me.
• A potential employer asked me if I would consider joining his company. I turned him down. Why? Because he told me his current employee was terrible and pointed her out with a sneer. His disrespect for her was a clear indication what kind of boss he would be. Bullet dodged. 
• I turned down a job offer from a company because I discovered dodgy HR practices in its past. What befell these poor employees may not befall me, but I knew I wanted a more stable job after Crazy Co, so it was a no-go.
• With my new co, GC, their structured, organised hiring practices gave me confidence. I liked that I got to hang out with the team twice during the interviews. To test if we were a personality fit, I created a light-hearted video during my presentation. They laughed. I knew then that these people understood my sense of humour and would appreciate my personality.

These lessons were very tough to learn, but necessary. As a result of these painful experiences, I’ve learned what's the bad I can live with at a job, and learned to recognise jobs that don't suit me.