Continuing on the theme of major life events that have happened to me relates to work. For the longest time I was complaining about how I wanted to leave my job. My old dream to become a daytrader in the stock market was just that... a dream. But I don't have that desire anymore. So no love lost there. I did however wind up getting laid off from work after almost 20 1/2 years of employment in 2017.
The writing was on the wall in early 2017. My manager Marsha announced in a team meeting that by the end of 2017, the team staff would likely be cut in half. I managed to dodge layoffs since 2007 and knew my time was coming to an end. Ten years of dodging was a good run. I remember having a 1-on-1 with Marsha and asked her if I would make it to my 20th anniversary in April. She responded in the affirmative. I was happy to hear that just to have that milestone as I'm not likely to hit that anywhere else. Not to mention I get to pick one more milestone anniversary gift. I ended up choosing a mini-grandfather clock which I'm still enjoying.
In July 2017 I got the confirmation that my last day would be end of September. I remember just nodding when Marsha gave me the news. I remember her asking me if I had any feelings on it since I didn't give any reaction. I told her that I appreciated getting the heads up.
I used that time to try and find another gig. Those interviews sucked. One of my most memorable ones was one for a business analyst role at Societe Generale in downtown Chicago. I was originally scheduled to interview with one lady but then she wound up working from home and I met another. She was going to have the original lady log in via a Zoom-type app that wasn't Zoom...can't remember what it was. So my interview was at 8am and of course I was fifteen minutes early. The time came and basically they wasted nearly twenty minutes of my 45 minutes trying to get the "Zoom" to work. Finally the other lady decides to do the interview alone. Basically I barely had time to get my points across and she basically insulted me by saying she didn't think I would fit in because the team was very intelligent. So she was indirectly calling me dumb. I so wanted to cuss that lady out. I reiterated that I was a quick learner and felt like if given a chance I would be able to contribute. Needless to say I didn't get that job. My attempts to reach out to the original lady fell on deaf ears.
Basically I had interviews that led nowhere. Thankfully since I had worked at my previous employer for almost 20 1/2 years (missed the complete half by two weeks...*LOL*), I had a great severance package that was 40 weeks worth of my salary. That made things a lot less painful but I still was struggling to find something.
I finally was able to land a six month contract business analyst position with a popular aviation leader with headquarters in downtown Chicago. That was a great role and I was so sad when it ended. I had tried to find other contracts within the same company and even befriended one of my teammates there who really tried to help me but nothing materialized.
As a segue I really enjoyed my time working downtown. I loved taking the train in the morning (even if it was crazy packed) and walking downtown to their offices. Plus there were so many food options to choose from for lunch. I even befriended a lady named Neela (the one I mentioned who tried to help me find another gig) and we would exercise by taking the steps on several floors and hanging out downtown. I worked there from March through September of 2018 so thankfully didn't deal with snow but I hated rainy days as I would get drenched walking from the station to the building and since I was a contractor, I didn't have my own space where I could store a hair dryer or a change of clothes. So I'd have to use the blowers in the men's restroom to try and dry out best I could between other men trying to use the restroom. The other thing I didn't care for was constantly being stopped by solicitors and beggars. Some of them would get nasty with you if you kept walking and not listen to what they were selling. But really those were the only gripes I had.
So I wasn't having any luck finding any other business analyst roles and interviews were getting harder to come by. Sally reminded me of her time working at Home Depot and Aramark before finally getting a corporate job again in 2014. She told me I needed to check my pride at the door and take a retail job.
There were a couple things that stopped me from going that route right away. One was that I wasn't ready to give up on getting a business analyst role. The other one was that I needed to go to Detroit to help care for my sick Mom. At the time she had her hysterectomy and I wanted to be available to help my parents.
After my Mom's initial recovery, I decided to apply for a warehouse position at Amazon. That resulted in me going to an informational Amazon session at a local job banks site. From there I was directed to apply via another website for a job. There was a Warehouse that's ten minutes from my home. Unfortunately there were no openings there so I applied at a location 90 minutes away even though it wasn't ideal.
That led me to attend another orientation session where I needed to submit to a drug test. Assuming I passed the test, I would be given a start date. I did pass and my start date was 05/08/2019. I was scheduled to work 4 1/2 hours a day from Wednesdays to Sundays.
It's been a surreal humbling experience working at Amazon. It definitely felt like a huge step down organizing packages into duffels and transporting those duffels to Amazon drivers. It's definitely not what I thought I'd be doing at this stage in my life. But having a job is better than having no income going in.
Within two months I was made into a permanent employee. I attempted to relocate to the facility close to my home but that led nowhere. I decided to relocate to a larger facility that was 40 minutes from my home. That was around the time my Mom died. I used a bereavement day on my first day at the new location and came in the next day for orientation. My new schedule was a full-time one for 10 hours a day from Thursdays to Sundays.
My job there was different than at my first location which was actually a smaller secondary facility that resorted packages to later pass to the drivers. For this role I would be picking customer order items off giant pods driven by "Roomba" robots.
One thing I had to get used to is that your breaks are timed and you have to be back at your stations in the allotted time or else you get Time Over Task points. Breaks are 30 minutes but actual time is more like 15 minutes between the time it takes to walk to my car and back.
For the most part the people are nice. I did have one jerk call me a "FAGGOT" after I accidentally walked into the same path he was planning to walk. But thankfully at the time of the incident, I had planned to move to a different role with a part-time schedule. My hope was that doing a part-time schedule would give me time to find a corporate job. Yeah that's still in progress.
My new and current schedule is Saturdays and Sundays for 10 hours each. As a bonus since my schedule is a weekend one, I would get differential pay of an additional $3 an hour. I get that differential even if I work extra days. My current role primarily is to pack items into boxes from those that are picked. Occasionally I get called back to pick which I actually prefer since you're mostly by yourself whereas in packing, everyone is closer. Plus in the summer months it's cooler in the picking area.
So that's been my work life. But I have been making some moves that I'm hoping will help me get my work life back on track. But that's for another time.
No comments:
Post a Comment