So this is your first, and final warning look away now.
Work is destroying my soul at the moment. I read a super Phil Galfond (pboh) article a while back I am 58.4% certain that I posted it in an earlier blog, however don’t take that as gospel, about the life/poker balance. In his scenario poker was work. For me it’s a little more complex I have the Work/life/poker balance, and I have a pretty jam packed day already. As most of you know I work 9-5 for the bank, this can be strenuous at the best of times, as of late it is beginning to stress me out in ways that work has never gotten to be before. We are short staffed in the extreme due to various reasons, but mainly long term sickness, we have no cover or temps to replaces said colleagues and as such the excess workload falls to the remaining staff. We are a small team to begin with and 25% of us are on long term sickness, add to this the holiday leave that people are entitled too and all of a sudden we are running at ½ strength. On days like today when certain tasks are required to be completed that require a set number of people to do it leaves a small number of us for customer interaction. In a customer facing business this leads to difficulties. Combine this with people demanding extra jobs get done and we still have the output of a fully staffed branch and you rapidly start to fatigue. On top of this due to us being short staffed we have fallen short of targets meaning I do not qualify for a 1/4ly bonus despite smashing my personal target by over 25%. To add insult to injury my 1/4ly review rating was “partially achieving” meaning that despite out preforming all my targets I am not doing my job to an acceptable level. The excuse for this… the branch isn’t meeting its target therefore we cannot give anyone an achieving rating. Almost a month later and I have managed to get this overturned and get a semi-fair rating but still no remuneration.
Adding to this, is my landlord going bankrupt ( as all people in Northampton seem to) meaning I have to move to a new flat, this is just fantastic especially given that I just applied for a promotion which if successful would see me move to Derby. However throughout the rental market there is a 6month minimum on all contracts, meaning that I would be locked in for 6months when I could be relocating in 2. Fantastic. All of this is leading to a splitting headache and many sleepless nights. It’s times like this that I really want to just quit work and play poker. My sample size and results all indicate that I could crush the games more than a comfortable living. However I don’t have the required savings at present to go on a downswing, so sadly that option is out of the question. I would need to be cashing out £1k per month and that just isn’t possible playing $25nl with a roll just shy of $2k. So that leaves me with no choice but to work for the man.
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Friday - 15th
Well this blog never got posted due to my lack of internet so I am sat in Cafe Nero this morning using the free wifi to upload it, and I will piggy back some good new on the end. I have got a new place sorted. It's 1/3 of the price of my old place, only 3 people live there (myself included) and the lounge and kitchen are beautifully kept, best of all not a student in sight. I think I will be very happy there.
Your problem with feeling demotivated at the Cooperative is that its corporate structure does not recognise your personnel achievement and so this is not reflected in your bonus. I would look long and hard at yourself and ask if you are happy about this and what you are going to do about it. Its also worth looking at the standard of living of those further along the career ladder in positions you deem attainable and constructing a range of attainment, from this you can decide is this company worth the investment of your time and effort. Changing corporate structure is not going to happen.
ReplyDeleteWhat helped me in deciding was turning up to interviews in better suits, shoes, watch and pen then my interviewers, I knew they where mainly HR guys, but you have to start asking yourself questions when its a manager in an accountancy firm and they have been qualified for 5 years.
I bet if you look around you will realise that even your branch manager would have worked very hard with x amount of unpaid overtime and ask yourself what has he got???? Probably middle-aged still saddled with a ton of debt with a questionable standard of living. If that's what you want from life with the security of a pension that's "definitely" going to get paid lols and "definitely" going to perform well lol (pension funds are historically the worst performing funds), then be my guest. Retail banking is probably not the safest sector to commit to a long term career atm due to increasing regulation and the fall out from the euro-zone crisis- given our exposure to French debt. QE is going to be shown as a big mistake and fallout will directly affect the retail banking sector.
I would say get out ASAP- you earn more playing poker, work less hours, have fun and more importantly work in an environment that is a pure meritocracy.