This January marks the 10 year anniversary at my current company. It’s the longest I’ve been at a single company. I’ve always said if the company treats me good, I have no reason to leave. The past 3 years have been challenging for everybody globally because of the pandemic. My company, an international school, was no exception. There was a dip in intake, contributing directly to less income. That’s why when the company announced that they could afford to give us one month bonus for the past two years and no increments during the pandemic, I totally understood. At least there’s still some bonus although not as much as the previous eight years at the company.
Now the worst of the pandemic has gone and left us. School intake has returned back to normal and the company shouldn’t be using that excuse this year right? We shall have to wait and see in August.
A few weeks ago there was a regional invitational badminton tournament held at the school. The ICT department was tasked with the scoreboard system and had to come to the school for the entire weekend. Now working weekends are no stranger to us. There’s this little sneaky line in our employment letter (or is it job description?) that says we should be prepared to work overtime including weekends when necessary. Most of the time, I would have no qualms about working weekends. I’ve done them loads of times in the past. At the very least I could make some extra cash by claiming the double-rate overtime. So what’s changed?
It all started on Sunday morning, during the last day of the tournament. Breakfast was provided for participants, their staff members and we assume all the support staff including us. As my colleague was helping himself to some breakfast that morning, one of the big bosses in charge of the tournament said we shouldn’t be helping ourselves to breakfast like that. He said the participants paid a lot of money to join, including for the food. I thought wow. There we were sacrificing our weekend with our loved ones coming to work for a little money and then being treated like shit by him.
Managing the scoreboard system and then live stream video was no mean feat. Had they hired a real professional to do all that, it would easily cost them tens of thousands of ringgit. But there we were, the entire department working our ass off and then being treated like crap. What is a little breakfast compared to the time and energy that we poured into the tournament? I have half a good mind to tell him my thoughts about him at the time but I knew better. It’s not the first time he treated members of our department like garbage and I suspect it won’t be the last. We did have our breakfast a few minutes later when he left. Still it left a bitter aftertaste in our mouth.
That got me thinking, at this stage of my life, should I subject to such indignation? Do I want to spend my entire working career at such a company/environment? No I’m not saying I’m beneath working overtime or doing support jobs like that but sometimes when you encounter uncouth people like him, it makes you re-evaluate your career choices. My career path at the company seems quite straightforward (or so I thought) at the moment. I am currently the deputy to the system admin and someday when he leaves, I might be considered for the job. Then again I see the pressure and stress that he goes through almost every day. It’s not good for the mental and physical health. Do I really want to be in his shoes someday? At the moment I’m not so sure. Especially with the current top management.
The dream is to become a full stack developer, work remotely from anywhere and earn a shitload of money. That’s why I’ve been dabbing my fingers into some coding lately although I quickly realized, learning a whole new field of knowledge at my age is not a walk in the park. Sure I have my basics in programming, it’s the energy and time required to learn new things that’s really hard. I’m usually always so tired after work in the evening, especially if I do any bit of workouts beforehand. All of my kids are still in school and I have transport duty for 3/4 of them every day after work. I’d be lucky to find any time to devote myself to coding during weekends. There’s always so much chores and distractions during those precious 2 days of the week. Besides, I also would want to rest some time right?
So you see, despite the occasional apprehensions that I feel at work, my choices for a career change are quite limited at the moment. Sure I could look for a similar job at another school or company but there’s no guarantee I would be treated better, heck it could even be worse. That’s why I’m trying my best to put all that ill-feeling behind me, at least for now. Especially when I still have many mouths to feed and kids to get through college. It’s not the right time to make rash decisions that could affect our livelihood.
