My new job is slowly destroying me .. what can I so? I’m so desperate.

[cantstartagain]

My new job on paper sounded ideal to me. In a category I really enjoy, big global recognisable firm, good salary.

I’ve been there 6 weeks. It’s pretty much fully remote, my entire team is in a different country so even if I wanted to go into the office I’d be alone, there is literally no work to do.

I just can’t do it, I live alone and I don’t want to be sat in my house 24/7, I don’t want to sit staring at a screen with nothing to do, it’s 2am and I don’t want to sleep as it means I’ll be waking up to another day of nothing …

If it's a career you love with a good salary, you could use the time to learn more about the job. I'm assuming there'll be work to do eventually. It could be just the time of the year and they might be easing you into it, especially if you're only 6 weeks in. Id use the time to learn more about the role, then when they come back to you with work, you'll know what you're doing. It'll leave you in a better position for promotion etc. if working your way up is what you're aiming for

Not what you want to hear but I'd love this job.

I think PP meant do these things out of work time, ie she doesn't have to be home alone all day every day.

No wonder this country is going to the dogs.

I can understand how lonely your work day is. Keeping busy with personal projects like learning a language as PP said, or online courses to develop other work skills to enhance your career prospects will make that pass more quickly.

But I think your main problem is loneliness. You don't seem to have a social life. Right now, while you have no pressure from work and no need to work late would be a great time to build a social life and start getting to know people.

Work isn't the best place to find friends. Interacting with colleagues might ease that sense of loneliness during work hours but people with busy jobs don't get much time for that. And you are often stuck with people you wouldn't want to spend time with if you didn't have to.

I would give the role another two months. In that time start looking around for another role. If the job you are in suddenly becomes better you can scrap the job. You can explain away the short time at this job as not being suitable due to the fully WAH aspect. You need a job with more interaction. A lot of jobs are now pulling people back into the office.

As an insurance you need to find something outside of work to interact with others.

I wfh half my week. I do think there is going to be a loneliness epidemic because of remote working. Fine if you have a family etc, not so great if you are not an introvert with no other people around you. I have a family and it is only half my time but I worry about colleagues who live alone, a couple of them have indicated that they were damaged by the covid lockdowns and the remote working.

Just because there's nothing to do doesn't mean you can be absent from the workspace. Terrible advice

Can you get another job while keeping this one and draw another salary? May also need to be wfh so only solves part of the problem but you would at least have work to do.

Could go part time in current job if another job needed you in the office some days.

Isn't the real problem that she hasn't got enough of anything at anytime? Yes if she was busy and tired from work the time would fly and she would be satisfied and enjoy her (quiet/lonely) evenings unwinding. And vice versa if she took my advice and got out there on her own time she might not feel the same way about being under-stimulated during work hours.

Anyway that's my idea based on the information shared by OP I may be wrong but I don't think it would harm her to try it either way

I totally understand how isolating it can be working from home, especially if you don't have a partner kids.

you’ve got three options

• speak to your manager and ask for more work
• get a new job
• use the free time to do something you enjoy / learn something or get another job on the side. It’s called over employment and there are lots of threads on Reddit on it

OP, have you spoken to your employers about why there's no work, when that might change, whether they are expanding the local team etc?

Same! I had that life when I worked for myself but not as an employee. Unless you’re in a role that requires you to be ‘out’ for periods of time, who on earth are these employers who are not fussed if you show up during working hours and not using teams or equivalent to communicate?

Yes, fair point.
The work issue should be the easiest to remedy by talking to her manager.

Use the time to search for something else that is office based. This isn't the job for you. Your mental health is too important.

Why is there no work to do?

Maybe time to write that novel??

When I started in my current org it was early 2021 and the office hadn’t reopened post-pandemic yet. It was a busy job so different to your situation but I also live alone and being fully remote (not what I signed up for/was promised) was miserable. The office reopened at the end of that year but by that point I’d also had enough of never meeting colleagues F2F (we were supposed to have team get-togethers but they were repeatedly cancelled) so I found another role in the org which needed me to be out and about on site visits and the like and it was such a relief. I was so much happier.

Life is too short for this. All the suggestions to do training are well meant but there needs to be some point to whatever training you do, otherwise it’s just as unsatisfactory.

I understand, as I have been doing similar since about 2022, and although I do have quite a bit to do, there is no sense of connectedness in the small team, who are mainly involved in their 'day jobs' (elsewhere). Being told things is also quite erratic, so the pattern is often all on or not much.

What has been a problem that I did not expect, is that I find it very difficult to describe good scenarios in my favour at interviews now. There is either the sense of 'This was a strategy, it got this far in this way, but never came to fruition - change of management,' or that things feel too complex or unrelatable/boring even when they were important, such as building and adapting a system that nobody else was bothered about, as long as it worked. I know that these things were 'big' in my role, but describing them has got worse and worse, for some reason, and there were many more of these than the obvious and successful wins. The more I try to describe all this, the less I respect it, or even properly remember it, and it has felt unlike other jobs before in that respect

I would say: develop yourself - with moving on in mind. Be tenacious on that. What skills do you need to work on? If a new manager asked you what you had identified and learned, in a job or in training or whatever; or said 'So what?' to several layers of what you had been trying to describe, and why, what would you say? Get some kind of a mentor, I found someone affordable to bounce info off on Fiverr (remote working), although lots of other sites offer similar. They will help because I feel that someone in your corner can do that well.

I've lived alone.most of my adult life (now in my 50s.) I do things like exercise classes and a language class (though that's now online) to help with social contact - I don't have many local friends, and speaking to people on WhatsApp and waiting for weekends when we're all available isn't the same (though it is better than nothing.)

Boredom is really bad for my mental health. I have lots of things I do in my spare time, but when I've been in work without enough to do, it's been bad, because you can't really go out to the shops or anything, just to interact with people, and you can't necessarily pick up the hobbies you want, either - I felt guilty about it.

As others have suggested:

• Ask your manager for more work.
• Do any online training available.
• Look for another job. The job might get better, but tough as it is currently, there are other jobs out there, so I would rather spend my time on that. I left my last job after 5 months (for other reasons) - it's only a problem if you do do repeatedly. Don't stay in a job that will beat you down. Or at least, only stay there as long as it takes to find another, and when you leave,be honest with them, that the job wasn't what they told you it would be.

OP this is exactly what my job was like when I first started. Fully remote, no team members in the country, nothing to do for the first few months. Things eventually picked up and now I’m busy and miss those idle early days.

Personally, I am quite happy to not have to step foot in an office and share a workspace with other people. But I get that it’s not for everyone.

You can get a device that moves your mouse!!

I'd be taking the piss and taking them for every penny!!

OP are there any co-working spaces near you? A lot of them are run as CICs and host meet ups and events as part of their package. My colleague uses one and they have bring and share lunches, weekly lectures etc.

If it were me i'd just take the salary and occupy myself whatever way I can. A couple of days a week I'd work from a cafe or garden centre type place just to get a break from home.

Have you raised this with your Line Manager ?

I work from home all the time, but I get out at the weekend and do other things. If there are quiet spells of not much work which I have been going through lately, I'll play on computer games and check in to meetings etc.

There aren't many details here but you really shouldn't be dependent upon work for your social fulfilment. There are much worse work situations to be in and it doesn't sound like your job is currently at risk. But you need to tell you manager that you don't have enough to do and offer to help out other members of the team.

What about hobbies? Have you got any? Can you go out for a walk in the day or work in a social space (coffee shop, shared workplace) for part of the day? Go to the gym in the evening? Anything that might get you out there and feeling less lonely. Are you living rurally? Can you move somewhere more populated with more going on in the evenings and weekends?

I mean this kindly but 6 weeks is very early days. Is there some kind of induction programme? Perhaps they’re going very easy on you as they don’t want to overwhelm you all at once. If your computer isn’t being monitored, you could genuinely use the time to up skill and learn more about the role, the company and ways you can contribute. You could take your computer and camp out at a coffee shop. Near me, we have a ‘women’s collective’ of women who work from home but one day a week they meet in a cafe, plug in, work but also socialise and network - the aim is to reduce isolation. If there’s not anything like that near you, perhaps you could start one?

If you’ve got a manager, tell them you’re geared up and ready to get cracking and you NEED some work to do. If after 6 months, it’s really not shifting then you at least know you’ve given it a good crack.

I’m sorry you’re struggling so much with all of this. It’s not easy!