The Job

About three months ago I started looking for a new job. I didn't tell many people about it, but I had a growing feeling that I wasn't going to be successfull professionally or personally at my current job. There are many reasons that I don't want to go too far into on here. The good news is that I found a new job and have given notice at my old job. My last day of work as a Grants Manager of social service non-profit in East Houston will be Wednesday, January 20th. I have two floating holidays that I don't get paid for, so I'm taking those on Thursday and Friday.

Now the drama with the new job is that I was recommended for it by a woman on my team in grad school. She reads this blog and my team has decided that I should refer to her as "Sunshine" from here on out. After my post on duality, I was terrified that Sunshine would regret recommending me for a position on her team. After all, didn't she have some kind of duty to tell her employer that they were considering hiring a crazy woman? Fortunately, Sunshine didn't do that and my fears and worries were for nothing.

I have four more working days to wrap up my job as a Grants Manager. It feels almost overwhelming when I think of all the deadlines that I have to communicate to people and all the final projects I need to wrap up. Everytime I do some menial, administrative task I think: "And that will be the last batch of thank you letters that I need to write and get my boss to sign" or "This is the last time I'll have to go through this contract." It's kind of beautiful really, just a bit tiring.

At my new job, I'll be working with Sunshine and four other people on a team as a Project Manager for a corporation. The business has about 1,000 employees and 50 branch and satellite offices in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. It's my first corporate job and I was officially welcomed to the team with a tour of the office that included the refrigerator full of soda that is stocked by someone in the office for everyone to drink and hot water in the bathroom. I have to confess: I've been washing my hands in the bathroom in cold water for two-and-a-half years because my non-profit doesn't have hot water. I can't wait to leave that behind.

In honor of the occasion, I've made a list of everything that I won't miss at my current job:

1. Incredibly loud pages in English and Spanish over the phone system for someone to move their car out of the loading only zone.
2. Feeling like I'm constantly in college during finals with all the papers I have to write and submit by their deadlines.
3. My coworkers switching from English to Spanish when I walk in the room so they can discuss the workings of the photocopier in "private".
4. Being called the white girl
5. Reporting on everything I do and am working on a regular basis to my boss.
6. Constantly worrying about if the agency is going to have enough money to stay open.
7. Being blamed for the agency not having enough money because I didn't write enough grants.
8. Feeling like my work was never good enough.

I think that about sums it up. Am I nervous about my new job? Definitely. The former direct supervisor (it's a long story) that interviewed me says he considers the team I'm joining some of the best and brightest minds at the company. He uses them to solve problems and smooth out relationships between distributors and suppliers. It's a totally new field, but I'm excited about learning something new and moving on from my current position.

Did I mention that the job comes with all the Diet Coke I can drink? How could I not be excited?