Check It At the Door?

You’ll notice as a part of my profile I talk about Jesus. He is the most important thing to me, and just because I haven’t mentioned him yet, doesn’t mean he’s been left out of the career piece of my life. On the contrary, in the same way that I don’t know how to go to a job and have it just be a job, or have co-workers that are just random people I spend my day with, I also don’t know how to check Christianity at the door when I go to work. I believe in Jesus Christ and that is the very core of who I am. What that means is when I’m making decisions or encountering a situation, I am usually 1) Praying and 2) Trying to decide how to enter that situation being the best example of Christ I can possibly be. Jesus loves and gives grace to me. I am definitely flawed and have my fair share of weaknesses (I’m sure you’ve figured out plenty of them already). I want to approach every relationship – even at work – with the same love and grace that Jesus gives me.

Many people I know and love, including my husband, work in ministry. That means that the places of their employment generally have Christ inter-woven throughout their values and the day-to-day operations of the business. It is hard for me to have different expectations than that in my jobs. I function and think as a Christian, yet I have to remember that my co-workers and business owners do not always function and think like Evangelical Christians. They may be Catholics, Athiests, Muslims etc. etc. Would I love for them to understand the love and grace that Christ has for them, certainly! I still can’t expect them to function and enter situations as Christians. I have always felt called to work in a job outside of a church or specific ministry. I appreciate the people that listen to their calling to work in those areas, I just don’t feel like that is where my calling is. I think the two work environments come with different challenges. So my personal challenge for today is this…

If I feel called to work in a job outside of ministry, what does it look like to live and love as a Christ-follower and yet not expect those around me to live and love as Christians do?

I’d like to say I’ve got it figured out, but I think God has a lot of work to be doing in me in this area.

Third Time's a Charm...

Company #3 - In an attempt to shorten my posts, I had split this experience into six “pre-written” shorter posts. In the end, what is in the past is just a small part of this journey, so I decided to scrap the six posts and only open up this very fresh wound once. This job was THE perfect fit. It used my skills and talents well. I took what I had learned from previous jobs and applied all of those lessons. I was working hard, getting to interact with and help people, and getting to organize and put procedures in place to help this business run as smoothly as possible. There was one problem: people don't have owners manuals and you never know what personalities you're going to get. I find value in paying attention to details. I spent hours upon hours combing through details finding mistake after mistake. I was told I needed to have more fun and that if a job wasn’t going to be fun, it wasn’t worth going to work. I was excited every time I found a small mistake to fix because that meant preventing a much larger mistake down the road; and finding a small mistake early means saving time and money down the road too. Being able to contribute in that way to the business WAS FUN for me (as weird as that sounds). That didn’t stop the same message being told to me again and again - I need to be less serious and have more fun. It was an odd dichotomy to feel like I felt more responsible for the business than the boss-man did.

I should note that somewhere in the middle of my career I realized that I care, deeply! As mentioned in an earlier post, some people can work, go home, and not let the stress of a job affect them. I do not know how to turn on an “I-don’t-care” button. I do care. Co-workers aren’t random people to put-up-with on a daily basis. They are people I spend a large amount of my time with. If something in a business or relationship isn’t working, I desire to see it get restored or resolved. Restorative, Responsibility and Harmony are all part of my “strength’s” – it’s an interesting mix. If not handled carefully, these three can quickly become weaknesses. I take responsibility for my work and my relationships. It is who I am.

Anyway, through a variety of circumstances, my workload increased…significantly. An already serious, hard-working employee was being asked to carry a burden far larger than any one employee should have been carrying. This didn’t exactly help with the “have more fun” concept. I tried to set boundaries, and somehow they failed. I was doing tasks that fit my talents perfectly, but too much of something you love still results in burnout. I agonized for months over how to make this great job work somehow, but I finally handed over my two-weeks-notice letter. The response, “You can turn in your key and your time sheet and just leave now.”

Wow! What a kick in the gut!  I spent months talking to my husband about what the right thing to do would be and in a few short seconds it was done.  These were my thoughts then, and I still ponder these today:

~What is it about me that is so distasteful that you feel like you are better off without any admin at all than having me around to work for two more weeks?
~What action of mine has suggested that I am such a poor employee that I would do anything to compromise the success of this business in the next two weeks?  What action has suggested I can’t be trusted?
~You now have no one to do the admin work.  I set up systems and tracked it all and now I won’t have the opportunity to train someone else in it.  I still care about this business and am sad this is how it’s ending.

There is a make-up in my genes, the very way God made me, that won’t allow me to not care.  I DO care.  I am very sad at the broken relationships and the abandonment with which I feel I left that business.  I continue to pray for the people who go in and out of the doors each day and hope that they are doing well despite the crazy ending to a tough relationship.

That pretty much brings you up to speed - so the job hunting journey truly begins…giddy up!

Another Chance At This Employment Stuff!

Company #2 - A kid's gym. Yes, I went from working with contractors and executives in Corporate America to working in a small franchise with about five employees and teaching childrens classes at a gym. I attempted to take what I'd learned from my past and applied to jobs with male supervisors, at smaller businesses, and jobs that had some people interaction. It was only after accepting this position that I realized the company went about their hiring process slyly. Although interviewed by a male, I didn't have a male supervisor, I had a female supervisor. Also, upon starting my first day, I found out the business had only been open three weeks prior to hiring me! Within the first week of the job, I could smell the dysfunction. There were three full-timers at this point: the owner, the newbie (me), and one other lady. I eventually realized they hired me so the owner could fire the other full-timer! When she left, the dysfunction continued. My boss told me information about other employees, business and personal finances, and general running of the business that was never meant for my ears. All of the knowledge I had about the corrupt happenings made day to day work incredibly difficult! I even went so-far-as to call the franchise corporate headquarters to try to talk to them about what was going on. They would not talk to me because they said they only correspond with franchise business owners, not disgruntled employees. That was a dead-end. Months of constant tension ended in disaster.  I had been very clear about my expectations for my supervisor, for my hours, and for my roll as an employee. They started trying to challenge my hours and my responsibilities. While I tried to compromise, they would not give at all. In the end, since I wasn't the business owner, I had to choose to stay or leave. After many tearful nights and long discussions with my husband (somewhere in all of this we had gotten married), we decided it would be best to put in my two-weeks-notice. It's a little scary to do such things without another job lined up, but thankfully I have a wonderful father who runs a production plant and he had some extra work that allowed me to be a temporary worker. So, I did it. I handed in my two-weeks-notice letter. I spent the next week prepping my students - you have to be extra careful with kids you know, they get attached.  I had prepared all of my classes that "next week" would be my last week. And then, at the end of my first of two weeks, my boss dropped the bomb - she asked me to leave the gym that day. I was stunned. Not for myself (obviously I had chosen to leave the job in the first place), but for my students! I had let them down. It was now going to look like I had lied to them. I cried - a lot. Thankfully one of the other employees saved all of the little gifts, cards, and flowers the kids brought in for me the next week and she even got me their addresses so I could write them thank yous. Then, that was that. The gym was gone and the job-hunting began.  I found out later that the gym eventually closed its doors.

Lessons learned:
-I can’t work for women supervisors.
-I don’t like knowing more about a business than I should.
-Sometimes the right thing and the hardest thing are the same thing.
-It is important to compromise with an employer, but you can’t let them take advantage of you.

Stay tuned for Company #3

An Introduction

Well, let's start off with an introduction, shall we?  First off, how did I get myself into this job-less situation?

Company #1 - I worked for a distribution company as a receptionist.  It was my first job out of college.  I liked the work.  People would call in, you'd start to recognize their voices, and they were friendly.  One thing about working with contractors, they are very friendly and a little rough around the edges.  It made for quite a few laughs.  It took a few months, but eventually, I started to realize that all of the tasks were becoming pretty simple and mundane.  I had a female boss and I started to pick up on the fact that she would throw in little jabs about other employees, or begin to tell gossip about things that I didn't need to know.  As soon as I realized that, things went into a tale spin.  Women are funny creatures, even more so when you start to challenge them.  In short, I interviewed for a different position in the company (with a male supervisor) and got the heck out of dodge! - oh don't worry, my boss did plenty of talking about me as well.  The funny thing about being a nice person, people have your back and watch out for you!

Alas, I was in a new position.  It was at a higher level, higher pay grade, and some stinkin' great benefits (which I learned later how much I should have appreciated)!  I worked for a couple of executives and did a lot of interesting work.  I REALLY developed my skills with Excel and Word and got to know the in's and out's of Corporate America-sometimes more than I wanted to know!  The funny thing is, once you learn your job, you do everything a little bit faster.  It didn't take too long to realize I didn't have enough to do.  My boyfriend (later to become my husband) and I spent much more time than I care to admit writing e-mails back and forth during the work day.  I am a hard worker.  When I'm at work, I like to be AT work.  Despite attempts by my supervisor to find more work for me to do, boredom set in.  On top of that, I started to realize how lonely it is sitting in an office all day while the executives around you are constantly out traveling.  It's a curious thing about me; I love being around people and serving them, but I also don't like to be bothered when I need to concentrate on work.  In the end, boredom and loneliness were no match for the great salary and benefits.  After about a year and a half, I started looking for other jobs.  This was the first (and only) position I left peacefully.  I had the opportunity to work with kids and get a little "better" title (which apparently is a big deal in America) and that was enough for them to send me along happily.

Lessons Learned:
-I realized some people can go to a job, work, and then go home every single day.  They don't need to like or love what they do.  They just go, make money, and use it to buy things so they can enjoy life outside of a job.  I am not one of those people.  40 hours a week is more than I spend anywhere else.  If ANYTHING is going to get 40 hours of my week, it better have some meaning and purpose outside of a salary and benefits!
-Some amount of people interaction is important.
-Female supervisors probably won't work well for me.
-Corporate America is a sterile and systems-driven place.  There is no personalization.  Everything works in the confines of the set-up systems, whether the systems work in every situation or not!  I don't know that it's for me.
-I don't like to be bored at work.  It's a waste of time and life.

Stay tuned for Company #2