Kaonashi Ga Suki

So, I was fired yesterday.

All last week and up until Tuesday I was asked not to come in because work had been light. Now, since my position is technically on-call, this wasn’t unusual. During the whole month of July I didn’t come in to work at all. Fortunately at the time though, I was still working at my other job (on campus) so it wasn’t that bad. I simply worked extra hours at my other job. But in August I quit that job because I wanted to spend more time on this one. Although I wasn’t always crazy about some of the tasks we had to do, I felt that my job was a good springboard to better, full-time positions in the near future, and I wanted to show my managers that I was serious and wanted to move up in the company by focusing solely on it.

Alas, it was not to be.

Ironically, when I walked into the director’s office yesterday morning, I was actually thinking that she wanted to talk to me about the full time position I was interested in. It was basically the same job, same pay, but with benefits.

It only dawned on me when I finally sat in her office and she closed the door.

My project managers had felt that I was only sub-par performance-wise. They said that I was too slow and made too many mistakes. Granted, they always worked with me in trying to make less mistakes and tried to help me work faster, but I guess I still wasn’t good enough. Last month they had given me my own project to work on (usually I go around helping others with their own projects), in the hopes that I would show improvement. I knew that it was a test and tried my best to excel at it. I triple-checked my work before sending it to them; I approached them constantly with questions and advice (which they said during my “3 month” evaluation that I didn’t do enough of); and a few times I stayed late just to finish up loose ends.

But I guess it still wasn’t good enough for them because I was apparently too slow.

While I admit that my managers did the best they could in helping me improve with my work, and while I admit that I could have been faster and more accurate, I still have a few gripes about the situation.

The first thing is that I was hired in March and didn’t start working until mid-April. I was not allowed to work during the entire month of July. I called every day for two weeks and asked if they needed me that day, to which they would reply with a no. They explained that the summer months are rather light in work and not too many people come in. I asked how long this workless period would last and they replied that it would be until the end of the month. I feel that, not only did I lose a lot of valuable learning time being gone for a whole month, but that I did not get my full 6-month probation period. Technically, it was only 5 months. I feel cheated.

The second thing was that, when I first applied for this position, I was not told that it wasn’t really a part-time position but rather on-call. Therefore, it was not made clear to me in the beginning that there would be times in which I wouldn’t be called in to work, and I definitely wasn’t told in the beginning that employees could go as long as a whole month without being called in to work.

The third thing was that I sometimes got mixed messages when it came to procedure. I’d be told to do something by one of the project managers one way, then be told to do it differently by another project manager. At one point, this led to me making another big mistake that had cost me (and them) time and money. I’m sure that was a major nail in my coffin.

The fourth thing was that there are some long-time employees who also seemed to be weak in certain areas of performance. About a month ago, I found out that one of the employees didn’t even know how to do data entry. In fact, she felt so unsure of her data entry skills that she hardly ever does data entry, and requested to take online courses in the 10-key number pad. I was really surprised to hear that she hardly did data entry, especially since it’s a major component of our job. What’s even more surprising is that she had been at this job for 6 years. I couldn’t understand why they would have hired her if she was so weak at this task, let alone stay there for 6 years. It’s possible that they hired her because of her other talent (she’s bilingual in Spanish), but I would think that such a talent would be considered as a bonus and that she would still need to do well at the basic requirements for the job.

The fifth thing was that my project managers were too gutless to even say goodbye to me yesterday. Granted, one of them wasn’t there (as usual- she’s never there), but one would think that the other one would come to me, tell me that she was sorry things just didn’t work out, etc. Instead, she hid in her cubicle the whole time. I didn’t even get an email from her.

The sixth thing was that when I arrived that morning, there was a belated birthday card waiting for me at my desk, signed by the whole department. Can you fucking believe that? They gave me a belated birthday card on the day that they fired me! What the hell is the point? It was bad enough that they didn’t know when my birthday was, even though I signed about 4 other cards prior to my birthday, but they give me one knowing that I was to be fired. Way to twist the knife, people.

(Incidentally, my boyfriend went through something similar a year ago. His department threw him a small birthday party on Friday, then promptly fired him the following Monday).

Anyway, as bitter as I am about the situation, my boyfriend reassures me that it was all for the better. Prophetically, last week (when I wasn’t working because they told me not to come in), my boyfriend suggeted to me that I should find a new job because this one wasn’t worth it. And you know what? He’s right. Sure, part of me is sour grapes talking, but while I gained some research experience at my last job, often times I had to do a lot of grunt work. I’m 30 years old and a graduate student. I’m better than this. I deserve more than this.

I’m through being a graduate assistant, a research assistant. I’m tired of being anyone’s assistant. I am tired of part-time positions. I’m ready for a real job.