I am finishing up job #4 since coming to Ireland at the end of this week. Right now I'm temping as an admin assistant for a large American multinational computer company. After working here a week I soon realised why movies like "Office Space" are made, books like Douglas Coupland's "Microserfs" are written and why "Dilbert" is such a success. Every day there was something that just grated me about this place. First it was the superfluous use of acronyms. Now, I didn't get a handoff when I started so I didn't know my TEE HEE HEEs from my FOADs but that didn't stop people from expecting that I just knew what they were talking about. The thing is, they didn't know what they were talking about. Nine times out of ten if I asked them what a particular acronym stood for, the person I asked did not know despite the fact that they use that acronym in a sentence on a daily basis. The other idiosyncracy about the place that I couldn't get over was the abuse of the English language. Did you know that sometimes I hotdesked, and that I had to request that an item be actioned, and if I didn't get a response on my action request I would have to escalate the action? I felt myself getting dumber by the day. Pretty soon I would be working on some best-of-breed deliverables if I wasn't careful. Then I would be sent back to grade three to learn how to speak and write English again.
I was at said multinational for two and a half months. Now I realise that I haven't provided any background to my ups and downs over the past four months, which I'll do over time because like I said in my last post, I have a lot of catching up to do. Suffice it to say, I have had some real problems with moving out of my intolerable living situation and almost getting sued in the process for breaking the lease. It was nice to have a steady job and not worry about where the next paycheque is coming from. After about a month, I even started to like some of the people I was working with. That said, I wasn't really enthused about the job but I really thought I would be there until I found something else, not until they found someone else.
I told one of the HR representatives early on that I was interested in the marketing side of things since I was hoping that if an opening came up I could be considered. Unfortunately she tipped off my boss, who really liked the work I was doing, that I wouldn't be there for very long and they should find someone who actually wants to be an admin assistant, which to be perfectly honest, is something I don't want.
When I found out last week that I had a week left at the job, I was pretty annoyed about it. I was hoping to book a flight to Prague in July to visit my friend and also go to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival in August as well as London at some point in the summer. All of which are now put on hold. That said, after my annoyance wore off, I was pretty relieved. If I had to hear "Ell, my inbox is full again, can you vet some of my emails?" one more time... By the end of the day, I realised that I didn't really like the company, I certainly didn't like the job, I just liked the nice, steady paycheque.
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Well if you didn't get a handoff when you started, how else would you have known that you needed to attach a cover sheet to your TPS report? As for the requirement to request action items, and then subsequently escalate them, surely the only way to deliver something qualified as best-of-breed is to first go for all the available low-hanging fruit.
I'm convinced it's impossible for anyone to say that paragraph out loud with a straight face .. try it :)
It seems that Ireland is a place where one can actually start in a corporation and still expect to climb the corporate ladder over the years; given this mentality it may partially explain why an HR representative would be so quick to sell out a temp. On the other hand, expressing an interest in staying in a company but moving to a different role shouldn't necessarily cast the individual under suspicion as someone's who's going to jump ship at any time.
But "vet emails?" - that really _is_ pushing the bounds of the language.
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