Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Working mothers v. mothers who happen to work

Why must I try to fit my home life around work when all I want to do is fit work around my home life? "They" say it's easy out here for working mothers. I say HA!


Okay is this too much to ask for? Here's what I need in a job:


-It needs to be nearby. One bus (no transfers), under 15 minutes drive or a 30 minutes or less bike ride.

-I need to make double digits an hour. Here in Ottawa, minimum wage will be $10/hr in March. I absolutely will not work on comission only. I'd very much like to keep buying brand name cheese. I'd also like to not lose money everytime I drive or take public transit to work.

- It has to fit into my family. My children are away from the house from 9:00 to 3:00. Why oh why is it so difficult to find a job with these hours?! I need to be able to make dinner and help with homework at the end of the day. And weekends are out. I'm a mother first, dammit.

- I'm going to keep it real for you folks. Frankly, I don't want a whole lot of responsibility. I don't want to take paperwork home, stress out about meetings or activities the next day or worry about sales projections or the cash register being short $27 from the previous day. I just want to do a simple job and get home to my family while it's still light out.



I love the job I have now. I really do. It meets almost all the above criteria except the pay thing. I'm irked that someone who'll get newly hired in March with be earning almost exactly what I do and I'd've been there over 2 years. I work well with others and do my job well. It's not a hard job, but it's got lots of fiddly little steps that screw up the whole store if not excecuted perfectly. It's not to say that I don't make mistakes (and here again comes the joy of the job) it's not an everyday thing and we can usually fix it. No problem.


Only lately the job has become far more stressful. There are now quotas we have to keep up and the higher ups are on our backs for production production production. It used to be a family operation but now it's turned into a business. Maybe it's time for me to move on.


Unfortunately the only thing I'm qualified to do is daycare. Which I'm really tired of but will do again only if pushed. Also unfortunately I'm not willing to go back to school to get qualified for something else. So here lies my quandry. I basically want tons of cash for doing nothing.


Is that so effing hard to accommodate?


kxx

2 comments:

KathyW said...

Hmmmm you could always have another baby...Lol! I can't believe I can read your blog at work!!! There goes MY productivity! Kxx

Leslie said...

I'm listening to a book on CD, it takes place in the future... where there is a full-time wage paid to SAH mothers! including a retirement salary! So maybe that gives us all hope for the future!