Youth is wasted on me

As mentioned previously, I was with that company for about 9 years. Could have stayed for the 10th year long service award, but several things happened.

The project I was in ended, and I was one of the very few permanent staff retained, while others – who were contract staff – were let go.

For the last few years I was there, I had already had enough. The pay increment was so low that it hadn’t made sense to stay for a long time. So finally, I had already been planning to leave, but was just waiting for my bonus. The company has a clause that if you resign within the same month of the bonus payout, then you will have to return that bonus. Obviously, I wasn’t going to do that.

I was brought back to HQ to do similar work. The job wasn’t all that difficult, to be honest… But the people in the company made life there unbearable. I had a new team lead, and reported to several project managers. One of whom, was technically – and really mentally – underqualified to manage anything.

The team lead had the tendency to be condescending in her feedback and instructions. I shouldn’t have let her get to me, but I did. By the end of the last 2 years I was there, my confidence level got shattered to minute pieces, and I was left wondering if I was even competent at all.

I confided with another Instructional Designer, and she became a bit of a cheerleader to me, and reminded me that I had been producing good work; that there were clients who stated they really liked what I had done. I had forgotten those wins, and she helped me stay sane for the last few months when I felt really downtrodden. I will always be grateful to her for her kindness.

Before I could make my move to resign, however, I was brought in for my annual performance review, where I was given feedback on how I can improve (whatever happened to talking about the strengths too during feedback though, eh?) and was given my performance grade. Then I was informed that the department is reorganising, and I will be transferred to another department elsewhere.

The choice was basically take it or quit. But, as we clarified later (another colleague was given the same treatment), even if we quit then, we would still need to be transferred over, and serve our remaining notice in that other department. Brilliant.

The reason given was that the department was in the red, and had not been making enough profit for the past 2 years. Upon reflecting on this reason, I kept wondering… If a department is not making money, is it the staff’s fault or is it the higher management’s fault? Why is it, though, the staff who always pay the price?

In any case, I was transferred over to this other department, where I was basically paid to do nothing. I was basically an overpaid intern. I stapled sheets of paper, shredded other sheets of paper, move things around and helped the other staff when they were overloaded.

I was supposed to take over a set of workload, but the person who was to hand it over to me was the department head, and she was always too busy to hand it over. So I waited until she was not busy, while finding and doing busywork, and kept on waiting. This department was providing training administrative work as a service amongst other stuff, and has absolutely nothing to do with Instructional Design.

My resolve to leave was even stronger. The day after the bonus payout month ended, I sent my resignation letter.

I stayed for a 2-months notice period, but I found out after I sent my resignation letter that I was under an older system and actually only needed to serve 1 month. I decided to stay the entire 2 months since I hadn’t found a new job yet, and I wasn’t doing anything difficult anyway.

I cleared my annual leave in between by going to Hokkaido, Japan, and had planned another holiday after my last day of work to Sydney, Australia. By the end of my holidays, I had basically eaten up the bonus and most of my savings.

😱