Got a new job (in education sector) which is completely different to what I did before, (still in education but not teaching) higher pay grade so a good jump for me.
Didn’t lie at the interview, told them what I could do and was honest I didn’t have experience of what they did but they offered anyway.
Its full time, which I didn’t want due to family commitments (single mum) but they offered it full time with some WFH.
One month in and I’m struggling. The ethos seems to be you don’t stop, no lunch breaks, no tea breaks the whole day is ram packed and everyone does extra (unpaid) at home. Coupled with the fact my line manager appears to be someone just senior to me, rather than an experienced line manager, which I think is part of the problem. He is going on a sabbatical in January for 6 months so I think his mind is on being out of there, but also the need to have me working at capacity to help cover him!
His training is not great. He just sent me email after email after email in the first week or so full of info, until I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t think what to do first and now requests for help ie “do I need to send this now” are just ignored or I get “it was on one of the emails I sent you 2 weeks ago” of which there were loads.
I have struggled, but I don’t think it’s because I’m shit. I’ve never struggled anywhere like this. It’s all at an utter breakneck speed and I can’t take anything fully in. I’m the kind of person who needs to be shown calmly and properly, not half shown whilst they answer emails or even worse on a mirror screen on Teams.
The job is so paperwork heavy and you have to know the timeframes for the next piece of paperwork etc and I’m just not getting this info.
Im in a rush and a tizzy a lot and I say this as a calm and rationale person.
Im probably already doing at least 45 hours per week and I’m still not where I should be. There is also one day per week where I work all day then am expected at a 1-2 hour teams meeting after all that, which massively impacts at home and again, was not mentioned.
He now wants us to meet weekly at work to see how i’m getting on, which sounds to me like he thinks I’m a problem.
To me the workload just seems to be going up, and I’m not doing all I should be yet. I’m exhausted. I work hard, I’m not lazy but there is just so much work there’s no downtime, no real chance to have a chat, nothing.
None of this was mentioned in the interview, and now I’m in it turns out the really struggle to keep anyone in the role.
iI now feel trapped. I think I will be really good at it if someone would just train me properly, and in order to leave I’d probably take a pay cut which is a big step backwards.
I have mentioned to him several times that I’m struggling and that his way of showing me isn’t working, but it just kind of falls on deaf ears.
I guess I just feel im screwing up, through bad training really.