Short Day At Work

It’s definitely a different feeling walking into the building where I no longer worked, like a distant dream. The new salesperson was the first person I saw when I walked in, but he knew to expect me. I walked through the front entrance to find my big sister from work. We decided to have lunch before I started working.

We had frozen yogurt at our old usual place. The people at the frozen yogurt shop still recognized me (I used to go almost every day). I chose to eat frozen yogurt because I felt like I’ve been overeating lately and I wanted to lose some weight. Unfortunately, it was a chilly day (for LA, which is like 75 degrees Fahrenheit), so we both had goosebumps by the time we finished.

My job today was basically to help the new salesperson with a few procedural tasks and answer any questions he or my big sister from work had about the various accounts I used to manage. I’m very efficient, apparently, because I was done after only two hours! I got a sad, sad paycheck. I wonder if the paper that the check is printed on is worth more than the amount written on it. I should have talked more slowly!

On the bright side, I was very surprised by how much I remember about my old sales job. Considering I left the sales department almost a year ago (mid-February last year), my sales brain started working almost immediately. I found myself saying and analyzing things the way that my old friend/boss did when he used to explain them to me. It’s nice to know that I learned a lot from the job, as short-lived and seemingly irrelevant as it is to my current/future path.

Before I left my old company, I chatted and said bye to my old boss. She acted the way that we had when things were good between us, with only a few awkward silences. I almost wasn’t going to say anything to her at all, but I felt like I should be polite.

After business hours, I met up with my big sister from work, her boyfriend, and the new salesperson (who “just happens to be” her boyfriend’s younger brother) for Korean tofu at BCD Tofu House. The food was amazing, but it offset the light lunch I had. Perhaps I should have controlled myself, but who can resist bulgogi?

Consultant

About a month after my old friend/boss left my old company (back in November), my old work crush left too. The only person who is still there with whom I have any emotional interest is my big sister from work, who took over for my friend/boss when he left.

Now that the “good” people have left (and some of the “not good” people were fired), my big sister at work had to hire a new salesperson. Unfortunately, almost a year after I left the sales department, I’m the only one who remembers how to do all the little tasks that the new person needs to learn. It makes sense actually; I trained everyone else, and now everyone else is no longer with the company.

My big sister from work emailed me earlier in the week to ask me a question about a task I used to do. After I gave her a detailed response, she replied asking if I could go into the office for half a day to help train the new salesperson. I would be a consultant for my old job. If it was anyone else asking (like, for example, my old boss who didn’t talk to me for the last six months of my employment), I probably would have said no immediately.

Lucky for her, my Thursdays are completely open this term. Tomorrow afternoon, I’m going back to work!

And yes, they’re paying me. My big sister from work offered me a rate that’s higher than when I was working there!

First Week Of School

My first full week back in school was busy but good. I’m constantly stressed, but I didn’t feel as overwhelmed as I did on the first day. My classes are quite demanding; I have to study every day just to keep up. I don’t know how I used to have so much free time when I went to college the first time. I used to watch TV, hang out with friends, and go shopping while still managing to get good grades.

The biggest headache last week, though, was getting access to the course websites I need. All the lecture notes, homework, and annoucements are posted on the websites, but they are protected and can only be accessed by students enrolled in the courses. The processing time for my enrollment in my classes took almost the whole week. Because I’m a concurrent enrollment student, I’m not considered a “unversity student,” so until I was officially on their roster, my professors treated me like I wasn’t supposed to be in their classes. Even the advisor in the statistics department called me an “outsider.” Ouch. Fortunately, everything finally worked out by the end of the week, so I don’t need to waste time worrying about missing important information anymore.

In other news, I went in for my last (half) day at work on Tuesday. I spent most of that morning teaching my fellow accounting person a few procedures that only I knew how to do. My old boss barely spoke to me; she was more like her usual self, which was disappointing after the friendly reaction she gave me when I initially told her I was leaving.

I went to lunch with my old boss/friend, my big sister from work, and another coworker who I usually went to lunch with (after my work bestie left). I hadn’t gone to lunch with my old boss/friend in many months, so it was great that we could share one last lunch together. My friend/boss was excited for me; he hopes that I’ll find a nice college boy!

The lunch was bittersweet, but it was a nice end to my time with the company. I said a quick goodbye to my old work crush (nothing dramatic), and I was off to school for an afternoon discussion section. And that was it.

I took time off from studyinig on Saturday to go to the LA County Fair with some friends (one of my best friends from high school and my best friend from college). I had never been to a fair before, and this was a great introduction. It was so much fun! I went on the ferris wheel, pet sheep and goats, slid down a huge slide (riding on a potato sack), and tasted five different wines. I had a foot-long corn dog for lunch, shared a blooming onion for snack, and split a fried twinkie, fried snickers, and fried oreo for dinner. Yum. The fried snickers was the best. I’d go back to the fair just for that!

This Is It

Classes on Friday felt a little (very) overwhelming, maybe because I haven’t been in school for a couple years (and haven’t taken undergraduate classes for longer). Moreover, the classes were overfull, so it seemed unlikely that I would even be able to enroll (concurrent enrollment students are lowest priority because we’re not official university students). It wasn’t until the next day (yesterday) that one of the professors confirmed that I would be able to enroll in two of the three classes I’m trying to take.

You would think that being able to enroll in my courses is a good thing, but I’m ambivalent. On one hand, yes, I didn’t want to leave/quit my job without knowing for sure that I would be able to enroll immediately. On the other hand, I had to decide whether I wanted to finally leave the dead-end but easy and comfortable job I had for a path that is terrifyingly uncertain.

Needless to say, I’ve been agonizing over this all weekend. I’ve been wanting to leave my job for months, yet when the time came, I was hesitant. Honestly, I haven’t completely made up my mind on pursuing the long and arduous statistics path. But the only way I will know if this path is right for me is to try. If I continued to wait until I’m 100% sure of what I want to do, I’d never do anything. So my only option at this point is to just go for it. No looking back, no regrets.

Today, I finally summoned up the courage to tell my boss. I met her in the office (yes, on a Sunday) and basically told her that I was going back to school full-time, effective immediately. My boss reacted so much better than I was expecting. She was very understanding. The news was sudden, but she said school is very important; the company wouldn’t want to get in the way of that. We made small talk about school (how hard it would be to get back into it, but I should be fine because I’m still young), education, and how things have changed over the years (tuition, class sizes, etc.). We were chatting the way we were before our falling out back in April.

I’m going to go to the office on Tuesday to show my boss and the other accounting person how to do my job (it’s really not difficult). I won’t be able to stay the whole day because of a discussion section at school in the afternoon, but Tuesday might be my last day at the office. I told my boss I would still be available for questions or help later on, but we both agreed that going to school and working at the same time is very difficult.

When I told my friends at work, they were all very happy for me. My old boss/friend said he always knew I wasn’t going to stay, he was just waiting for me to make a move (he’s always one step ahead of me). My ex-work crush (or is it my work ex-crush? I guess now he’s my ex-work ex-crush!) is the only one from work with whom I was discussing this decision before any other coworkers, and he was always supportive. He told me to go for it with no hard feelings about leaving. At the end of the day, I have to do what’s best for the most important person in my life (which is me!).

I called up my big sister from work, and she was also very excited about my news. The sad thing is, she’s going to go back to working for our company indefinitely, starting tomorrow! We just missed each other! I’ve already scheduled to have lunch with her on Tuesday when I go to work one last time. We’ll probably have frozen yogurt.

So here I am, getting ready for bed before my first full week back in school. Everything is suddenly different. Everything has changed. I’m terrified on so many levels. But this is it. I’ve taken my life to this point, and there’s no going back now.

Low AR

This has been an amazing week at work. Due in large part to my collecting efforts, my company’s AR (accounts receivable, i.e., the amount of money people owe us) is currently low, which is good (lower AR means lower risk). I finally feel competent at managing our AR.

Not only have our customers been cooperative in paying (mostly) on time, but also my boss has had almost zero contact with me all week. No interrogating questions, no harsh instant messages, no nothing. She’s been out of town the last three weeks, but this is the only week that she loosened her grip over me. She comes back into the office this afternoon, though, so hopefully she won’t ruin my great week.

The icing on the cake was a couple days ago when my big boss told me that our AR was pretty good and actually thanked me! He had never thanked me before, so that was a big a moment.

As much as I don’t want to stay at this company and despite my best efforts not to, I still care about my job. It’s great to be recognized for my work and not be questioned constantly when I clearly know what I’m doing. That’s all I want.

Besides a raise, of course.

Proactive

Times are tough for my company. Since I’m in charge of accounts receivable (the inflow of money owed to us), there is tremendous pressure on me to collect on unpaid past due (and sometimes not quite due) invoices. I’ve been trying to do a good job, but my big boss is getting stressed out by invoices that are even one day past due.

Today, my big boss called an impromptu accounting meeting, the majority of which was stressing how important it is to collect and explicitly showing how frustrated he is by my performance. Less than five minutes after the meeting, he sent me a strongly worded email saying how important my responsibility is to the company and that I need to be more proactive. He also said my job is very difficult, which tells me that my lack of results is all that much more disappointing. I’m paraphrasing the email (I don’t have it in front of me), but I was freaking out for the rest of the day. I really felt like I was going to get fired.

I talked to my old boss/friend about it after work, and he helped to calm me down a little. He knows that I have communication issues with my boss, but I should still ask for help when I need it. My boss is still there to help me (it’s just business, after all). He also said “if you can’t change others, change yourself,” which is an interesting thing to consider.

After I got home, my old work crush called me to see if I was okay. I hadn’t talked to him at all about what happened today. He said he knew that I’m under a lot of pressure right now, but he wanted to remind me that the reason why my bosses give me so much pressure is because they know I can handle it. They expect more out of me. If they didn’t expect so much, they wouldn’t be as demanding. This was a common topic when I was still in sales (since my old boss/friend had very high expectations of me and therefore yelled at me more than his whole sales team combined now), but I often lose sight of that fact these days. His minute-long phone call with me was short but encouraging.

I’m still freaking out a little bit, but talking to my two good friends at work helped a lot. I’m pretty sure tomorrow is not going to be a picnic, but at least I’m not as discouraged as I was initially.

I’ve been watching episodes of I Love Lucy tonight (Season Five, when she goes to Europe) to relax. Lucy is so funny.

“Ok”

My job situation is becoming unbearable. Working for this company was meant to be a stepping stone, a way to learn new things while I figure out what to do next. Lately, though, I feel like the learning has stopped and I’ve overstayed my welcome.

Yesterday, my company received payment on two invoices that I’ve been chasing since I moved to accounting in February. I sent proof of delivery at least four times. I sent my boss an instant message (my only interaction with her is via email or instant messaging) telling her all about it, saying “I just wanted to share the good news,” and her reply was “ok.” There was no “good,” no “thanks.” Just “ok.”

The sad part is that this “ok” is the most nonnegative thing my boss has said to me in nearly three months. Maybe I’m expecting too much to hope for any amount of positive feedback or encouragement. My workplace has become such a negative environment that even an apathetic, neutral response is the most I can ask for.

I need to get out of this, but I don’t have a plan. Do I want to willingly become one of the millions who are unemployed and have no health insurance? I can’t afford to quit. But can I afford not to?

The Same Friend I Knew

Things have been getting increasingly stressful at work. My boss and my big boss (the president of the company) were hounding me all last week about collecting past due invoices. With the economic downturn, money is getting very tight, so I understand that we need to be more vigilant in collecting on invoices before they are too old to collect, but there are better ways to communicate with me that don’t make me feel incompetent.

If my relationship with my boss was better (like it used to be), I wouldn’t necessarily mind the extra push they’re giving me. But with the way things are, any interaction with either my boss or my big boss makes me feel like all the work I do is meaningless and the handful of mistakes I make define my performance. My stress level was getting so high that I felt like I would be either fired or laid off at the end of the week (but I wasn’t). I think the breaking point is coming.

Fortunately, my weekend was pretty good. I spent all of Saturday with my brother and my best friend from elementary school (who I hadn’t seen in 15 years). We ate dim sum with my parents, watched Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (awesome), played video games on the Wii, and spent hours chatting about pretty much everything.

In many ways, it felt like nothing had changed. I don’t remember too many details about when we used to hang out, but there were certain mannerisms and aspects of my friend’s personality that reminded me of the friend I knew so many years ago. I thought, yes, this is the same guy. It was great.

Motivation

I tend to shy away from challenge. When things get tough, I give up pretty easily. My mom even told me so (and when your mom says it, it’s probably true). I joked that I would consider going to medical school (like my brother). She said I would never be able to handle it, because I would give up at the first sign of difficulty.

What my mom said is true, to a point. Math was always difficult to grasp, but I studied it because I was interested in it. It was worth it to me to spend so much time and energy understanding it, because it didn’t feel like work. But once I became discouraged and lost confidence in my ability, it felt like work. The payoff wasn’t worth the effort anymore.

My interest and motivation has always been highly influenced by my supervisor. For example, I never liked math until I had one incredible professor in college who brought the subject to life for me. In graduate school, my conflicts with my advisor directly resulted in my deciding not to continue pursuing a Ph.D. Now, my motivation to work has been all but erased by the awkward work environment created from the strained relationship with my boss.

This dependence on my supervisor has been both an advantage and a disadvantage. When relations are good, I’m happy and I work well (often seemingly independently motivated). When relations are bad, I’m discouraged and lose all drive; tasks that used to be interesting and challenging become laborious and cumbersome. As a result, lofty ideas and goals become unrealistic and impractical fantasies.

So here is my solution to my own shortcomings: go into business for myself. I’m too easily swayed by a supervisor, so why not become my own supervisor? In doing that, I would force myself to stay motivated, because there are no other alternatives. Sink or swim, basically.

Given my interests, skills, and background, the most practical business I’ve been considering is private tutoring. Having seen my company run from different perspectives (I’ve done sales and accounting, but I’ve also helped in production, shipping, quality assurance, and customer service), I think I have some idea on how to run my own small business (I might be eating these words later). I should be fine, especially if I get a lot of advice from Amy (I’m strongly considering partnering with you).

I still have a lot of reservations regarding making the leap into becoming self-employed (often considered a euphemism for unemployed). There is substantial risk involved, and I still have confidence issues, but maybe that’s exactly why I should do it.

One Year Gone

A whole year has passed since I started working with my current company (the anniversary was yesterday, technically). I probably should be happier about it, but in many ways, I’m already planning my escape.

When things were good (and I felt important and competent), I deluded myself into thinking I possibly had a future with my company. After only a few months, I was given a lot of responsibilities (beyond my original position). All the managers trusted me and relied on me. I felt almost like a manager myself. I wanted to be a manager. I wanted to learn, and I was motivated to learn everything about everything.

Yet somehow it all fell away about a month ago. I admit I made mistakes (I always take responsibility for my mistakes, I hate passing blame), and the problems have all been resolved, but the work environment has irrevocably changed. My boss still doesn’t seem to trust me; she barely says two words to me unless it’s absolutely necessary. Without her trust, I no longer feel motivated to learn or even work.

As much as the situation sucks, it has given me an opportunity to take a step back and think about what I want out of my job and out of life. This job was always supposed to be a stepping stone to something better. Everything I’ve learned in the past year has given me the boost that I needed. Now it’s just a matter of finding my next step. To take that chance I’ve been considering.