I was looking for a 4 month job as part of my university degree and was looking to stay at home. I was going to go back to university in the September, it was May.
I took a job with a plastics manufacturer up near Coventry, which was close to my parents and not far from my girlfriend, who was fantastic.
They promised I would be reviewing their procedures, making recommendations about how to improve matters, I would be management.
I turned up and it was thermoplastics, you dump some resin into a high temperature mould, you put on some transfers, press a button, hey presto after a few seconds out comes a plastic ash tray with a logo on it.
They asked me to do some time at £7 an hour learning the machines.
The machines were shit, they pissed out hot hydraulic fluid over you all the time and the plates were so hot and the target production so high you got burned.
I crashed my car turning into the car park on day 3. Couldn't afford another one.
I gave my findings to the bosses after a week or two. Spend a few quid fixing the machines, slightly lower the target production rates, people will get less burned and the reject rate will be lower.
They rejected that and kept me on the machines for the rest of the 4 months.
One of my mates had a much better job back in London I could have done but I wanted to be close to the missus.
Who then split up with me not long after we had agreed to share a house for the next academic year.
Now I learnt a lot from this, but I should have walked out.
There must be worse ones than this. Although I still do miss Jenny.
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Comments
Could bore you with other details.
Anyway it was meant to be a job thread to add balance to the actual resignation spectacular.
Oh. That wasn't what you meant.
I should stop only starting threads when had a few to drink.!
In the end it was three months of hell... Worked solely for a Manager who'd whisper all the time so would struggle to hear her requests and would keep telling me I was doing something wrong without helping me to get it right next time (this was an area of Recruitment I'd never done previously)... Now I'm not one to leave a job without having something to go to but met my parents one evening for dinner (about a month in) and confessed that I couldnt last and that I'd have to leave.
My parents have always had the same approach to work as me (i.e. Only leave one job when you have another) yet were brilliant and could see how depressed I was working there and said that I had their support... Sadly I'm someone with A LOT of pride and refused to chuck it in, wasted three months there and when the Contract ran down I was offered an extension yet did choose to leave because I just couldnt be bothered with it anymore
Even now wish I'd left earlier or wish I'd taken one of the jobs which would have been in a different industry and I reckon I'd have excelled at it, instead the next job was again in Recruitment (Couldnt find anything else) and between those two roles wasted a year and a half of my career
I say MAYBE because I've been lucky to have had continuous employment all that time which, with recessions etc, is definitely not to be underestimated and it has assisted and enabled my wife and I to own a modest home and bring up our three lovely daughters all of whom have done and are doing (touchwood) well.
So do you look on a job as part of life as a whole or an end in itself?
If the former then, as described, things have worked out ok.
If the latter then I probably should have gone given that I have never progressed beyond a very modest level of attainment in the grand scheme of things.
Why didn't I go?
In essence lack of confidence I suppose. I was made redundant when my wife was pregnant with my first and the six weeks or so it took to get my present job seemed an eternity at the time. The message I took from that experience was somebody didn't consider me good enough then but somebody does now. For better or worse stick it out until they chuck you out too.
As a man in life you seem to be judged by what you do and what you have got rather than what you are. In those senses I often regard myself as a bit of a failure.
However (possibly to cope with those feelings) as I said above I've always looked on a job myself as a means to an end and I certainly don't regret a largely happy marriage, three lovely daughters and two lovely grandsons.
Like I say it all depends on how you look at it.
12 years old now...
boy did we fuck them about.