If you’re new here, this is a pretty awful way to ease your way into my blog. “Welcome to the Real World” is a series detailing my early working years. The idea is to impart some wisdom and laugh at my mistakes.
You can find the full series here. However for a quick recap, I started my data capturing job and things were good. I was concerned about the fact that I was a temp on a 3 month contract but I worked really hard and I was sure that it would pay off. Let’s all laugh together.
I was young and had no clue that how hard I worked had nothing to do with my promotion. But I was about to. I was going to learn that lesson the hard way.
When I started in March, there were a few other temps. There was a man in his 30s, a girl who had just finished high school and a older female. The only person who worked at the same pace as me was the man in his 30s. However I started work at 7AM every day (my working hours were 8AM to 5PM). I felt like it could be seen that I was a hard worker. About a month or so after I joined, a guy around my age joined. He was able to keep up with my pace. But he did one thing I didn’t. He befriended the boss.
When it came time to renew our contracts, all of the people who started with me got their contracts extended for another 3 months. I was incredibly surprised when the same thing happened to me. I knew that I was faster than them. So why now were we given the same treatment?
When it came time to renew the contract of the guy who befriended the boss, he was made permanent immediately. I was furious. So I stopped working as hard as I did. I was called into countless meetings where management tried to figure out what the problem was. I replied with I didn’t understand what the problem was. I didn’t understand why now I was no longer as fast as the other guy.
But I knew what the problem was. I just didn’t know how to verbalize it. I didn’t know how to verbalize that I felt demotivated by what had happened.
Thing is, the working world is a game. Who you know matters more than what you know. I should have known that. After all, the main reason I got the job was because my aunt set me up with the interview.
The guy who was made permanent actually stole work from others (i.e everyone had an Excel spreadsheet assigned to them and he would go into these sheets, copy the information that he needed to capture and add it to his spreadsheet).
Management defended him and said he “took initiative”. I was shocked by I kept my head down and worked at my new, slower pace.
After my second round of 3 months, I was made permanent. A vacancy opened in a different department and the guy applied for it. He didn’t tell the manager who he befriended which brought me so much joy.
The manager had no choice but to let him go but he was not happy. The manager then came up with a new rule. If you’re applying for a job in another team or another department, you need to tell a manager.
I’m not sure what the point of this rule was but when the time came for me to leave, I made good use of that rule.
But that’s a story for another day.
