To want a job I can go home and forget about?

[twosoups1972]

A bit of background - I am in my mid 40s with 3 dc aged 17, 16 and 12. I am well educated to degree level and worked in insurance before having dc. I didn't really enjoy it and always planned to stay at home when my dc were small. Dh is well paid and so I spent 15 years at home with my dc which I loved doing. I've never been terribly ambitious career-wise.

About 5 or 6 years ago I started to think about retraining to do something new as youngest dd was settled into school. I took a 2 year course to qualify in a fairly unusual job. I don't want to say what it is as it's quite unusual but it comes under specialist teaching. I had to pay for the course but I thought I would get that back when I started working.

Qualified a few years ago and am now in my third year working in the field. Very part time - just one day/week. I do enjoy some aspects of it but I find the professional responsibility overwhelming. I hardly ever stick to my one day per week as I have to make appointments to see children, liaise with schools/parents, write reports and so on. I have a great manager who says I should only be working on my working day but it's difficult. For example, if I send out an email suggesting some appointment times and people don't respond on my working day, I can't just leave it till the following week. So my work computer is usually on most of the week.

I work Wednesdays and by Monday I am already planning my workload and worrying about what needs to be done.

Sometimes I want to pack it all in and get a job that I can leave and go home and not worry about. But it would be a waste of that training wouldn't it?

Yes but working in Waitrose is very different from the kind of job you’re doing, isn’t it. You can’t stack shelves from home! As it’s operational delivery, I expect they have a rota system if she is a manager so she doesn’t need to worry what happens on her days off, whereas if she worked in accounts or HR her experience may be more like yours.

I think your problem is the one day a week aspect.

I worked two days a week in a job involving setting interviews and doing visits, it was difficult for the reasons you describe e.g. if someone doesn’t confirm an appointment you’re stuck unless you keep working on your days off. When my child went to school I increased to 4 days still part time, and in the end I did my hours over five shorter days because it was a nightmare on the Monday just catching up with one missed day’s worth of crap from the Friday.

I agree with PPs that the issue is your working hours.

Part time working is often presented as an easier option but in my experience it can be more stressful because it makes managing the workload difficult except in very reactive, transactional type roles.

I think jobshares work better (never managed to find one myself but thats just what I've observed).

Thank you eva that's a good point. The problem is, as children get older especially approaching GCSE years, they worry about missing lessons at school to do sessions with me. I try to be accommodating and flexible.

That flexiblity is coming at the expense of your mental health though isn’t it? Setting better boundaries is good advice.

It sounds like you’re going to end up doing a McJob otherwise and that’s not ideal is it? Better to make it clear that it’s a or b or nothing. The students’ employers won’t be flexible and if it’s inportant then they need to prioritise it.

Could you spread your hours accross more days, so increase your hours slightly but do two or three days which gives you time to do other things on working days and free days still. That way if you get an email response when you're out of the office the time between you leaving returning to see it won't be as long and you have more days to offer appointments?

However I do also agree that you need to set boundaries and not make yourself continuously available when you're not at work. That isn't fair on you or your family as you'll never really be switched off

Agree with pp - it’s the hours that are the problem. In your shoes I would work at least 2 days, probably 3. One day just isn’t enough to have a handle on anything and you’re ending up feeling on call without the remuneration to go with it.

Problem with jobs you go Home and forget about is they’ll no doubt be pretty dull and mundane and badly paid.

You have specialist skills and will probably feel a lot more engaged in your work if you’re not trying to squeeze it into one day and then feeling stressed about having to deal with emails etc the other days

I agree you are being too flexible. I’m sure whatever your sessions are, are valuable. So children will need, want or be told by their parents to see you regardless of missing lessons. It’s not fair for parents to assume you can make any time they choose. I totally see you are trying to be helpful but I think you are taking it too far if it’s having this negative impact on you.

@HeyCarrieAnneWhatsYourGame @SwedishEdith

Thank you!

Everyone knows part timers work harder and smarter than full timers. So much research out there.

I would look at whether you can get work emails on your phone as well, if you're keeping your laptop on to check them.

Obviously ideally one isn't checking emails outside work at all, but if you are anyway you may as well just have them on your phone where you can tap out a two minute reply rather than feeling tied to your laptop.

Also I agree that appointments don't necessarily need to be flexible - I certainly wouldn't expect anyone like a SaLT to be being as flexible as you are.

Can you instruct them to phone for an appointment and get school sec to do it and they get offered the next appt on the Wed, failing that the wed of the next week. If the service is valuable to the school they might agree to that.

As others have suggested, can you work 3 mornings a week instead?

Or could you invest in some software which allows people to set up their own appointments? Or an online system?

That way they could see what was available and you wouldn't have to do it.

Ideas here
zapier.com/blog/best-appointment-scheduling-apps/

There are some practical solutions and some things you just need to accept.

Appointments could be managed by a web interface. Dd’s Therapist uses this system and I love it. It’s so much easier for me than having to call, or email/text back and forth deciding on a time.

Interfacing with schools and providing real
Time response? Well, that can just be the nature of some jobs. It isn’t reasonable to wait a week for every interaction. You could still set limits. The exact ones depend on your actual job. Perhaps you could set aside a time each day when you will handle correspondence, instead of addressing it throughout the day.

For scheduling outside of hours, really think about what your hours should be. Maybe you should be working a split day by plan. Maybe you should just do 2 afternoons/evenings a week. Especially for services with children, there is obviously going to be demand to work around school. If you embrace that, you might feel less stressed.

Sounds like you are doing more like a full time job but for very part time wages OP. I completely get you have a feeling of responsibility for work but you do need to add more structure and boundaries or you will a) Start to resent your job and b) Burn yourself out and be little use to students, yourself, immediate family or your elderly mother.

You are spreading yourself too thinly.

One day per week to get your work commitments done sounds hard - and people will push against that to get their needs met.

Could you investigate the possibility of working two or three days maximum and stick to your hours? People will get used to them if you are firm and consistent. As a PP mentioned put an Out of Office message on your work email and mobile phone accounts to let people know when you can be reached.

ALSO: in your email "signature block" put the days and hours you are available (ie your contracted hours) so it's there automatically each time you start a new email message.

See if you can get some admin assistance to help manage your diary - particularly for your non-working days. That person should know your earliest start time and your latest finish time each day so you are not overwhelmed.

Another thing is to build time in your diary to complete, for example, the report writing. Block out a couple of hours (or whatever is appropriate) each day to do these tasks and balance them against your meetings and protect/work around them as far as possible.

I'm sure you can make this work - but not at the expense of your own health and the needs of your family.

I wouldn't give up the job, OP. Not so much because it's a waste of your training (that wouldn't bother me too much), but more because as your DC get older I think you'll be glad to have something to keep you interested outside of the home. This isn't true for everyone, but I think it is for most people. In six years maybe all your DC will have left home!

As other side have said, maybe re consider your working hours and set boundaries around how frequently you check emails etc.

I'm similar to you - mid 40s, three DC, degree educated, had several years out of work as a SAHM, high earning DH - and I work 2.5 days a week in a professional job. That's a really good balance for me and I rarely check email outside my working hours.

Getting work emails on phone as pp suggested is a good idea, but then I think as you seem to need a complete break, you probably won't like that. Also when you say you keep laptop on all the time, perhaps just put it on lunchtime for say an hour, and any after lunch can wait until the next day. Then for example, you might think 'but if I do the hour a day catch up, it's eating into my time, plus I'm doing hours I'm not getting paid for, and still can't switch off from it'. You sound very intelligent, so need something to occupy your mind, but as you say not very ambitious, so maybe work from that point on finding the right job for you. You financially probably don't have to work, but probably should do something. Don't see what you've done so far as a waste of time or money. It doesn't sound like exactly the right job for you. It might be the right sort of job though, so either do something similar or have a complete change. Even if you had any job for one day a week, chances are you will be asked at some point to do extra time for some reason. I think all you need to do is to get to the bottom of what you really want, then you will find the right job.

Can you just work flexitime? So see it as I work 8 hours s week rather than a set day?

At the very least you need an online booking system where people can see your open appointments and can book themselves in. First come, first served.
I agree you might want to do two slightly shorter days so you have time for other admin/ report writing.

I'd also imagine if your employer hadn't offered phone emails it won't be possible. Your dealing with sensitive confidential information about children so it had to be a particularly encrypted way of doing things, which is costly. If they had the system I'm sure you'd be on it ashtray and if they funny they're not going to put it in place for I've employee who works one day per week

You're

You want the job for the money I'm assuming but don't want the work? Get a job in a supermarket on a set day which you can forget as soon as you leave. You can't have everything, and maybe someone who's willing to work will replace you.

If you get a retail job are you prepared to work weekends? And be asked to cover sickness/holidays/work extra at Christmas?

As others have said one day a week is just daft. Packing it in to work in retail would be a waste of your training but so is working one day a week. You said you did it because your youngest was in primary. She's not now so ask if you can increase your hours. The person who said that part timers are normally more stressed than people who work full time. Not the case in my job. Us full timers are the ones doing all the work they don't have time to do on top of our own work. None of them ever work over their hours to get stuff done because they know full timers will have to pick it up.