Unemployed Watercooler Fridge Buzz Commiseration, Alienation and Mental Anti-Stagnation Society (DNRIYHM)

I was once turned down for a 9-to-5 office job on the basis that I didn't own a car and the nearest bus stop was *gasp* a mile away. Like they really thought it impossible that someone could walk that far. I pointed out that as a child I'd walked a mile to school every day, but they were set in their views.

Well, I guess I'm back here is where I'm at.

I can talk to myself without feeling like my presence is stopping other people from talking to themselves. I can bitch about headhunters and their dumb ways to my heart's content. I can post pictures of dirty dronerock boys without feeling like I'm imposing on other people.

I have a limit on how much headhuntry I can deal with in a day. There comes a point where I don't want to be bright! and chirpy! and personable! and employable! any more. I am sick of explaining how an overinflated salary is not a compensation for treating your employees like they aren't human beings, or for having to deal with cnuts. I am sick of explaining that no, really, *insert random town in Hampshire* is not a reasonable commute from South London. I am really sick of having to take SQL tests administered by people who know zip about SQL.

Here is a hott boy, though he is neither dirty, nor particularly dronerock, either, but he has some pretty christmas tree lights.

https://31.media.tumblr.com/77e9416010e71a4aded50b65d3111b39/tumblr_n3er0xWF8Q1qgze9ho3_1280.png

Is working from home an option for you (both personally, and is an option in your line of work)? Just curious - and feel free to tell me to STFU.

I've been working from home for 3.5 now and so I am curious about other people's opinions about it. I thought maybe the solitude would do my head in but in fact this hasn't been the case at all. I think going back to sharing an office *would* do my head in tho. Think I'd need my own office if I did.

*3.5 years*

No, it's not a bad question to ask at all!

i did discuss working from home at my last job (my boss and the other programmer both worked from home, and it worked really well for them) - but, in discussion, one of the things they both agreed was that working from home works really well *when* you have a partner/family life. If you work in your study for 8 hours, and then your partner and/or kids come home, and you have reasonable social interactions with them (and especially if you have a regular social life outside the home) then it's apparently fine! Also, you have to be really comfortable with being on the phone a lot, which I really am not. I have an upper limit for the amount of phone time I can face. (This was a big problem, with having an off-site boss at the last job.)

I live by myself, and I know from (6 months of unemployment or whatever at this point) that being by myself for prolonged periods of time like this, is very, very bad for my mental health. One of the things I most need from going back to work, is a regular social interaction environment, where I'm expected to turn up regularly, and perform basic small talk or whatever. I have an incredible ability to survive prolonged periods of aloneness (I currently can go 4 or 5 days at a stretch without speaking to another human being face to face) but I am also aware that it is very, very *not good for me*.

(Sometimes things like ILX can help with this. But whatever gives also takes away. There are stretches where ILX is super not-good for me.)

But, it seems there are lot of people, especially IT folk, for whom working from home is a great option! I'm just not one of them.

The thing about recruiters is something to which there is no easy solution - there will be always be those who put their commission before any satisfaction of doing a job properly and enhancing people's lives by matching the right employee to the employer. I was fortunate enough to find the diamond in the rough, but I did so via LinkedIn, which I know a lot of people don't like. It did mean, however, that I was able to observe his posts on there, see that he knew and cared about the industry (as he didn't only post job stuff) and so *probably* was a decent guy before I approached him about the job I was interested in. My instincts were, fortunately, correct and he ended up being one of the very few people I endorsed publicly via the LinkedIn site.

Yeah, I recognise it's a major setback, not using LinkedIn, but I do not feel comfortable giving out so much personal and identifying information to a company that have already shown they aren't great with data issues.

Have been speaking to my old boss about references stuff, and aawww, he is so great. I do actually miss my former boss. Don't miss the rest of the company at all, but I do miss my immediate boss.

Phoner interview went OK. I hate phone interviews (especially on speakerphone, because it's so hard to hear!) but it's nice to be able to do an interview on your bed, in your pyjamas. The guys who interviewed me seemed OK but it's impossible to tell without physically meeting people and seeing what the environment is like. Straight White Dudes will always describe an all-male environment as "totally relaxed, totally friendly" but it takes walking in there with breasts to find out whether it really is. When he was talking about the team, he initially said "guys" then realised I was a woman and corrected to "people" and immediately apologised for it, and we had a bit of a laugh over that, so it seemed like he's not a jerk. I don't really like the industry, but it's an industry I'm familiar with so that counts in favour, I guess. Hmmm. So much would depend on the environment. Also, formal clothes, ugh. I don't think I even have formal work clothes any more; at least not ones that fit. I suppose I can just pretend I'm cosplaying Daniel Kessler if I have to wear a suit every damned day.

P.S. Headhunters: do not EVER call me by the diminutive of my name, not in an email, not over the phone, just not EVER. What the living fuck. Very tempted to shoot back an email saying "Thanks, Bobbie" (the headhunter's name is not Robert, but this is the kind of thing) and see how he likes it. Ugh.

surely an interviewer should use what ever name you've used in your email, CV and covering letter? Otherwise they would be just *guessing* the diminutive of your name (given that there's at least four possibilities I can think of?).

Formal clothes is a bit :-O nowadays unless the job is client-facing (which mine is, sometimes).

Yeah, the job is occasionally client facing, and though I suggested the concept of "The Office Tie" which we employed at my old job, that got laughs, but they said sometimes more than one of you had to meet a client at once?

Diminutives are just... it's not even which spelling variant they would use, but the fact that he feels entitled to even use one in the first place? NO. Use the name I have on my CV, my covering letter, my email. It's pretty clear what I consider my name to be.

Exactly.

Does someone called James get routinely called Jim?

I am sure that people called James routinely get shortened to Jim or Daniel to Dan, without their consent, and usually if it matters to them, they have a way to say politely but firmly "actually, it's James" or something like that. But you know, if you had "Mark" on your CV your email your cover letter, and someone in a business setting just started calling you "Marky" - you'd give the side-eye a bit to that.

Anyway, I am back for the next round next week. I don't know how I feel about this. I will know better once I get in there and lookit the place.

Anyway, it's just the headhunter doing that, and not the actual employer, so it doesn't matter.

The very first phone interview I ever had was scheduled for Thursday, August 14th 2003. I got home, waiting by the phone for them to call and they never did. I tried to call them eventually - no response. Turned out that a power outage had blacked out most of the eastern US! When I got a job as an editor of an oil and energy journal the following year, the first issue I edited was about this incident and why it took so long for the power to come back on (there's no National Grid in the US so they couldn't transfer power from elsewhere. There's an Eastern grid, a Western grid and a Texas grid).

Well, the phone interview was re-scheduled....I had two further in person interviews in the UK after that - it was down to me and one another person and were struggling to make up their minds and eventually chose the other person. Maybe I had a lucky escape as it was quite a bizarre job - editing a textbook which I'd used myself at uni (new editions come out every few years) and liaising between the various authors all of whom were quite eminent names in cell biology. They always held their meetings in a big Georgian house round the corner from Abbey Road studios, and when the interviewer showed me the previous edition of the book it had a picture of them all on the back cover dressed up as the Beatles as they appeared on the cover of Sgt Pepper.

Although I got fed up by the time I was 5 of people saying "but what is your 1st name?" (I still get that btw) I at least haven't ever had to worry about people shortening my name.

Haha, that's hilarious. (The Abbey Road thing, to GG.) That kind of thing could either mean that it would be a fun place to work or an absolutely awful place to work in a ~hilarious japes~ (oh god kill me now) kinda sense. But yeah, when you don't get a job, sometimes you discover ages later things that, really, you find out you're kinda relieved that they chose the other person. That power outage thing is kinda bizarre, but yeah, at least it wasn't you!

I wish I could be happier and more confident about this place. Part of it is: well, the other job that I was discussing on Monday sounded *so* amazing, and I really wanted to work there. But it would be going back to the medical world (yay!) but the whole thing is, because it's back in that world, if they knew about my previous employer and the whole scandal there (oh I still can't even bring myself to type out anything about what happened there - it was based around something that happened years before I even worked there. I was unaware of it when I was hired, and I worked my fingers to the bone to try to sort out the aftermath of it when it broke, before I resigned in protest over their disgusting and disgraceful handling of it) but all they would have to see is the name of that company, and I'd be tainted by association and I'm terrified that's what has happened. Argh, paranoia.

So I'm kinda torn between "don't really know if I want *this* job" and "had a lead on a really great job that seems to have vanished" and wish I could be feeling less ambivalent about the whole thing.

Oh. Headhunter 2 says that ~better job~ won't actually shortlist candidates until Monday. I wish I could go back and erase the panicked post I made above. :-/

Learn to keep your mouth shut, Branwell Bell.

Good luck with that.

So. No word on the job I actually want, which was supposed to select candidates by "Monday". Bah. :(

I hate this uncertainty, I hate not even knowing if it's definitely not going to happen.

4-hour interview (including 3 tests) - I am not sure I have the stamina for this sort of thing.

I just really... I don't know. I normally come out of an interview with a quite clear sense of whether I want the job or not. I don't really have any sense of anything, except a very vague instinct that I don't want the job, and it's so vague a gut instinct that it might just entirely be PMT.

The stickler, really, is the hours. It's 45 hours a week, standard contracted hours (OK, they claim there is "an hour for lunch" but I was there over lunchtime and I saw everyone pretty much eating lunch at their desks.) That, to me, seems excessive. I can do 9 hour days maybe 1 or 2 days a week, if the workload demands it. But the idea of a 9 hour day, every day (and the potential for several days a month that they will require more) is just... no. Was I just spoiled by my last 2 jobs being 9 to 5 and 9 to 5.30? Is 9 to 6 just considered "normal" now, and those last few jobs I had were freaks?

I just can't do that whole macho competitive overwork thing. I do not get any more work done in a 9 hour day than I do in a 7 or 8 hour day. I am just more tired all the time, and tired means 1) I work slower and make more mistakes and 2) it sends my health to hell, which means I start taking loads and loads of sick days, which is really counter productive.

The job itself... I can't think of any overwhelming reason not to take it. I also don't really feel any enthusiasm at all, especially for the industry. Not that I expect to feel "OMG, yay, best job ever!" when I start a new job. (Though I did when I started the last job! - though look how awfully that turned out.) It's just... if my overwhelming response to a job interview is "I don't really want to work here" I should probably not work there. Is this a bratty, childish reaction to have, or is this a perfectly reasonable and adult reaction to have? (Especially over the hours thing.) I can't even tell any more.

ARGH. Headhunter says they want to make me an offer and all I can think is "can you take your offer, and give me 4/5 of the salary you were planning on offering, in exchange for 4/5 of those crazy working hours?"

If they really want you, there is always an opportunity to negotiate. That is, if you really want to work there as opposed to really needing to work.

I do not get any more work done in a 9 hour day than I do in a 7 or 8 hour day. I am just more tired all the time, and tired means 1) I work slower and make more mistakes and 2) it sends my health to hell, which means I start taking loads and loads of sick days, which is really counter productive.

i would put it to them in these terms tbh. good companies recognise that time flexibility helps employees and employers, especially in cases where a documented health condition is an issue. if they're completely intransigent on this they'll assuredly be a horrible company to work for in other ways as well. (unless there's an actual reason for being in the office at certain times that isn't a moronic insistence that more hours = more work done, i can think of some reasons but they wouldn't apply to your industry, i don't think)

I have already raised the issue of flexitime/shorter hours and was met with "you could work at different times, but those are what the hours are". I did explain that there were long-term health issues which meant that regular 45 hour weeks were just not an option for me. I am not quite desperate enough at this point to *have* to take it, so I guess that leaves me in a good position to negotiate for a 4-day workweek, at which point, fine, I'll do 9 hour days. But I'm not feeling very hopeful about the option.

if explaining the health issues didn't even persuade them to trial you to see if you're able to do the required work in the hours you need, idk, that's a bit of a warning sign.

Yeah, that's kinda what I'm afraid of, but that's kinda what working in Finance is like: "These are what the hours are, if you can't do them, sucks to be you."

I raised my concerns, and the headhunter just came back offering more money. It feels completely churlish to spurn money on that level, but at the same time "thinking that money is the answer, rather than actually addressing the issues raised" is another red flag of "this is not a place I will be happy working."

ARGH. I hate the way the try to make you feel awkward or objectionable for stating in advance what your needs and inabilities are.

And the whole "I want you to reject this more-money offer, before we go back to them with the 4 days a week offer" and it's like... NO. That is backwards. I ask for what is important to me, and if you can't get the ideal thing I want, then we negotiate from that point. I don't feel like I should have to reject an offer outright in order to ask for what I really want.

ugh ugh ugh. I wish I could just bring myself to ... I dunno, give myself permission to say "No. This isn't going to work." And again, that panicked feeling that if I say no to this job offer, there will never be another one. (Rather than "you've impressed one company enough for them to hire you, you can impress another company, that doesn't insist on 45 hour work weeks.)

My last 2 jobs were 9-6. It's a pain in the arse and of course most people myself included don't take a whole hour for lunch. Maybe on Fridays if I went to the pub. My new one (which starts next week) is 9-5:30 and the commute is halved so I get to sleep in a bit and get home earlier, which is great. Sorry this is maybe not the thread to mention that.

Good luck BB, I'm pretty sure you do similar stuff to me (my main skill is databases/SQL) so I can relate to your interview stories. There do seem to be more jobs out there these days fwiw.

No, that gives me hope, because it makes me *know* that I'm not being insane or overly demanding to not want to work 9 to 6. Those are stupid hours, and any employer that actually gave a shit about the health of their employees would recognise that. Employers exist who do not insist on squeezing every last drop of effort out of their staff; this is not one of them. My last 2 jobs were 9 to 5 and 10 to 6.30. It is not unreasonable to expect to work those kinds of hours.

I feel bad now, because I had to get pretty emphatic with the headhunter's boss over the phone, and feel like I've been rude.

But I don't want to commit to a role with hours I know that I will not be able to sustain. The alternatives are: don't take the role. Take the role, end up getting very unhealthy and taking tons of sick days. Take the role, work like a dog for the first few months, then slowly start to slack off in a really underhanded way until I have the hours I desire.

It's awful feeling so bad about turning down a job, but it's clear, this is not the employer for me. "If they negotiated that way for you, then they would have to negotiate that way for everyone." Hey, you know what, if loads of people would actually negotiate for flexitime or 4/5 of their salary in return for 4/5 of their hours, maybe I'm not the weird unreasonable person, just MAYBE YOU ARE WORKING YOUR STAFF TOO HARD.

In other news, tomorrow is my birthday. I want to go to the seaside. Should I go to Broadstairs or Brighton?

I think Brighton looks like it's half the price and an easier journey, even though I know there are nicer walks to be had around Broadstairs. There are no sea arches anywhere in walking distance of Brighton, are there.

And just when I'm ready to start throwing darts at their pictures, there's this:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/8b0bf0420abdfdb16b226938d974951c/tumblr_n3rwy6Km3E1rd1g7mo1_250.jpg

Smirking bastard. Why are you so cute.

Bit late, sorry, but HB BB!

Aw, thank you Spacecadet! x

I don't know if I'm just being ~over-emotional~ right now, but...

Although I had an excellent birthday yesterday (chocolate biscuits, TSM, seaside, crazy Victorian architecture, Doom Bar) I kinda ruined it by checking my work-related email last night. I wish I had left that until this morning to get ... I don't even know what the word is for the emotions I'm experiencing.

It isn't disappointment, because my gut feeling through the whole process has been "I do not want that job". I should have just listened to that gut feeling, and said no flat out, and not let myself be coerced or sweet-talked into a negotiation process. But it isn't relief, either, because either the employer or the headhunter decided to just do a passing "kick you in the teeth" neg in the last email, telling me that my negotiation "left a bad impression."

(All along, I think this headhunter has acted particularly unprofessionally. For example, asking me the wrong set of questions in the initial interview (they asked me the developer questions, not the report writer questions!) Then, before the first phone interview with the employer, he said "oh, don't mention that I asked you the wrong questions, also, here are the actual questions you will be asked, look up the answers so you do well in the test - oh, but don't mention I gave you these, either!" Um. Now, obviously, I do not need any help acing a SQL query writing test, but still, that was weird.) ((I am semi-tempted to just forward that email to the guy who interviewed me at the employer and say "by the way, you were complaining about candidates who did well on the phone interview, then couldn't pass the sit-down computer test? Here's why."))

This whole world is just not something that makes any sense to me. I know, from experience, if you say to an initial offer "I think that salary looks a little low, I'd like another £2k or £3k" then headhunters will go back and negotiate. But the idea that I might say "I'm willing to negotiate for less salary in order to get more reasonable hours" is basically viewed like I just did a shit on the board of directors' table.

Oh fuck it. I am just going to consider this whole thing a bullet I have dodged. I will give myself today to feel kinda bummed and weird about it, and then throw myself back into the job search on Monday.

Omg. You did nothing unreasonable! You dodged a bullet imo. I would not have wanted to work those hours either.

Thank you!

It really will be something that I pay more attention to in the future, is how many ~women my age~ there are in an office. (In that one: none.)

Because I have started thinking, like, it's impossible for me to work those kinds of hours because of my long-term health issues. But what if I had children? I don't in any way mean to equate "parenting" with "middle aged women" but still! It does make me wonder, when women my age disappear from a workplace, what the issues are. I don't know why men put up with overwork culture. But from those guys in the interview, going "I work 9 hour days, no problem" "well, I work 10 hour days!" I suspect it is that whole "macho" competitive overwork bullshit.

(Oddly, the employer that I worked for 2 jobs ago, like, 75% - 80% of their staff were women. And they were having appalling problems with their staff retention rate. The whole reason that they dropped the standard contract hours from 40 to 37.5, and also instituted flexi-time and part time, was in a deliberate effort to hold onto their staff, most of whom were women. But the reason they were even willing to consider it, was that they had 3 women on the board of directors! 2 of whom had children, and all of whom said "you know, the working hours might be a problem.")

Blah blah blah etc.

I don't know why men put up with overwork culture.

Don't blame the victim!

You know, on ILX, I sometimes spend a great deal of time composing posts, and then just hitting the back button, thinking "I don't really have the energy or the emotional equilibrium to argue through the inevitable backlash right now."

And then I see the posts that other ILX0rs actually just go ahead and blithely post, and I just think "really?"

Instead, I am going to go and pitch some illustrations to a website that a friend of mine told to me pitch to over a year ago, but I never got around to doing because... well, because I was afraid. Because I think that would be a better use of my time and energy.

happy bday for y'day k8!

tbf i was listening to some of the women in my office having a "who's ill the least" brag-off y/day so i've got to say that workplace tuffness feels like an equal opps disease in some ways. but otoh we work reasonably flexibly and have reasonable holidays

I am not going to have this argument, and especially not here, but when I hear men who do not go home and do The Second Shift bragging about the ~long hours~ they work it does ring a little hollow.

I mean, basically fuck long hours culture for a billion other reasons, but for men to even pretend this is some place where men and women are equivalents, just... come on. No.

no i know there's a real difference at home, and i was gonna mention it. but i have observed women acknowledge this too with a kind of competitive stoicism. my stance on the horror of long hours culture is pretty well-documented too.

the macho overwork thing seems to be a symptom of 'get as successful as you can as fast as you can QUICK QUICK before some bastard beats you to it' corporate bullshit whereas women often through necessity have to ascertain more of a balance throughout.
I am lucky, my workplace is mainly female and treats flexible working seriously, and some of the men are taking advantage of it too (not in a bad way! I mean doing their own flex working to look after the kids etc).

Wonder if it's even worth applying for anything during Easter week, but trying to at least log onto the website and apply for things so at least it looks like I'm active.

I've only officially been doing this a month, but I'm already so sick of ~job search~. Need pictures of cute boys in suits.

Also, today is my estranged brother's birthday and my subconscious decided to bless me with creepy freaking dreams. Thanks for that.

Oh god, how does one stay focused and ~enthusiastic~ and "oh yes, I would love to interview for this job which requires weekend cover... (oh do fuck off)" in the face of endless, relentless disappointment and being asked to jump through hoops for impossible things. I'm getting to the point where I don't want to even call anyone back. But I know that I have to. Would like to just take a week off and go on holiday from looking for a job.

Anyway, here is Kessler demonstrating his fingerbanging technique:

https://31.media.tumblr.com/8ce454f747035a565aaa17fc3054968d/tumblr_n3x8rmJtND1rd1g7mo1_250.jpg

Ugh, unemployment sucks. Working from home sucks too. I'm currently working on some research for an industry body and I am going a little stir crazy, even when I change it up by going to the library or coffee shop.

I'm struggling with headhunters as well, my resume doesn't clearly identifiable box so most headhunters ignore me. That or they try and cell me 'career coaching' or CV rewriting services. I went to a meeting with one for shits and giggles and they quoted me $5000 for their services, maybe I should get into that racket. Having done this from the other side I wish more hiring managers hired like I used to, cut out the HR CV screener and the head hunter and go straight to the resume pile and LinkedIn. I hired two or three great people who never would have got in through the traditional route and turned out to be amazing. (especially the vegan punk tech writer I had to fight really hard to hire, she ended up winning the MVP award at the christmas party the year I hired her)

Also fuck a 9 hour work day. I think my peak productivity is somewhere around 35 hrs a week. i would love to be in a position to ask for a 4 day week or a 9 day fortnight but right now no-one is interested in talking to me.

Oh god thank fuck I haven't been offered "career coaching" or "CV rewriting" because fuck that racket. I'm not convinced that any of them know more about the recruitment process than anyone who has actually... y'know, hired a body. I suppose the sheer volume of the CV pile (and how much people lie on their CVs) is the reason that managers don't do this. But when the headhunter is adding another layer of mendaciousness, rather than taking it away... I dunno. Half the ones I speak to don't understand technology, and the other half don't seem to understand that "office culture" is just as important (if not more) than tech skills, which can usually be taught.

I am well aware that I'm a tricky case, because with the right manager and the right environment I will work like a dog, and have certainly proved myself capable of it, but with the wrong manager and environment, I'm a complete fucking HR nightmare. And I have no desire to go into an HR nightmare any more than they do.

I think everyone's peak productivity is between 30 and 35 hours a week. I cannot think of a single instance where longer hours resulted in more work getting done. Work always expands to fill the available time, so you gain nothing by working longer.

I spoke to 3 different headhunters yesterday, and I'm at the point where I'm mixing up them and their jobs and which other jobs they're connected to, and I've started writing down some of it in a little notebook, but then as soon as you write it all down, you never hear from them again.

Anyway, here is a picture of Kessler, because this seems to be becoming a tradition:

http://37.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyaeoipkvE1qcuqzco1_1280.jpg

Oh, and just as I was complaining about headhunters, there was another one on the phone. I guess I have a phoner interview tomorrow so I need to go and do some research.

One of the best things I ever heard about productivity was during my scrum training; that their are only 22 productive hours in a week, less if you have any kind of management responsibilities.

The thing is about CVs is I reckon that I can do pattern recognition faster than an HR wonk. I'd always pass back my shortlist to HR for initial contact and phone screening but go through the pile myself.

Top tip, I use Asana as a sort of CRM to keep my recruiters and conversations with them straight.