A colourful tapestry of jobs

I had this idea last night - in the early hours, after Cody the dog got me out of bed to let him out for a wee - and it seemed like a good thing to do at the time. Keeping in mind that this blog is, first and foremost, for my children to read when they are grown so they can get to know me better, I thought they would enjoy reading about my professional failures and successes... where I've been, where I got to, and why.

So it's mostly for them, but if you're interested enough, grab a cuppa!

Summer Jobs

The summer after my mother died, I didn't work even though I legally could have - I was about to turn 16, but life was stressful and I was recovering not only from my mother's death but also from a gallstone operation.

The summer after that, there was a very short lived stint at Toys-R-Us. Two days, I think - maybe it was just one day, a morning and an afternoon. This job taught me that it's the lowest jobs that are often the hardest, both physically and in terms of demands on you. My job was taking things from the warehouse to the shop floor. Heavy things. And the boss wanted them exactly where he wanted them, and nowhere else. It was stiflingly hot, and I had to wear a uniform jacket. When I'd had enough, I gave the boss just enough attitude - a look, a tone of voice was enough - for him to call me into the office and fire me on the spot. Thanks very much.

The year after, I was a bit more focused: at the time, I wanted to go further with chemistry and/or biology. So I found a summer job at the local water purification plant. That wasn't interesting - the job itself was mostly about sitting in what wasn't much more than a shed out by the water pools, which the worker I was shadowing would leave every few hours to take samples from all the pools to take back and analyse, and write down the results. In between those trips to get samples, he taught me how to play Minesweeper. I got very good, and that skill helped me kill many an unproductive hour later.

After finishing school, I found a summer job (in between school and college) at Siemens. This wasn't very demanding - filling in excel sheets mainly - but I really liked my boss, a middle-aged man whose face reminded me of my uncle and whose name I have sadly forgotten; when the summer ended, he created a job for me that I could do part-time while studying: project managing the building of 3G base stations across Austria. I enjoyed the work, and the money was very much needed of course too. It was a bit odd working as a woman who was just about hitting 20 years of age, with an office full of middle aged men. One of whom, sitting in a different row (and on another team, so I never spoke with him), had a hardcore p0rn screensaver in plain view. It was different times.

I kept that job for a few years, until going to Durham to finish my BA. It was very odd to have so much time on my hands, not working and so little face-to-face instruction; but that's not the story here. In the summer before moving to Durham, I had a summer job at Atos Origin, another office job but this time in B2B Sales: we literally phoned through lists of businesses to try and get them to accept an engineer visit to talk to them about a software platform, Citrix. I had two brilliant coworkers who made what could have been a soul destroying job (all those annoyed rejections!) a fun game, and we had lots of conversations. My boss too, only 10 years older than me and someone whose intellect I greatly admired, had many deep conversations with me and her persistent invitations finally got me to visit her church, and eventually resulted in my conversion to Christianity. 

Europlakat does street furniture and advertising 

Trying Full Time Work

Having finished my Business BA in Durham, it felt like the thing to do now was to move back to Vienna and start working. I quickly found a job at Europlakat, an outdoor advertising company jointly owned by French JCDecaux and Swiss Affichage. They didn't actually have any operations within Austria - Eastern Europe is their patch - but Vienna is where they chose to place their headquarters, presumably as that is neutral territory. I was the assistant to the Technical Director, and sat in an office with the assistants of the other two directors: a Frenchman for Decaux, named Monsieur Sambron, middle aged and smoking the stinkiest cigars I have ever had the misfortune of being exposed to; and a Swiss man, in his 30's, whose name I have forgotten. One thing that irked me to no end was that in the entire building, all women were assistants / secretaries. If you were female, you were expected to be the tea maker. There were no women in responsible roles. I hated the place.

A funny anecdote from my time at Europlakat: my boss was from Eastern Germany, and having grown up behind the Iron Curtain, he hadn't been exposed to the different German dialects and he just could not get an ear for the Austrian version of German. People in the office didn't speak dialects the way they would at the pub, but the accent was nevertheless there. And my boss was feared throughout the company because people could not read him; he would sit in meetings with a pokerface saying nothing, and later on send emails. If someone tried to speak to him informally, he'd tell them to email him instead. It was only I who knew the reason for this: he understood very little of what people were saying! He'd take me into every meeting, ostensibly to take notes, but afterwards he'd sit down in the office with me and ask: "So, what did they say?"

I made it six months there - about a month into working there, I began looking for alternatives. There was a programme for UK graduates to move to New York for a year's work experience, and having finished my degree in the UK I was eligible for this. I applied, and was accepted; and so, six months after starting at Europlakat, I got my ticket out.

My workstation at the architects

My home while in NYC (although it was actually across the River, in New Jersey)

In the USA

The Mountbatten Programme took graduates into entry level jobs in the States. I began at an architect's office as assistant to five directors; these had interviewed me and other candidates on the phone, and had been looking for a receptionist - this job they gave to another candidate, but they liked me enough to create a different job for me: assistant to the five directors. It sounded interesting, but unfortunately it became clear after a few weeks that they had no idea what to use me for. Their calendars were connected; there was no paperwork to do; and after going round and round asking for work, and feeling like a nuisance, I eventually ended up mostly surfing the Internet. Which they didn't appreciate. One day I came to work in the morning to find that the IT guy had pulled up my entire history, proving that I had been spending a lot of time online. They dismissed me.

Being with the Mountbatten programme however, this wasn't the end of my time in New York: another intern had just left a position at the IIRC, the Institute for International Research. What sounds like some sort of official body is actually very much a profit making operation: they put on professional conferences and charge exorbitant amounts to attendees. I was the receptionist. My duty was to be cheerful, welcoming, and to receive post. Unfortunately, my boss there was an elderly spinster whose entire life seemed to be about this company, and who made my life miserable by micro-managing (one example: packages had to be stowed one inch away from the wall, so as not to make marks. More than once I noticed her creeping up quietly and running her hand between the packages and the wall to check that I had put them at the correct distance.) If you know me, I'm not the bubbly smiley type - never have been, never will be. But the environment didn't help. Between a boss who policed my every move (it's unprofessional to have a cup of tea at the reception desk!), a tiny windowless break room to spend half an hour with miserable coworkers - one of whom commuted from Long Island, 3 hours each way, every day! - and a hire-and-fire culture I found revolting (one single mother had to take a few days off because her son got sick, upon coming back her things were in a cardboard box and that was that), being eventually fired was a relief here.

It was touch-and-go about going home. The Mountbatten programme officers were kind, though, and I was lucky that another intern had just left a position at the ESUUS, the English-Speaking Union of the United States. This was the first not-for-profit organisation I had ever been at, and I was assistant to the fundraising director. This job was an eye opener. Particularly after the IIRC and its horrible treatment of workers, who were cynical and exhausted, here there were people who loved what they did and truly cared about it. They had a goal, something to work for, that wasn't just money or making shareholders richer - there was a bigger reason to work there, which resulted in a very different atmosphere. I was able to bring in my knowledge of building websites, and overhauled their online presence; the Fundraising Director mentored me and made me feel valued; I was happy.

My home in Maryland (while working at the German School)

The year in New York was coming to an end though, and I wasn't happy to go back to Austria; so I sent as many applications as I could to companies and organisations that had any connection with Germany or Austria, given that my one unique selling point was my native language. And - unbelievably really, for someone so young and inexperienced - the German School in Washington DC went through the long and expensive visa process to get me a working visa so I could start with them right after finishing in New York. I moved, initially into the basement of a couple who were part of the local church, and later into my own (shared) place, and began a project to set up a fundraising office at the school. The school had never seriously asked for donations, and wanted to set up a steady fundraising income. Once the office was established, they hoped that some local mums of pupils could run it part-time; but the initial setup was what they hired me for.

The German School

It was good, although the office they gave me felt like a fishtank: surrounded by glass walls, pupils walking through the hallways, I felt constantly watched! Unfortunately, the fundraising principles my mentor at the ESU had taught me weren't embraced by the school leadership: in American academic (and most other) fundraising, the Board is very much leading donations so that as a fundraiser, and as a Board member, they and I can invite others to 'join them' in supporting the institution. In this case, the Board didn't see giving money as their responsibility but rather, they saw it as my job to get others to give. This proved difficult without support, and eventually, once I had set up the basic structures needed, I clashed with the Board about their role and they decided not to renew my contract.

In the USA, a working visa is tied to a particular company or organisation; I could not just find a new job. Any new company hiring me would have had to secure a new working visa for me, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars and only available once in the year, in September. My contract finished at the end of December, so finding an alternative job was simply not on the cards. 

There was a couple from my church who were moving to Baja California (Mexico) and there was opportunity for me to move with them, but my Spanish wasn't good enough to work and I didn't have savings to sustain me for months while I brushed up my language skills. I thought, I contemplated, I prayed. And in November I attended a church conference in Los Angeles, where I ran into the couple that led the church in Winchester, UK. We got chatting, and they told me that there was a house of four young ladies in their church which had one more bedroom vacant, and if I wanted to move there, I'd have a place to stay straight away! So - while the UK wasn't where I wanted to be, I had no real choice and decided to go there for a year at most, and try to make my way back across the Atlantic again as soon as possible.

Having got used to American spaciousness, a room where I could basically touch both walls at the same time was a bit of a culture shock!

In the UK

So my time in the UK began in January 2006, moving to Winchester, to a house full of South African girls I had never met before. I arrived just before a weekend, and on the Monday I went to the local employment agency, who sent me straight on to a temporary job at Naomi House Children's Hospice's fundraising office. I worked there as assistant to the Fundraising Director - part of quite a big team, because this hospice receives no funding except for donations. This was a brilliant job, for a sad yet beautiful cause, but it was only a six-month appointment. I hadn't realised just how brilliant this was until after it ended - because I had got that job so easily, I was dismayed to find that there weren't any other jobs available. Winchester is a tiny town really, and there just aren't many local jobs. Many people commute to London, which I wasn't willing to do after all the commuting I had done in the States!

I had a very short stint at a retail store for Bang & Olufsen, as a salesperson, and let's just say I'm not suited to sales.

One Sunday, a member of my church mentioned that there was a job going at the head office of the organisation he worked for that might suit me. I wasn't too keen on it because this was in Reading, a good 90 minutes door-to-door from my place by public transport, but I felt I had to at least apply because he took the trouble to tell me about the job. So I applied, interviewed, and - got the job at Prospects for People with Learning Disabilities!

This put me in a difficult position, practically - I now had a 90 minute commute each way, starting in January of 2007, where I would cycle from my home to the train station, take the bike on a train (once an hour there was a direct train to Reading, otherwise it would involve changing at Basingstoke), and then cycle uphill to the office. Cycling in January wasn't fun, cycling through towns wasn't fun and involved many flat tyres due to broken glass and such... but, I needed the job, and I figured I'd do this until I found something better more locally. But then, after only a couple of months, it became very clear that God was calling me to this job - this was a Christian charity, we would pray together daily, the values and ethos of enabling people to live their lives to the full just really resonated for me and I found I couldn't just leave that for a job that would merely bring in money.

I felt quite stuck for a long time. After about eight months on the job, a member of a coworker's church (whom I'd never met before) gifted me a car, and that cut my commuting time in half as well as making it much more comfortable. I continued living in one place and working in another, and because I felt committed to both the church in Winchester and the job in Reading, it was just what I had to do and I got on with it.

But after about 18 months of this, things began to grate. The time; the cost; the way I could not be fully in either place. There was a local church I knew of in Reading, and after some prayer I decided that the job was a calling from God and that I would move to Reading. As soon as the decision was made, another church member of another coworker was going to Africa for over a year and looked for someone to stay at his house for the duration: I had a place to stay.

I loved my job at Prospects - here at the House of Commons with a coworker and my cousin, at an event to advocate for people with learning disabilities 

I stayed at Prospects for many years - in fact, until moving to Bristol when I got married to Mr. in 2013. Starting in a team under the Director for Corporate Affairs (who became the most important mentor and friend I'd ever had in a working capacity), an eventual reorganisation in 2009 meant that the entire team was dissolved and only one combined job remained, as Marketing Manager reporting to the Operations Director, which I was appointed to. I enjoyed the work, but also seeing the difference the organisation made to people whose voices normally went unheard.

When I met Mr. and things became serious, the question arose about where we should live. He was anchored in Bristol, working for Airbus; I had felt very much committed to my job at Prospects. There was no possibility of doing my job remotely, that was made clear at the outset when I raised the issue; and so, after much thought and prayer, we decided that I would move to Bristol and leave my job at the same time. I worked literally until the day before our wedding, and left the job with deep gratitude and love. 

Not long after, Prospects was bought up by another company and things changed - so again, I am grateful for having been spared that upset, and it showed that the decision to leave was right.

Our lovely first home in Bristol, Asha the Dutch Barge

Having got married, and as yet without kids, I had to find my feet in a new city and find new work according to new priorities. My priority now was to be at home, to make a home; I didn't want to find the kind of work Prospects had been, where my heart and soul were invested. At this point, I just wanted to make a bit of money on the side to support our life together, but keep my focus on the home. So when a very part-time position at our church opened up, just admin, where I would be allowed to take the dog to the office, I jumped at the opportunity. I was able to walk to work, almost an hour's good walk with the dog, and worked two half days a week.

I kept this up after baby 1, N, but when I got pregnant the second time not long after, we decided it was time to let go of this job - I certainly had my hands full. 

A couple of years after D was born, I decided to re-train as a hairdresser and set out as self employed. I had never done that, and it was a big step, and very different work to anything I had ever done before! I did a year's evening course at the local college to qualify as a hairdresser, with the intention of working for myself afterwards. 

While I enjoyed the course, and the learning, in practice things just didn't work out financially: I had the costs and time of getting to the client's home, and couldn't charge much because there's a lot of competition and hairdressers do work for very little money - I tried for a few months but had to concede that the little amounts I made just didn't make up for the time, effort, and missing out on being around the kids.

Back to the drawing board. Having volunteered to caption for the hard of hearing charity Open Ears for many years since they had met me during my Prospects days, I felt I could perhaps try to make this a professional endeavour and earn money from it, so I qualified as an Electronic Notetaker. This has been a brilliant move. I've had steady work I could do when it suited me, much of it from home; we've had opportunity to travel as a family; and I know I'm making a tangible difference in the lives of many people who need captions to fully access the information given at events, lectures and so on. This job won't last forever - AI is coming - but while it exists, I'll enjoy doing it.