Old Work

Things have been pretty strange around here the last few weeks. Aaron was offered a job opportunity out of state with the option to start out on a 3-month contract. We weren't sure about relocating, so we went with the 3-month contract to give us time to decide. The company provided housing, as well as flights for Aaron to come home and visit us. Since Aaron had been the main caregiver for our daughter when I was working, I knew would have to start arranging babysitters for each of my evenings of work.

Things at work were kind of stressful to begin with. There were some inherent challenges with the evening workload, as well as some frustration with the other staff (I had actually begun applying for other jobs). I started feeling rather overwhelmed by the prospect of lining up childcare help for the next three months (although we do have some incredibly willing and accommodating family members living in the area). In addition, we were pretty pleased with the Aaron work company's willingness to meet all of our requests, and we really thought it was a high likelihood that we would be making progress toward a move. Moving was an easy excuse to quit my job (even though they have a constant struggle with staffing on the evening schedule, and I knew they wouldn't be pleased). So I decided to cut out some stress in my life and put in my two-week notice. Over the next two weeks, Aaron had started the job. He enjoyed it, but we realized pretty quickly that the likelihood of us wanting to move there was dwindling. I started to regret my hastiness in quitting my job. I could have easily just reduced my working hours to limit some of the stresses of the situation. The day after my "last day" at work, I talked to my supervisor on the phone, and I said that in hindsight I should have had just made some schedule changes instead of quitting. My supervisor surprised me by saying that it would be easy to reverse the decision, and he could keep me off the work schedule for the next three months while my husband was out of town. He offered to discuss it with HR, and the next day he sent me a text to verify that's what I wanted to do. I said yes. Then my daughter and I went away to visit Aaron. 

After I came back from the trip, I was surprised when I was still locked out of my work account. I called HR, and they told me that my supervisor had not submitted the request until more than a week after he told me he would. HR didn't know if they could still reverse the decision. They had already cashed out my PTO, disconnected my work phone, and a few other things that can't simply be undone. I talked to the supervisor, and he told me he had accidentally hired someone into the same position I left. He had lots of open similar job postings, but it was just that fact that for the person he hired, he happened to select that particular job posting which would have been connected with "my" spot. And for some reason that affected my ability to be rolled back into my former spot. I was invited to reapply and they would certainly hire me back. I was pretty annoyed about my supervisor not doing what he said, and since it had already been finalized, I decided to ride out the decision and stay unemployed for several weeks, caring for our daughter full time. 

It was really nice to turn in all the supplies I had to carry with me for the job. It was nice to not have any work responsibilities. 

I know they hired two traveling nurses to cover the shift I left (two other nurses left a little before I did). I'm frustrated that in all the discussion about my potential to stay, they did not make much/any effort to keep me, even though clearly they were desperate for help. They could have offered a sign on bonus, or a higher pay during the discussion about hiring me back. I might have accepted such an arrangement. The job is tough, but I was doing good work there, and I can put up with a lot for more money. Here's another weird thing: when I put in my two-week notice, no one from my work reached out to me about it at all. My supervisor did not even reply to the email when I sent my two weeks notice. How is that for feeling appreciated at work? None of my "superiors" said anything at all. They didn't even say anything about turning in the supplies from the job, including the electronics like the phone and the computer. I have to wonder how long it would have taken for someone to realize I still had them. I finally had to reach out to them to make a plan to deliver the items (I no longer had access to the building, so I couldn't just take them in myself). There is one person who reached out to talk to me on my last day: the educator who trained me for this job. This person is not necessarily a supervisor over me, but she is just very kind and genuine and wanted to wish me well and thank me for doing good work and for helping to train new nurses. She is the one person who made me feel a little bad leaving. 

All in all, it has been a positive change. I have had much less stress during Aaron's absence due to leaving my job. It has been a relief to just have it off my plate completely. Yet I also feel truly that this job was a blessing for our family the last two years. Yes, there were a lot of hard things about it. Yes, I complained about it at times. But it allowed us to save money and prepare for some big expenses we had this year. It allowed me to work at maintaining skills and gain a lot of confidence in my abilities. I wanted to quit at first, but I really stepped up to the challenge because I felt that God had led me to the job for a reason. The schedule for this job let me work without requiring outside childcare (at least not very often). I know I was guided to apply for this job two years ago by inspiration because God knew that this was what our family needed at the time. The growth I experienced by working through this job - knowing it was what God had placed before me - was worth the struggle.

Supplies for work