A New Job

So, on Friday I started a new temp assignment in the HR Department of a local private hospital. The recruitment consultant told me that they were ok with me looking for a more permanent position and taking time off for interviews, as long as I gave them around a week's notice if I found something else, which is pretty cool of them. She also told me that it was a HR Coordinator's role which they needed filled while they recruited for the permanent position, because the person previously in the position had been promoted, so there was an opportunity for it to turn permanent if I was interested. Sounds pretty cool, right. So, here's how my three days of working for them went.

Friday, I arrive and meet the person currently in the role, who will be training me. I say 'training' in the loosest sense of the word, because it was loosely training. It seems she had been in the role for 6 weeks on a temp basis, and was now moving to another role - in another organisation. Strike one for my agency! The few minutes of training she managed to squeeze in between her social activities mainly consisted of her updating errors in her hand-over notes as she showed me how to do things like sort and distribute the mail (strike one for her). It quickly became pretty clear that this role was more a receptionist role for the HR Department than a coordination role. Strike two for my agency. She then proceeded to tell me all about her new job. Here's where I got really angry.

You see, the agency who sent me for this role also put me up for a 6mth contract with another company. I was told that although they were very happy with me, I didn't get the position because they'd upgraded the position and taken someone with more experience (ie instead of a coordinator they hired an advisor). So you can imagine how shocked I was to hear the person training me tell me that this was where they were going. I was more shocked to discover that not only did she have less experience than me, she was being paid less than I had been told was on offer, had lied about the experience she did have, and was planning to move overseas in three months time. Strike three for the agency, and strikes two and three for her. This is only the first day, and already they're both out! Luckily she's leaving the pitch, but the agency is still out there swinging.

I won't bore you with what was an essentially drool-worthy (as in, in your sleep) day yesterday. The most interesting thing there is that I left work early for an interview with a local university. Cue today. This morning, I received a phone call from the uni's consultant to offer me the position, starting Monday. Since my consultant was coming to work today to organise the paperwork for my temp role, I decided to discuss it with them when they came in. I know it's a day short of the week's notice they'd asked, but I figure it won't be much of an issue. Apparently, I figured wrong.

My consultant (who bought her boss along for good measure) tells me I'll just have to call them and arrange to start after this assignment finishes, because my 2 week temporary contract includes a four-week notice period clause. I'm compelled to point out the fact that I haven't signed the contract yet, and in any case would have questioned that before I signed it, due to previous discussions. It is decided that they will speak to the HR Manager before the contract is signed to make sure it's ok for me to finish on Friday. My consultant then takes me aside and tells me that they've agreed I can finish today. Um, what? I thought we said Friday. But no, they say, have a break. I almost point out that I've had a break for 2 weeks before these oh-so-tiring three days of menial office work and that should get me through, but I just nod (the job's not really worth arguing for) and head back to my desk. One of the other HR girls says I can go home now if I like, but I shake my head and say no, I'll finish up what I've started today, tidy things up etc. I'm then told firmly that I should go home, because that was the HR Manager's decision. Again, um what? So, with all the dignity and the biggest smile I could muster, I pick up my bag, throw my things in it, shut my computer down and bounce out the door without looking back.

The uni's consultant called me not long after to confirm my start date, and let me know she was negotiating salary etc and would come to me soon with an offer. She almost fell off her chair when she heard the story, claiming she'd never heard such a thing as someone being terminated for being offered another job. I'd even told them that the start date hadn't been confirmed and I hadn't completely accepted yet (the start date would have been negotiable anyway). We both put this down to a severe overreaction.

After I filled out my timesheet for the week, I sent an email to my former consultant, expressing my disappointment. I have a certain knack for, as someone once put it, kicking in the nuts so innocently you wouldn't realise it's happened if it didn't hurt. As I like to think of it, cutting the flesh without appearing to slide in the knife, and leaving no real evidence it happened. Usually, this talent is reserved for resignation letters and people I don't like at work, but let's just say I made a couple of cuts in said email.

The events of this week caused two dilemmas for me, one of which was immediately cancelled out by the circumstances that caused the other. The first was, do I tell the agency that the person they've just placed is a liar who plans to skip out early on their contract, costing them money? This was cancelled out by the circumstances of being put out of work and having to struggle harder to make ends meet for the next few weeks - let them find out the hard way. I'm pretty sure their commission is more than half a week of my wages! :-) Revenge is sweet.

You call this security?

The last couple of weeks, something strange and annoying has consistently happened to me. Every single time I walk through those security things they have out front of shops, the thing screeches. I have no idea why, but it's wearing thin. The embarrassment of having everyone in the store stop and look to see why their ears are being assaulted horrific. Now, I have no idea what in my bag is causing this, but I'm so close to standing at one of these gates and passing each individual item through it so that I can find the offending item and drop it off the nearest tall building. It really is getting too much, the staring, the covering my ears as I walk through, staff rushing to check my bag...

Wait a minute, hang on - actually, no-one has rushed to check my bag. That's strange - for two weeks I've been setting off alarms and not one store member has asked to check my bag. Let me think back to all the alarms I've been setting off.

• Target - No. Actually, not one single staff member looked at me or even batted an eye.
• Big W - Well, the door greeter looked at me, but didn't seem concerned.
• Priceline - Other customers looked at me. The register operator glared at me as if reprimanding me for the noise I'd caused.
• Chemist Warehouse - The register operator glanced at my bag and shrugged.
• Several clothing shops - salespeople gave me a once-over and turned the other way.
• Myer - No staff member in sight, and none appeared at the noise.
• Coles - Operators on the express lane looked around and shook their heads at the noise.

Actually, I'm right - not one single bag check conducted in my two weeks of setting off alarms. What is going on? Fair enough, my bag is easily identifiable as a designer handbag (large metal logo) with an RRP in the region of $200, and I'm generally dressed pretty well - skinny jeans and a nice t-shirt at the least, lately. I'm clean, well-groomed and wearing shoes. Also, I'm not running, and appear rather peeved at the beeping. Is this appearance enough to override the usually telling screech of a security system? If so, I'm starting to wonder how exactly Winona Ryder was caught shoplifting, rather than how she managed to take so much. I mean, if no-one will ask to check the handbag of little old me, who would get up the nerve to ask a movie star? More to the point, has anyone told these places what an absolute waste of money their security system is? They could save heaps of money by having someone stand at the door and pull up all the scruffy, no-shoed people, and wave the pretty ones right by.

Funnily enough, this isn't the only time I've seen bad security practices. Anyone who lives in Brisbane knows that these days, you can't get off a train in the city around peak hour without passing security who check tickets. I've seen scruffy-looking people clearly holding tickets close to the security personnel be held up and have their ticket scrutinised, however I can be still trying to pull my ticket out of it's pocket in my bag and be waved through. Yes, when they haven't even seen a ticket. Then there are the days when I'm holding up my ticket, and while they're stopping everyone else, they just wave me on. I've actually traveled around for two days (unintentionally) on an expired ticket, simply by holding it up as I walk past. I was shocked when I realised that I hadn't gotten a new weekly ticket that week (I'd had that day off) and hadn't even been stopped once.

I'm sure many of you out there have experienced something like this, and I'd be really interested to hear about it. Leave a comment if you've got a 'security? what security?' moment you'd like to share.

EDIT: Update, after a few more weeks of setting off alarms, I discovered that it was something in my wallet causing the problem after it set off an alarm when I ducked into the chemist without the rest of my bag. I'm still unsure what it was in my wallet causing the problem, but the friendly register person swiped it over their magic magnetic security tag deactivator thingy, and I finally found some peace!

Workplace Bullying is not OK!

Yes, I know - Long time, no write. I go giving you these job tips promising more, and then disappear, which is terrible! Where have I been?

Well, a couple of weeks ago, I quit my new job. Not because I had another job to go to or anything like that. Simply because I couldn't put up with being bullied by the other girls in the department anymore. So, for the past couple of weeks I've been holed up at home applying for new jobs, going for interviews etc. Today, I've finally pulled it together enough to take some time out and get back to my blog.

Now, the thing is, I'm not exactly the weak little person that runs off when things get difficult. I don't give up, I stay and fight. So how can I let things get to the point where I go out for lunch and refuse to come back? I was beating myself up about it for a little bit, but then I remembered that over the last 6 months, the company had no less than 4 people leave the position I was in. Suddenly, I feel much better - clearly, the problem wasn't me. In fact, I've now decided that the reason I only lasted 4 weeks was because not only do I have alot of respect for myself (and others) in the workplace, I also have a low tolerance threshold for the kind of behaviour I was dealing with, and I have very strict boundaries around how I will let others treat me. Let me give you the situation.

I was working in a 'team' with four other HR 'professionals' - an OHS Officer, two co-ordinators and a HR manager (who left shortly after I arrived). These coordinators are actually at my level, however given that the person previously filling my position took off in such a hurry (I now know why) and wasn't there to train me, the other two HR Coordinators took it up on themselves to train me. This would have been great if they didn't both have different ideas on how my job should be done. So, I suffered through three weeks of being told off every time one of them came to check my work, because I was doing it the way the other had showed me. Regardless of how many times I pointed this out, they never talked to each other and consistently made me the person to blame. In fact, I became the person to blame for any and all issues, even if it had nothing to do with me. With the departure of our manager, we were reporting to a Sydney manager, so eventually I contacted her to discuss my problems. At first, she was very concerned, saying she was going to help out, talk to these girls and get one set procedure for everything, so there could be no such similar issues in future - ie get a proper manual written up for my position. However, this then turned into me discussing these issues with the girls in question. As I had predicted, this made matters worse. I then suffered through them standing over my desk, taking out everything in my in-tray and interrogating me on why it hadn't been done, then berating me for it. Considering the improvements I had made since starting, and the huge backlog I'd reduced, the indignity of this treatment from my 'peers' was the last straw. I went out for lunch and never returned - I had the feeling that one more word from either of them was enough to make me reach out and slap them. Physical violence isn't really my thing, so I called to say I wasn't returning and that was it.

Of course, this is a brief overview of the situation and doesn't really cover half of what I suffered through in those four weeks. I had so much positive feedback on my work from other areas of the organisation that I find it hard to believe my work may actually have been at fault, and trust me I've examined this over and over for the last couple of weeks. I have to say, the fact that I still don't feel any regret about leaving even now, when it looks like I won't be able to pay rent next week, really says alot.

So, what's the point to this post? I really wanted to make this about the rising instances of workplace bullying and harassment, why it's occurring and how to stop it happening to you, as well as how to deal with it when it occurs in your workplace. But really, I'm totally stuck. I mean, why is it occurring? Who knows. What makes someone act so disrespectfully towards their colleagues? What possible excuse could there be for this kind of behaviour? How do you stop it happening? Before I would have said that workplaces should have policies and procedures in place, and that HR departments need to take on the responsibility of ensuring their workplace culture doesn't allow this sort of thing, but no-one cares about policies these days, and it's occurring within HR departments (who really should know better). As for how to deal with it, it should be reported to and dealt with by managers and the HR department, but look how far that got me. Looking back at the companies I've worked for, it's quite clear that managers don't really want to deal with this kind of issue and tend to sweep it under the carpet, or push responsibility back onto the victim (the same thing happens in our schools today).

This is something that greatly concerns me, and is something I intend to do more research into. I don't know yet how I'll go about it or where to start, but I can't let it rest. I'm not going to be one of those people who sweeps it under the rug, I'm going to stand up and be heard. This behaviour is not OK, and I don't care who hears me say it. Hands up who's with me!