Spring is here and so we need a new podcast - and here it is

We are not in Kansas anymore. Or applying for jobs in the late 1970s or 1980s. Job searching in the 21st Century.

Advice I would have given myself at 21

Nobody suggested it would be interesting

Nobody said it was easy

No one ever said it would be this hard.

No extravagant claims were made during the interview for the role, pretending that it would be uplifting, fulfilling, contribute greatly to society or even be enough to keep you awake during most of the day. There were veiled mutterings along the lines of there's actually nowhere else to go from here, no promotion escape route, no way of seeking a more demanding role. This is it. And they failed to mention that my predecessor had not stayed longer than a few months. But, my choice, I accepted the job. No complaints there.

And so here l am. Bored. In fact I shambled across the boredom threshold sometime back and am now trying to see if there is a limit to boredom and what may lie beyond peak boredom, in the way perhaps, that philosophers used to contemplate what came after you reached the rim of a flat earth. There may even be grades of boredom, like the Beaufort scale for wind speeds or Mohs scale of hardness. In fact I've invented one (see below).

I was asked again, just this morning, was I enjoying the job. Why is everyone so concerned about 'enjoyment' of a role. I don't think I look suicidal or someone about to walk off site permanently, though the glazed look I get in my eyes around about 3pm is an indication of my daily cerebral cortex shut down for my brain's protection. My stock answer to the question is ‘I can tolerate it’. And I can. Though there was small incursion, for a day last week, into a 'Nope, now I'm actively not liking this’ zone.

I've been here almost three months. Three long, long months. I feel like Marvin the Paranoid android felt in The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. 'The first ten million years were the worst,' said Marvin, 'and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.'

Now I don't like to think of myself as prideful. I've done many a mundane and unpleasant job in the past. How can I ever forget cleaning a large Welsh sewerage works at 0800 on a warm summer's Monday morning. I just can't, not even with therapy. Then there was the garbage truck summer job where there were real metal ash cans that you had to lift onto your shoulder and empty into the truck with the ash and other garbage blowing back into your face. None of this softie mechanical handling for us. Some of the residents would neatly tie their pornographic magazines up in bundles for us so we could read them at lunch time. How thoughtful. How graphic. Rather put me off my sardine sandwiches I can tell you.

I work in what you'd call an industrial environment if you were being kind. This does not comprise shiny state of the art Macs and clean, modern, comfortable office furniture, oh no. I've cleaned my desk using antiseptic wipes, I clean my keyboard weekly, my workspace and bin get cleaned/emptied every full moon and the heating is either a barely adequate wall mounted electric convection heater or a wheezing electric fan that sounds like a Boeing spooling up. The space where I work is partly a dumping ground for amputated office chairs. They’ve come here because, well I’m not sure, probably because no one could think of anywhere else to put them. Still, it is my space and I can concentrate on the tasks I'm set.

What you have to do, of course is find coping strategies. For boredom the course. I have discounted alcohol and drugs sadly. Apple music is particularly helpful and I'm making way through their back catalogue quite steadily. You have to look deep into your reserves to survive the numbness. I have become rather good at The Times crossword at lunchtime and this proves a useful d_st__t_n (11, a thing that prevents someone from concentrating on something else.). I go for walks around the site with self set tasks. However this is a little weather dependant and today it has rained and rained thus causing me to stay largely inside and become ever so more like Marvin.

There must be something you like, I hear you say. Ok can tolerate then.

The short, 15 minute drive, against the traffic, to and from to work. The hours are OK. And, and, oh the pay-check. I didn't really need it when I started but, as life goes, circumstances have changed recently and it is coming in very useful. It's a short term thing so I’ll be interested to see if I can maintain my stoicism when the need goes.

And this is the advice I'd give to my 21 year old self.

'Get a job where you care about what they do. Don't just accept any role (unless you are desperate) even for big money - there's never any long term satisfaction or fulfilment in it for you.'

A long time ago I thought I could take my transferable skills to any industry. I was wrong. Well actually I was right as I did do exactly that. However the life lesson for me was ‘You have to care about what you do.’ I quickly found out I didn’t care about the outcomes and products and my move was a disaster; I had to leave as soon as I could. I've learned that if you care about the outcomes, or the organisation, it's far easier to tolerate the boredom and mundane nature of work that every job has. If you don't care about it then every day becomes hard and mistakes are more prevalent. And you clock watch constantly for the moment you can leave.

Don't boil the frog. The podcast.

Working fewer hours than you want or need?
Over educated for your current role?

Underemployment - pernicious. As bad, in my view, as being overloaded with work, and can be just as damaging, if not more so. I tell all (well some) in my latest podcast.

Usual places including iTunes.

Busy doing nothing, working the whole day long

Underemployed?
Over educated for your role? I consider the implications in my next podcast due out on Saturday.

'Don't ask me what I think of you, you might not get the answer that you wanted to.'

Well.

I've worked for a fair few organisations now. Not necessarily because I wanted to but because the move was often forced on me. The 'R' word, I may have mentioned it before. It's been a working life of ups and downs, going round in circles, digging holes and filling them back in. Some organisations I've been happy in and really enjoyed working there, some places I've loathed, some have been OK, a career transit lounge until the next opportunity comes along. Sometimes the people I've worked with have been fun, some mixed, others very, very hard work. I'm thinking of two in particular when it comes to the very hard work – one, an Italian car company and the other a now defunct textile group (and what a glorious, mind bogglingly stupid career move that was. Moving on...).  I have had a portfolio career, before they were trendy, if you want to categorise it. And you do, I'm sure

When you are offered that new role you spend a few weeks bathed in the warm aura that someone wants you, that the sun is shining and opportunities are endless. You've sold yourself to them and they have flattered your ego bigly by saying 'Yes we choose YOU.' What no one can tell you, or will tell you, is just what it's going to be like actually working there. Our contracts of employment tell us our pay, hours, make vague and largely worthless statements about what the job involves (anything the organisation pretty much wants it to), the hours of work (ha!) and so on. But nowhere does it say “You are required to be genuinely happy' or 'You are required to derive great job satisfaction and contentment.' And that's just as well really as it's all a lottery as to how it goes down.

Therefore you pitch up on the first day and (all of these have happened to me); 

• They know you are coming, there's a desk, equipment, induction, meet and greet the team. Someone tells you where the toilets are and how to make a drink. It's organised. 

• They know you are coming, there's a desk, equipment, induction, meet and greet the team. You learn within two hours that the growth plans expounded at the interview are based entirely on conjecture and have no basis in reality. The job doesn't really exist - it's a 'Bullshit job*’. The manager leaves within a few weeks; that is not a good sign. Really, it's not. Those were the highlights and it's all going southbound from now on.

• No one seems to know anything from Reception onwards. There is no structure, plan, induction and you spend the first week trying to find out just where you are meant to sit and what you have to do. You are never formally introduced to any one, you have to figure out who is who and make your own introductions. You go on your induction 6 months after you start - yes, I'm not making that up.

• A manager knows you are coming, meets you at Reception, takes you to a desk or office and...leaves you there. There is never a formal induction, you have to make your own plan up, nobody knows what it is you are meant to be doing and it's made quite clear that you are an embarrassment to the Director who doesn't want you and a perceived threat to the marketing manager who thinks you are after his job. That was the highpoint, like a ski jump slope after that only with no snow to land on, just pointy rocks. 

• You are met, sat at a desk, moved in an hour to another in a corridor then, as that really is not at all convenient and quite a surprise to passers by, stuck in an office in Portacabin where you cannot hear the sound any other person unless someone visits you (and they don't know you are there so they don't) or you walk back to the main offices. It takes three weeks for the phone to be connected. The rest is a notch potch of good and bad. However there are some highlights - several woman fighting at the Christmas party, drug taking on site, more fighting amongst males, stealing.

There are more and I'm sure you have your own variants. But slowly all is revealed whether it is good, bad, mixed or indifferent.


I was asked, during my first probation meeting a short time ago, whether 'I was happy in my job.' I answered truthfully ‘I can tolerate it.’ And I can, but that's all. I wasn't complaining. I wanted to set the context in that I knew what I was accepting when I took the role and the implications for great contentment. Or rather not. But happy? No. Fulfilled? No, and never likely to be. Thank you for the job, I'll come in and work as productively and as efficiently as I can for 8 hours a day, I won't complain unless it is legitimate but please, don't expect me to be challenged or deliriously happy in the role. I don’t get up in the morning punching the air, waving balloons on sticks and shouting ‘Can’t wait to get back to that repetitive admin it's why I got an MBA. I knew that elective module in repetitive low grade admin work would come in useful one day.’ 

It's a means to an end is all. 
Money.

I find that rather sad really that, at 64, I couldn't find a role that I could find at least partly satisfying and fulfilling with all my skill sets and experience. Nothing wrong with being an older worker, just don't lose your job.

*Wikipedia: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory is a 2018 book by anthropologist David Graeber that argues the existence and societal harm of meaningless jobs. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless, which becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth.

Success; my latest podcast (and for once it's not me doing all the talking)

Losing your job through no fault of your own is tough whatever age you are - for older workers it brings extra challenges. 

In this podcast I interview an older worker who deployed a very successful strategy and tactics to get a new role quickly when his senior management role was made redundant.

(I still have a lot to learn about remote interviewing - as you can tell)

Mission impossible?

Have your five minutes of fame. Be heard across the world. Well USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt and others.

Talk to me folks.