to be utterly fecked off with my job?

[kiritekanawa]

Working freelance for less than 1/6 of the minimum wage. I've been sitting on my backside for 3 full days and half last night, am now 1.5 hours overdue with no end in sight for hours. THis is a job that the company reckons takes 3-4 hours.

The pay is utterly crap. The job is supposed to give me self-esteem and provide things like concert tickets for me and DH. The one concert of the year that I'm actually able to go to - starts in 1 hour and I won't be going to it. DH is going, extremely pissed off that I'm once again bowing out of a social occasion because I'm working all hours on this sodding job. How did it turn out like this? I used to have a job I liked, that paid enough and wasn't the intellectual equivalent of a zero-hours contract at McDonalds with about 24 extra unpaid hours tacked onto every shift.

Back to work...

What exactly are you doing? How are you in the position that you're accepting less than 1/6 of the minimum wage? What are your skills?

It is utterly outrageous in this day and age that anyone could be in a situation where they earn so little! How do employers get away with this?

I've just left a job where I was actually out of pocket at the end of the day, and although my employer was not breaking the law, as far as I am aware, it is morally unacceptable to treat employees the way they treat theirs.

You have chosen to be freelance so you can dictate what you do and don't do. Its up to you to make the change in your life to live the way you want to.

HereIam20 - no i haven't chosen in the slightest to be freelance - I can't get anything else at the moment. I live in a tiny university town stuffed full of unemployed people with PhDs and considerable job experience (all the spouses of the university academics). The country's economy is completely stuffed, so businesses go broke a lot.

ImNameyChangey I'm working for a company that supports academic publishing. I have a PhD, 10 years' postdoc and uni lecturing experience (including 7 years at Oxford and Cambridge) and worked for 18 years in academia until the end of last year. See point above re being unable to get a job.

WhereIsMYJonathanSmith I am inclined to agree that hte employers are exceptionally exploitative. However, they have a lot of people who can be exploited. Try getting a job in a supermarket or a cafe or a bar, when you're nearly 40 and have a PhD and have only ever previously been employed by universities.

Exactly. I ran my own business for over 20 years and couldn't even get a job in Asda. And as for getting people off the dole! All well and good when there are actually genuine jobs to apply for but where I live there is very little employment available.

I can barely earn enough to live on.

It is awful that with all your experience and academic qualifications you can't find suitable, well paid employment, I'm not surprised you're pissed off!

Makes me glad that my academic career never took off and in the few years since my PhD I managed to 'climb' the admin 'ladder' a bit. At least now I'm a failed Dr. earning just over minimum wage while sitting at a desk.

I have little helpful advice, OP. Have you thought about A-level tutoring or something? That's what people used to suggest to me when I was at the height of my frenzied and fruitless applying-for-lectureships phase. Train up youngsters to go take degrees only to find there's a dearth of graduate jobs, and prop up the system!

Now I'm depressed.....

I edit for academic publishers, and while the money is not fantastic it is far better than £1/hour. Could you do that?

Is your PhD in a scientific (specifically bioscience) discipline?