3 Things

[stormkeeper_lovedoris]

 
1. The weekend has been great so far. (It's Sunday morning). Crazy-good weather all 3 days. When I went to bed last night, it did start to rain but I kind of loved having the windows open and falling asleep to rain.

2. Game night was so much fun!

3. And I did my good deed - went canvassing for Sean Casten, in an attempt to flip a House seat. It went well. It was organized well.

Also, I am happy that not only does Rollin love his job but he was offered another job too. It's a tough decision I think, because he likes his current job but the new offer is for way more pay. It's just great that he is so in demand and his education is leading to the types of jobs he wanted.

Comments

[nytshd3]

I so so so enjoyed this weekend's weather. Just right. Not ridiculously hot, not too cool, just perfect.

We had a great time at game night too!

I have mixed feelings about Rollin's situation. When he first came home and told me about it, he was excited and said he was definitely going to apply. I was excited for him for a bunch of reasons. He gets paid very little at his current job and he has to spend a LOT of time driving around, which I am not a fan of. I worry about what happens if he gets into an accident with a client in the car, what if the client gets injured or dies, etc. Plus it's a TON of wear and tear on the car. I mean, reimbursement based on mileage is nice and all, but putting that much mileage on the car every week is not great. Plus spending that much time driving isn't good for your back. His back is OK now but I used to work with a guy who was a truck driver who said most people get out of truck driving because all that time sitting and driving kills your back. I told him the one thing he should consider was that if he took this job (as a probation officer) he might have a hard time getting a different job with a different title later because some companies are ridiculous like that ('why would you want to be a counselor? You're a probation officer!'). He said he would pretty much be working with the same population he's working with now. Plus they *already like him* over there so it's not like starting at a brand new job. So it would be a significant boost in pay plus state benefits, plus it would theoretically be a pretty stable job (at his current job they recently decided to eliminate an entire department and they were immediately let go), all of which would be *great*. Yes, there's a possibility that if the state continues its current issues with payments he might have to take furlough days or something, and who knows what kind of pension plan he'd end up with, but overall, on the compensation side it would be really good.

He went back and forth - first he was totally gung-ho about applying, excited about being able to make better money, plus it's a bigger organization so likely more possibility to move up. At his current job, I think he would be a great replacement for his boss, but who knows what they might have in mind (like if someone else is already lined up/next in line for this position or something). It sounds like she's planning on retiring in the next year so at least he might get an answer on that one relatively quickly. Anyway, a day or so later he said he was thinking he didn't want to leave his current job since he hadn't been there for very long and didn't want to just stop working there so soon after starting. Then a day or two after that he said he was going to apply for the job, and I pointed out that he could always apply and find out more about it and then make a decision once they officially made him an offer (possibly even leverage an offer to get more money at his current job, though he didn't think that would fly). The next day he came home from work and said he had a really positive experience with a client at his job and decided that he should stay and that he didn't really want to be a probation officer. I'm not going to push him to do something he doesn't want to do, and I'm really happy that not only does he love his job, the people he works with (like the probation office) love him too. But I can't lie, I'm kinda disappointed that he's not going for the job, especially since one of his coworkers, when he told her about it, told him that he deserves it, he should go for it, and that she's been there for like 10 years and still making only like $13/hr. She also said he's cleaned up like 4 years of backlog in the past 30 days. Hopefully staying will lead him to better opportunities (maybe something in his field closer to home, for example). He said he's willing to look for something else once he's been there for a year, so that helps me feel a little better. I just don't want him to stay for endless years being underpaid and working his butt off for nothing. Well, not *nothing*, I know he's helping people out. But one of the hard things to do when you take care of everyone is taking time to take care of yourself. It would be nice for money to be a little less tight (especially since it looks like my school tuition is going up :/). He's been exhausted and sleeping a LOT lately, I think partially because he's been thinking about this stuff a lot and it's been wearing him out. I want him to be happy, but I *also* want him to be paid a fair wage for the hard work he does.

[stormkeeper_lovedoris]

It really is a fascinating situation. The pay sucks but he loves it. It may lead to something better paying, it might not. (Yikes, someone's been there for 10 years and is still only at $13?? Is their job comparable to what Rollin does??) I know in 'the olden days', I would say to at least stay at his current job for 1 year, but I don't know if anyone cares about that sort of thing nowadays. And heck, when the pay sucks, it's hard to feel loyalty just for the sake of loyalty.

Maybe he should just stay in as good a relationship as he can with the person who told him about the other job and then talk to him again in a year or so. I keep leaning back towards that. Of course easy for me to say, and hard to do when your finances are tight.

[nytshd3]

The person who's been there 10 years has a different job than Rollin, but it sounds like they don't have any long-term folks doing what Rollin does (perhaps because they pay so little). The probation office has apparently poached a number of other employees from them in the past. Rollin said he's come into contact with folks in other offices of the place where he's working now (they have several offices) who do what he does and he'll be sitting by them taking calls, making arrangements, doing paperwork, etc while they at least appear to be doing nothing. He overheard one of them on the phone comment that "someone" would need to pick up a client, but she didn't schedule anything, etc. He said maybe this is why people get paid so little to do this job. I said that could be a chicken/egg situation - do people not work very hard because they get paid so little, or do they get paid so little because they accomplish so little as a group?

Last night he told me he *was* going to apply for the job after all because he's bored at work and feels frustrated that he's been working his butt off to get a lot done but no one else has stepped things up or done anything other than occasionally letting him know he's doing a good job. So I guess we'll see.

[stormkeeper_lovedoris]

Keep me posted. I get it, I totally get it. I mean, it's hard to work around people who just don't seem to care.

My old friend Kris used to work at a battered women's shelter. She said the pay was terrible and yet the job required a college degree. She often talked about how bad so many of her coworkers were.