Jobs

My 1st job was delivering pamphlets, I loathed it, it was soooo much time spent folding the junk mail, probably about 75% of the work was folding. You folder until your fingers were black from the ink. It gave me enough pocket money to afford the little things, which at age 14 was parts for my bike.

My 2nd job was working after school on Wednesdays at a family owned photo shop, I did general tasks like cleaning up and eventuated to classifying miss prints. (Classifying photos printed in error helped with calibration the machine that developed photos). There were some eye openers working at this store, you would be amazed what people take photos of. I think the store closed down because of the emerging popularity of digital cameras.

My 3rd job commenced half way through year 12 when I started working as a nursing attendant at an aged care facility. I remained at that nursing home for almost 4 years well into my nursing degree. It was a place of many firsts one of which was experiencing death first hand. I had only ever seen a dead body once. It was my grandfather at his wake the year before. In the years I worked i witnessed all facets of life in particular the lower end of human existence, dementia, incontinence etc etc

Seeing so many people who had lived great lives come to an end was a privilege.

My 4th job was my first IT job doing EFTPOS & point of sale support. The hours were good, I worked 7 out of 14 days on 12 hour shifts. I miss working shifts, in particular how much free time it permits you. After 12 months I was made redundant as the contract I worked on was terminated.

My 5th job was doing the exact same job on the same contract with a new company. I went on to stay at this company for the next 5 years working many roles from tech support to management ending up in operations. I saw the writing on the wall and signs that the company was not managing their finances well and left. (They were bankrupt within 3 years)

My 6th job was working as a technical analyst for a company that owned private hospitals. This was a great job, working in a great team for a great company. As things happen this company was bought out by a smaller company looking to expand. There was good and bad in the takeover, unfortunately all the systems I worked with were targeted for lights out.

My 7th job was working for the company that took over the private hospitals business working on a network project interstate. This was a great experience for me personally and professionally as I was able to move my family to another city. It was a great experience however as we were interrupted by a cute little blond boy we had to move home

My 8th job fell in my lap, the stars definitely aligned for this one. I was sitting in Brisbane contemplating resigning from my job and moving back to Melbourne when a phone call out of the blue set the scene for a new job in Melbourne working as a systems analyst starting around the time that we would arrive home. Though far from the best company on earth working there for the next 5 years was great for me in so many ways. I was able to leverage flexible work arrangements for hospital trips. I would have happily stayed there for many years however working for a tyrant and not being able to visualise where my career there was going made it an easy decision to leave.

My 9th job is where I am now, again IT, again as a systems analyst.

What have I learnt in 9 jobs??

• Most jobs have an expiry date
• You learn just as much working for a bad company as you do for a good one.
• People will stay way too long in a bad job if they work with good people

As a footnote I found it interesting that I had this post typed up yesterday but didn't post it everything from here on I added later.

Today I arrived at work today to an email from my one over manager expressing her thanks to me for the work i've done while my direct manager has been on 5 weeks leave. The Head of the departement was also Cc'd on the email and he had responded and also added his thanks.

I've been working in this new role for only 10 weeks and i'd say that's more praise than I received in the last 3 years at my old job.

This new job feels good.