15 minute rule

So I’m reading this kind of self-help book at the moment, which helps you use a ’15-minute rule’ to avoid procrastination. The idea is you can do anything for 15 minutes, and as writing in my diary is something I’m always putting off, I thought I’d give it a go. I have this week off work, so maybe I can get back into the swing of writing a bit if I give this a go. So if this entry ends suddenly, or makes no sense, that’s probably why.

So I seem to remember the last time I wrote in my diary I was complaining a bit about my job and being fed up with being a temp. A lot has changed at work since then, but then that was probably over 6 months ago. First big change is that I’ve been made permanent (hurray!). They finally gave me a permanent contract in October last year, which I was very pleased about, as you can imagine. The actual process was a bit of a nightmare, and involved over a month of faffing about with CVs and applications and even having to have an interview for the job that was already mine. But it was worth it in the end, and I’m very happy in my job. My job hasn’t changed much apart from day-to-day things like being allowed an email address now, which has made my life a lot easier. I’ve been trained up on a few new things and trained up some other people, and generally have continued to love my job and the people I work with.

The other big thing that’s happened at work is that before Christmas they announced that a lot of our work was migrating to Coventry and there were going to be job cuts. It was all handled quite well in that anyone who did end up being ‘at risk’ would be redeployed to somewhere in Sheffield, and be given a lot of help finding a new position, rather than just being made redundant, but it has still been a bit of a horrible period to go through. They rated everyone who could be affected so that the highest rated people would get to stay and the lowest rated would be at risk. But because I hadn’t been there long enough they didn’t have an end-of-year rating or anything to look at, so all the new starters were automatically given an average rating. So that was a bit crap, but understandable – it was the fairest way to do it. After that, if there were lots of people with the same score, there would be a tie-break situation that would mean an interview. As I had an average rating I was in a tie-break situation, which I had kind of expected, but naturally I was still terrified at the idea of an interview. I HATE interviews, and it worked out that we were given only a week’s notice to prepare for it. So that was terrifying and I spent the whole week agonising over it. Everyone at work was great and I was given lots of help and advice, mock interviews and prep sessions with my team leader etc, plus Tom as always was very supportive and helpful. I was probably quite well prepared in the end, but still extremely nervous. Plus obviously, my interview would have to be on Friday 13th! And at half 3 so I had all day to worry about it. Anyway, I had the interview, but wasn’t too sure how it had gone, but as it turned out I did very well, and ended up in a safe situation so got to stay in my current role. So that was obviously a massive relief and I was thrilled to hear it, but it’s still been quite difficult because of other people in the department being forced to leave.

So the last few months have been spent in updating CVs and applying for new roles for a lot of people. But most people have managed to find new roles and in the past few weeks have started leaving to start their new jobs, so it’s all been quite emotional at work at the moment. There were two people in particular that I really wanted to see stay when they had their ‘tie-break’ interviews and one of them did, but one of them has left so I felt particularly gutted about that.

Ooh – time up! To be continued…