Monday, August 14, 2006

Take This Job And Shove It

Figured it's time to give you a rundown of what's had me so stressed the past couple of weeks, and I now feel like I'm at liberty to write about it.

I essentially decided I hated my job a few weeks ago. Things were fine at first, but over time I came to the worst realization that you can have at a job -- that my bosses were complete and utter assholes. I would honestly go to management meetings on Mondays and wonder if there had been a Bad Idea Convention that everyone else had gone to without telling me. Very frustrating.

Fortunately for me the stars must have been aligned in some mystical way. Here's how things pretty much panned out...

Monday (two weeks ago): I decide the fat lady has sung -- I update my resume and send it out to a few companies and recruiters

Tuesday: I make appointments for a few interviews.

Thursday: I get a job offer from New York, even though I wasn't looking there, from a company that wanted to know if I had moved back because they still wanted me on board over a year after I had been talking to them about a certain position. I unfortunately had to let them know that I was in Australia and not going to be back in the near future.

Friday: Get a job offer from a company here in Sydney. Sounds good, but I tell them I will need a few more days to think about it. Spend all weekend worrying about what I should do.

Tuesday (last week): During my lunch break I go to my second interview with a big multinational company. By the time I get back to my office I have an offer.

Wednesday: After sleeping on it, I accept the offer from the big company, and withdraw myself from consideration for several other positions before I get any more offers that will just make me stress even more about making a decision.

Friday: Resign from my current job.


So that's that. I'm still in shock at how quickly things moved, and now I'm trying to work out how I can get some time off between jobs. I felt a bit guilty at the thought of this originally, but I've just gone to have my Australian taxes done and I'm getting about a month's pay refunded to me, so I can now justify napping and watching music videos for at least 2 weeks straight if that's really what my heart desires.

Of course just in case I get too relaxed, I now have to go through the entire visa sponsorship process AGAIN, and the big companies do it the way you're supposed to which means I have to have all kinds of documents that I didn't even know existed just to apply. Hopefully they haven't hit their quota for loud drunk kinda-black-but-not-really Americans yet.

5 comments:

Cristin said...

Congratulations! Quitting is the new working, I'm telling you.

Zander said...

Yeah it is an interesting feeling, I've never quit to leave for another job before. (Actually I almost did but then the company basically "laid me off" because they heard I was hours away from giving notice.)

Much more exciting though when I know I will have time to unwind before the next gig starts.

Anonymous said...

congrats this kind of shit would only happen to you..

miznyc said...

Congrats to you! Your whole job search reminded me of this interesting article I'd read about maximizing vs. satisficing and searching for jobs.

You have the right idea about withdrawing offers to avoid stress. But then again, I'm a satisficer.

Here is the link to the article. It's really fascinating. It's called "Doing Better but Feeling Worse. Looking for the 'Best' Job Undermines Satisfaction":

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01677.x

And that last commentor is right. You are the luckiest bastard I know. I wonder why you've not played Lotto yet...

Anonymous said...

are new mother's allowed to say bastard?:-)