I’m in a bit of a career dilemma and not sure what to do!
Been in my current job for over 20 years, progressed through the company and now deal with customer complaints, also helping out with admin work. My job is a 15 minute drive from my house and I drop my kids off at nursery/grandparents and pick them up after work. The pay has always been enough for how I live. Since having DD I have dropped to 4 days a week. This has been stable and easy for me, but I hate my job. It’s a toxic environment, there’s no opportunity to move to another position, I don’t enjoy dealing with customer complaints all day, the senior management are constantly falling out, one rule for one and another for another mentality.
I have two kids. My DD is 2.5 and my DS is 6 months old. I’m currently on mat leave and have applied for other jobs just to dip my toe in the water and see what happens.
I’ve been accepted for a job as a PA in a new sector in an environment I feel I would enjoy working in. So this could be my way out, but, it comes with some sacrifices. The commute to work is about 45 minutes each way, it is 5 days a week for about 5k less annually than if I were to work 5 days at my current job, I have to be very flexible to work around my bosses hours so in the interview they could not, at that point, give me a solid agreement of working hours, although it doesn’t appear that they usually work past 5pm. It also doesn’t seem like WFH is an option.
I don’t know whether to take the job. My DH believes that once we have more clarification on the hours, we can work around childcare and he said we’ve been lucky in our careers to be able to work so close to home. I just worry that I will regret taking this and spending less time with my kids but then it’ll make me a happier person going to work I actually enjoy!
What would you do?