52 weeks later...
Surprised to find my last entry here was almost twelve months ago - once upon a time I lived on Live Journal, I do miss those days, when I do ever check my friends page now days it’s pretty threadbare on decent entries from people.
So what’s happened since last August? Well it frankly has been a trying 12 months in many many ways. Probably the most pressing and obvious was the financial aspect of things. Trudi decided last November that she could no longer stand her job at the Salary Packaging company; her solution to this situation? Quit. To say I was horrified really understates it, we really aren’t all that well off that we could support one of us being unemployed for an extended period of time. In the months leading up to this, Truds admitted many times she hated her job and her team leader. I suggested then she should look into finding another job, something she never did. So she bottled it all up until she said she couldn’t face another day at work and just emailed her boss and quit. I’ve never really been unemployed, but I felt November/December may not be the best time to be searching for a job, so despite Trudi’s confidence that she’d easily be able to find something else, particularly with one of her former employer’s competitors, I was much less optimistic. Unfortunately I proved to be correct, she was out of practise in interviewing, her CV was poorly written and out of date and most tellingly she didn’t have a suitable answer for prospective employers for why she’d quit with her previous company. Long story short, it took over six weeks to find another job - that ran us pretty close to not being able to afford to pay the mortgage. What was worse was that she didn’t take the initiative in having all that time off to clean the house or anything like that, I still had to procure and cook dinner - I’m a long way from a chauvinist but if you are contributing nothing financially then I’d suggest it is good form to contribute domestically. But we survived and came out the other end with Truds employed at a large financial institution (not the one I work at).
However the drama did not end there. Truds had decided to take a cruise with a friend earlier in 2012, she’d already paid for it when she quit her job, said cruise was for 3 weeks or so (Sydney-Honolulu), after which she planned to do some travel in the USA meaning she’d be gone almost 5 weeks all up. She told this to prospective employers as she should have. She ended up being offered two jobs a day apart, she’d advised both of the intended leave. When she reminded one company of her travel plans, they changed their minds and said they couldn’t take her on with that leave 3 months away. The financial institution said nothing as she started her training, she bumped into the recruiter at work on day 2 and reminded her of the leave, just to be on the safe side as no one had mentioned it. The recruiter initially denied she’d ever mentioned the leave (a lie) then changed her tune to not remembering it (much more likely she forgot to tell the company), and advised that she talk to her team leader. Team leader says it’s a big issue and that there’s no way they’d allow her to take that leave, even unpaid. In between a rock and a hard place, Truds lied and said she’d cancel her leave so that she could work up until she had to go overseas. This introduced a new problem - recovery from the financial shock of her two months off work would take time to fix, how the hell were we to afford to pay the mortgage with her off work again for a month and half! What if it took her six weeks to find another job when she got back?
Well we’re still here; we managed to organise with the bank after much too and fro to suspend our mortgage payments for three months whilst Trudi was unemployed and travelling. The upside to this was it allowed us to resume our original plan and I visited the USA also, I flew over and visited friends before catching up with Trudi and her friend in San Diego. It was a good trip - taken in less than the best circumstances, we had no where near the level of savings I’d prefer before taking a major overseas trip. I’m a worrier and paranoid at the best of times, the last thing I need is the prospect of a large debt hanging over my head at our return. I didn’t enjoy the trip as much as I could have as I was worried at every turn about how much stuff was costing. I really shouldn’t blame it on anyone I suppose, but if Truds had managed to stick out a few more months in her job she could have taken paid leave, my 2012 bonus wouldn’t have been pissed against a wall keeping us afloat over Xmas. It would have been a much more relaxing holiday. Of course the flipside to that coin is that Truds would have had to spend six months at a job she didn’t like. What makes it difficult is that she has never detailed what it was about her job and team leader she hated so much? She said she felt bullied, I am sympathetic to that’s I’ve been bullied at work and at school. But she never gave any detail about what that bullying consisted of? What her team leader did that made her feel that way?
Anyhow, we are back on track now.. for the time being at least. Truds managed to find a job fairly quickly after getting back from the trip. She did waste two weeks before starting to look, if it had been me, I’d have been on Seek.com the day after we got back into the country, but that’s me I suppose. She’s paid fairly well to do a job she finds dull - hopefully she sticks at this one.
My job hasn’t changed in the past twelve months - I’m well paid to do a job that doesn’t challenge me, doesn’t interest me and frankly bores me to tears. I like the people I work with, that makes life much easier. We just went through a restructure, basically an excuse to sack people. Fortunately or unfortunately I was not made redundant. We had a meeting last week where we were supposed to find out about the impact on people in our area, at the beginning of the meeting I had an oh shit moment when I considered I might be made redundant. Then I realised they’d likely have to pay me a redundancy pack in that instance - somewhere in the vicinity of 50-60 K - I was actually a tiny bit disappointed that I’d kept my role. With that kind of money, I could pay the mortgage for six months and really take some time our to take a breath and think about what my next step should be. Alas, didn’t happen, maybe next time!
So what’s happened since last August? Well it frankly has been a trying 12 months in many many ways. Probably the most pressing and obvious was the financial aspect of things. Trudi decided last November that she could no longer stand her job at the Salary Packaging company; her solution to this situation? Quit. To say I was horrified really understates it, we really aren’t all that well off that we could support one of us being unemployed for an extended period of time. In the months leading up to this, Truds admitted many times she hated her job and her team leader. I suggested then she should look into finding another job, something she never did. So she bottled it all up until she said she couldn’t face another day at work and just emailed her boss and quit. I’ve never really been unemployed, but I felt November/December may not be the best time to be searching for a job, so despite Trudi’s confidence that she’d easily be able to find something else, particularly with one of her former employer’s competitors, I was much less optimistic. Unfortunately I proved to be correct, she was out of practise in interviewing, her CV was poorly written and out of date and most tellingly she didn’t have a suitable answer for prospective employers for why she’d quit with her previous company. Long story short, it took over six weeks to find another job - that ran us pretty close to not being able to afford to pay the mortgage. What was worse was that she didn’t take the initiative in having all that time off to clean the house or anything like that, I still had to procure and cook dinner - I’m a long way from a chauvinist but if you are contributing nothing financially then I’d suggest it is good form to contribute domestically. But we survived and came out the other end with Truds employed at a large financial institution (not the one I work at).
However the drama did not end there. Truds had decided to take a cruise with a friend earlier in 2012, she’d already paid for it when she quit her job, said cruise was for 3 weeks or so (Sydney-Honolulu), after which she planned to do some travel in the USA meaning she’d be gone almost 5 weeks all up. She told this to prospective employers as she should have. She ended up being offered two jobs a day apart, she’d advised both of the intended leave. When she reminded one company of her travel plans, they changed their minds and said they couldn’t take her on with that leave 3 months away. The financial institution said nothing as she started her training, she bumped into the recruiter at work on day 2 and reminded her of the leave, just to be on the safe side as no one had mentioned it. The recruiter initially denied she’d ever mentioned the leave (a lie) then changed her tune to not remembering it (much more likely she forgot to tell the company), and advised that she talk to her team leader. Team leader says it’s a big issue and that there’s no way they’d allow her to take that leave, even unpaid. In between a rock and a hard place, Truds lied and said she’d cancel her leave so that she could work up until she had to go overseas. This introduced a new problem - recovery from the financial shock of her two months off work would take time to fix, how the hell were we to afford to pay the mortgage with her off work again for a month and half! What if it took her six weeks to find another job when she got back?
Well we’re still here; we managed to organise with the bank after much too and fro to suspend our mortgage payments for three months whilst Trudi was unemployed and travelling. The upside to this was it allowed us to resume our original plan and I visited the USA also, I flew over and visited friends before catching up with Trudi and her friend in San Diego. It was a good trip - taken in less than the best circumstances, we had no where near the level of savings I’d prefer before taking a major overseas trip. I’m a worrier and paranoid at the best of times, the last thing I need is the prospect of a large debt hanging over my head at our return. I didn’t enjoy the trip as much as I could have as I was worried at every turn about how much stuff was costing. I really shouldn’t blame it on anyone I suppose, but if Truds had managed to stick out a few more months in her job she could have taken paid leave, my 2012 bonus wouldn’t have been pissed against a wall keeping us afloat over Xmas. It would have been a much more relaxing holiday. Of course the flipside to that coin is that Truds would have had to spend six months at a job she didn’t like. What makes it difficult is that she has never detailed what it was about her job and team leader she hated so much? She said she felt bullied, I am sympathetic to that’s I’ve been bullied at work and at school. But she never gave any detail about what that bullying consisted of? What her team leader did that made her feel that way?
Anyhow, we are back on track now.. for the time being at least. Truds managed to find a job fairly quickly after getting back from the trip. She did waste two weeks before starting to look, if it had been me, I’d have been on Seek.com the day after we got back into the country, but that’s me I suppose. She’s paid fairly well to do a job she finds dull - hopefully she sticks at this one.
My job hasn’t changed in the past twelve months - I’m well paid to do a job that doesn’t challenge me, doesn’t interest me and frankly bores me to tears. I like the people I work with, that makes life much easier. We just went through a restructure, basically an excuse to sack people. Fortunately or unfortunately I was not made redundant. We had a meeting last week where we were supposed to find out about the impact on people in our area, at the beginning of the meeting I had an oh shit moment when I considered I might be made redundant. Then I realised they’d likely have to pay me a redundancy pack in that instance - somewhere in the vicinity of 50-60 K - I was actually a tiny bit disappointed that I’d kept my role. With that kind of money, I could pay the mortgage for six months and really take some time our to take a breath and think about what my next step should be. Alas, didn’t happen, maybe next time!