A Wonderful Terrible Job

On April 1, 2019,  I began a job at local University that looked promising.  It was working for a research organization. I thought my dream of a permanent job had finally come true.  The institute was the brain child of a  professor who wanted to do something meaningful with the last  few years of her career: create an organization that would study ageing and help seniors world-wide live longer, healthier lives.

I wanted to become one of those indispensable assistants that is the bosses left hand.   Instead, it was a nightmarish experience of cascading failures ending with me being handed my letter of termination twelve weeks after I started with the words unsatisfactory performance burning my eyes as I read them.

The first red flag I ignored was the lack of new employee orientation.  The human resources department had suggested the professor put some time aside to train me.    She told me she had no time to do this but I figured the online training I was offered would suffice and I would just figure out the rest.  As an office temporary,  I was used to parachuting into roles and having to adjust quickly.

The institute had seven different programs on the go.  I wrote the names of them all on a white board and tried to figure them out.  Meetings were chaotic.  Complete agenda's weren't shared and three meetings were wasted discussing menu plans for a group dinner.

I was using unfamiliar technology -ZOOM and doodle polls.  I had the computer of my predecessor which, according to the bosses Phd student, had a virus.

Red flag number two was the organization did not have a structure.  There was no board of directors, mandate or meeting schedule.  I had worked with associations and institutes before, but without a structure you're left trying to nail jello to a wall.

The third red flag was the first major meeting with international stakeholders.  The hotel and meeting rooms were booked less than four months before the event right over the Canada day holiday when hotel prices are at their peak.  The guest list was not set and people were still being invited two weeks before the actual event despite there being a finite number of hotel rooms.

Red flag number four was the finance department  refused to help me.  Part of my job was tracking budgets.  I had two budgets to monitor and prepare travel claims in the University system called Concur. My boss had made a trip to New York City shortly after I started and I was having trouble preparing her claim having only had online training.   I was berated for phoning  the finance deparment too often to ask for help.

On my last week I had finally completed the claim and figured out some other forms, but it was too late.

The final straw for my boss was when she asked me to change the meeting room for our first board meeting at the last minute. Three of the members received cancellation notices and didn't attend.  I didn't know how to set up the audio/visual equipment because I had not been trained yet on that type of boardroom. The meeting went on but the damage was done.

On June 12, 2019 I was summoned into my bosses office and handed the letter of termination and a taxi chit.. I took them back to my office to look at later. For the first time in my life I had a private office with a key and I had decorated it from tip to toe with pictures and my own reference books.  I turned on a podcasat and decided to take my time packing up. As I was walking down the hall with my bags (I was too mortified to ask for boxes) I could hear my shoes flip flopping on the tile floors.  Like my shoes, the job just didn't fit.

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