Should I just roll with this? Work situation.

[Waytooearly]

I got a job in December for a very good national company. Excellent reputation, good employer, nice people, all great.

The plan was that I would work at their new branch, local to me, when it opened. However, now several months later, it's still not open. (Construction delays.)

They've honoured their contract to me, paid me full salary, and I am working at home. I use a rental office in town centre when I need to see clients. (Like I'll rent the office for just the time for the appointment.)

However I am starting to feel a little fed up with some things. I don't know whether I just need to chill and roll with it, or whether I need to find a way to address it in a positive way. Here are the issues:

1. I am expected to take on new clients but I have no access to our client database. So I just make paper records and send them to headquarters, they say they will work out billing whenever local office is open.
2. I have to oversee construction work at new building, whilst also being given client files to work on. So some days I camp at little cafe with WiFi near new our site, work on files whilst going back and forth to site. It is actually really awkward to have a table in a crowded cafe and be working ith clients' financial docs. I don't think it's appropriate.
3. I'm expected to travel once every few weeks to headquarters, which I'm happy to do, but it's a three hour drive and I'm not being paid for travel time.

4.People keep sending me files to work on. Which, great, I am being paid so by all means give me work to do, but I'm increasingly uncomfortable with the files full of precious original documents piling up in my house.

1. I have to pay for a lot of photocopying and postage (court bundles) as well as expenses related to new office (new keys, measuring tape, etc.). It adds up. This month alone it got up to nearly £200,and I had to send several emails to get myself reimbursed!

But on the other hand, good job, good employer, should I just shrug it off? We will def be open soon (I see the progress first-hand!) So maybe just reasonable growing pains?

For what it's worth, I am not management and it's relatively low pay, though a good position with lots of prospects. (I only mention because not getting reimbursed for £200 is a big dent in budget.)

What do you think?

Hi, it definitely sounds like something I would mention, you are NBU to be a bit peeved off about the inconvenience to you personally and also it sounds like some quite serious data protection issues going on with the client files at a cafe and at your house, if nothing else (if it was me) I would want to document somehow that I had made management aware that was how I was working and they were OK with it in case anything does happen, I wouldn't want it said I had just decided to work like that off my own bat and against company policy or anything like that.

Do you have a line manager you catch up with regularly? If not then I would try and arrange a phone call or face to face session with whoever is your immediate senior, just to review how things are going in your new role. You don't have to raise everything in one go nor does it have to be a big conflict, I would probably decide in advance what the most important issues are, and say something along the lines of 'just wanted to make you aware that because as you know construction of the branch in X is delayed I've had to make some temporary working arrangements (mention the temp office and the cafe etc) - these weren't ever meant to be permanent and I am not sure they are suitable due to data protection (etc - give examples - perhaps look up if there is a company policy on data protection, they should have one and what it says about mobile/home working and sensitive data, it will lend weight to your argument if they are expecting you to work against their own policy).

Then you need to constructively think of some suggestions for how the company could help - e.g. could they pay for you to use the temporary office full time until the new branch is built or is that financially unviable? Is there another branch nearby you could use a few days a week? Can they provide more secure storage for the documents at your home? Is there a company credit card you could use to pay for postage etc rather than paying yourself and getting reimbursed? Basically always approach the problem with solutions rather than just issues! In the worse case scenario at least even if they can't or won't do much to help at least you have ensured they know what's happening and protected yourself!

Good luck, hope things improve.

Thank you, that's helpful. I agree, definitely want to keep things positive.