Reset: Lost Job April 17, 2011

[First posted 1/28/11]

Ahhh, well, the reason I haven’t written for so long is, well, within one week of my last post – the one where I’m so happy with my new job? – the two co-workers I had to work most closely with showed themselves as nasty “itches with a B,” and I was harassed daily for the next nine months. Just my luck, the manager who hired me – and who saw through their “itchy” games – handed me over to a new supervisor, who took their side. Every. Single. Time.

Finally got out of there, in May 2010 – only to land in a very pretty prison, surrounded by more nasty people, this time both colleagues and managers: petty backstabbers who felt threatened by me, and didn’t particularly want a fiftysomething in their pretty picture. So they dumped me, last month, four days before my long-planned three-week vacation, cheating me not just out of the vacation itself but also 50+ hours of non-cashable leave time.

I am taking this to appeal, to prove they acted in bad faith and also for age discrimination, for destroying my career with the state.

At the same time, I want no part of working for the State of California. In the 17 months that I worked for two state agencies, only one of my four supervisors, the first one, was fair to me – and I had her for a mere 2 months. The other 15 were hell.

First Week O-K!

First posted 8/6/09]

By this morning, I was telling people that I liked my new job just fine – though I’ve only said about five words to my boss all week! Then again, maybe that’s the secret to a great start: never seeing your boss.

But seriously, folks, it has been a good week. A short week due to Furlough Fridays (the first three Fridays each month), but so far, so good. There was little I couldn’t handle, I got plenty of help when I needed it, and my boss actually is really nice – when she comes up for air between back-to-back meetings. Of the dozen or so people in our office, and the half-dozen or more in other offices that we work closely with, I haven’t met a single truly difficult person yet. Maybe I’m not looking, or maybe I’m too new, but I think that’s an excellent sign.

It’s a very busy, fast-paced office too, and I know that I will be as swamped as my trainer is once she’s transferred all of my duties to me. ¬†But hopefully, by then I’ll have systems in place – or plans for them – that will keep things manageable.

I waited till the second day, to test the waters first, but then I brought out inexpensive but healthy (or not unhealthy) snacks to share with all. I think it set a good tone, started a few conversations, and started the bonding process.

One strategy turned out to have bonus benefits. Our office is working on a large, multiyear project, and it operates much like a startup company, with a recent move to larger offices, new staff coming on board weekly, and the project team made up of state employees, county people, and consultants from several firms.

With staff changing so often and coming from so many different places, we didn’t have an up-to-date staff list. Complicating matters, our department-wide electronic address book requires us to know the person’s last name to look up a phone number or an email address. Until I could get my own address book set up, my own way, I was going to get bogged down trying to reach people quickly in my own office.

So I decided to collect business cards from everyone – state, county, and contractors. Not only was it a help when an urgent matter came up, it turned out to be a great way to get to know people. One contractor spends an hour each way commuting to Sacramento from the Bay Area. A staff lawyer swims for an hour or two after work several times a week. And the executive who came on board when I did has two full-time jobs until they can fill his other position. Try and get a piece of his time!

And I got connected with the grapevine. Not the gossip grapevine – I want to stay away from that, for a long while – but the cultural grapevine. There’s a coffee club, and a water-purifier club. Every day, a staff attorney brings in the overflow from her tomato garden to share ¬†with everyone – take as much as you like (and I did – I love tomatoes!). I took a walking break with a co-worker who knows every hidden path in the area. Who knew a corporate business park, with acres of parking lots, could be so “green”?

A good week, but an exhausting one. I’m back to my volunteer internship for this month’s Furlough Fridays, but then I’ll take a break in September. I’ll need it!

First Day O-K!

[First posted 8/3/09]

Seal of the State of California

I am happy to say I am now, officially, a state worker.

My first-day jitters disappeared the moment I entered the office. There is such a thing as being over-prepared, my job coach said, but I think I was “just-right” prepared. The first days and weeks are absolutely critical in setting the tone for relationships with your boss and colleagues.

So I did a lot of research on admin assisting – a new role for me – on the state office I’ll be working for, and even on my new boss (hey, they have our resumes; why not see something of¬†theirs, by doing a simple Web search?). I got advice from my job coach and an internship colleague about a possible communications glitch with my new boss (which turned out to be nothing). I found advice online for starting a new job, for handling difficult people, you name it (see links below). Before I left this morning, I read once more the encouraging pep talks from close friends.

I felt “just-right” ready when I left for work this morning. It was a busy day, with paperwork, three meetings, setting up my computer, and arranging my desk. The HR and tech people had already set up my computer log-in, email account, and phone number – a first.

And they say the State of California is bureaucratic, ha!

My boss wasn’t available to meet with me today, but she warmly welcomed me and another new (transfer) employee at the morning staff meeting – with cake! At the end of the third meeting – at the end of the day – I made a point of approaching her (she is very approachable) and thanking her for the morning welcome and for the job. We had a nice little chat as we walked out of the conference room; she said she’d meet with me tomorrow to go over my duties, and gave me a few tips for survival too.

The only downside is the salary. After the 14% cut from three furlough days, taxes, and deductions for benefits, retirement, and union dues, my take-home is fully $400 less than I was getting on unemployment – because even before any deductions, I’ve taken a 36% pay cut to work for the state!

Still, I’m glad to have a state job, especially at my age. This morning’s New York Times had yet more evidence of how bleak the landscape is when you find yourself unemployed and you’re over 50.

Here are a few of the admin links I found:

Starting a New Job, from About.com

Your Office Coach: The next best thing to paying for a personal job coach.

Admin Chronicles Blog: Where I found out about…

DeskDemon.com: Forums, tips, tools, you name it

And, last but not least, Laughing All the Way to Work: A Survival Blog for Today’s Administrative Assistant

Enjoy!

IGAJ!! (I Got a Job!!)

[First posted 7/27/09]

Woooooo-hoooooo! After a very dry year – and a very dry decade – I got and accepted a permanent, full-time state job at decent pay (still “underwater,” but not toooo far underwater), for what feels like a good office with good people doing interesting work.

So, you might ask (my job-search coach did!), what was different this time? Why, after so many months of one interview a month, if that, for much worse jobs at much lower pay, why did you get a job offer now? What did you do differently?

“Uh,” I said to my coach, so very articulately, “I hired you?”

Because, really, I hadn’t done anything differently, to speak of. And yet, last week was different.

I mean, I got called to interview for three different jobs in one week – two of them, for good jobs – when the norm was one a month, for a lousy job, if I was lucky. Every time I looked at any job listings, anywhere – for the state, for Craigslist, online, anywhere – I felt like I was witnessing the Incredible Shrinking Job Market. Being in the midst of a budget meltdown, more and more California state jobs, if even if they were exceptions to the hiring freeze, were listed as intermittent (read: on call) and/or limited term (like it sounds: temporary).

For this good job, on Monday I returned home from the first interview to find a message inviting me to a second interview, for Wednesday. On Thursday, my contact for that job had called – and reached – all three of my references – an excellent sign. On Friday the office was closed for a furlough day (the weekend was verrrry long for me). Today, when I got home from my state internship at 12:30, there was no message. I was actually beginning to doubt that I would get the job after all.

But then, just as I was about to leave for an interview for the third (much, much worse) job, the call came with the offer. Needless to say, I canceled the interview. (The interviewer for the second of the three jobs, meanwhile, called today to say I was “overqualified” – code for “too old.” Not for the state, thank you very much!)

So, luck was definitely a major part of this very different week, with the very happy ending (and beginning).

But my coach was also right: I had done some new things (besides hiring him) that definitely helped me land this job:

• The state internship was a huge factor, in four ways:
  • It showed my commitment to state work.
  • It gave me a new reference, who could speak to my ability to “get along” in a state bureaucracy.
  • It gave me a new confidence in myself and in my skills.
  • It gave me insider information for my target job (a professional-level state job), from colleagues who were more than happy to advise and help me.
• My job-search coach was a big confidence builder (thank you, Cliff!), both in his advice and just being there; plus, hiring him reflected a new determination on my part, a last big push to get the job I wanted, before my unemployment ran out early next year.
• I had two other great references, who stuck with me for four long years!
• I took advice from colleagues at the state internship, to start in a job class a step lower than my target job, which this is, and then seek ways to move up later – something that’s much easier once you’re a state worker to begin with.
• I did all the right things, from having good, relevant, concise examples to standard interview questions, to sending thank-you emails immediately (always ask for full names and email addresses of interviewers, and briefly reiterate what you can do for them), to giving my references a heads-up on the type of job and the things the interviewers emphasized, so they could emphasize the same things.
• My wide-ranging background and skills were a good fit, so much so that the hiring manager was willing to overlook my choppy resume in the last ten years (from editor to Web manager to teacher to nonprofit fundraising associate to…state worker??), just as the internship interviewers were.
• And here’s how luck played a part:
  • The fact that I was not a state worker, and that I was used to meeting deadlines, was a plus in this case – this office is not weighed down by bureaucracy – but only together with the commitment to state work I displayed by committing to the state internship.
  • They were on a fast track to hire someone quickly, as you could tell by the week’s time from first interview to job offer.
  • On the org chart, this office is close the head of the entire agency, which likely explains the exemptions they’re getting from the hiring freeze (to hire me along with a half-dozen others), as well as the fast-paced work environment.
  • The work, the boss, the “mission,” the colleagues all felt comfortable to me.
  • There were no “gotchas” – no traveling, no chain to my desk, etc. – I’d have a hard time living with, because of health issues.

Oh, and one more bit of luck: Before my first interview last Monday, I stopped in at Ki Gifts, purposely for good luck. Why? Because the first time I stopped in, I was on my way to the interview for the state internship. When I went back after the interview, Keith, the owner, said that lots of people had done just what I had done – stopped in before and after a job interview – and had always gotten the job.

Well, I did get that “job” – the internship. And now I got this job. I’ll have to stop in tomorrow and let him know. He’ll be happy and astounded for me. “Ki” means “life.” We all can use a bit of “life” before our job interviews!