OG Journal: Week 1 – Elhapo#8226

The following is a guest journal series from Guild member elhapo#8226 with some light edits. You can reach them on the Overemployed.com Discord.

Day 1 – Feels Like Going To School After Stealing Something

This is happening – job #2 (J2) starts today. I’m not sure how I got into this situation, but it might have been because in the past I had gotten an offer rescinded after trying to negotiate for an additional $5,000. I was pretty upset by how that all went down, getting string along, and then boom “no, thank you.” I felt betrayed and powerless. I vowed next time I’m just going to accept any offer and then ditch them if something else comes along.

Except this time around, the ditching part no longer holds true. I got an offer and even negotiated up another $10,000 since the benefits were subpar. This company is in complete disarray. Normally, this type of situation would be a complete no-go as far as a new job. But now I start to think, what happens if I don’t quit this job right away? I reasoned that I can try them out and see if it’s a fun and rewarding place to work. What’s the worst that can happen?

Then guilt starts to sink in. Why am I feeling guilty like I’m cheating? Cheating who? I have no freaking clue. I talked to a business owner I know. They say they have employees that work two jobs all the time. They say if I were you, I’d go for it. Working two jobs is not illegal. The business owner knows tons of people that do it all the time and they don’t even know why I’m hesitating.

Screw it. Here we go. Day 1 starts off with 100’s of people virtually watching some propaganda video about how amazing the company is. Everyone is super nice. I feel like a baller even though I haven’t been paid yet. In my other job (J1), I’m doing my regular stuff. I was really worried that the 3-hour onboarding from J2 would be bad, but it was just the opposite. I wiggle the mouse every once in a while and put on a Zoom meeting in the background to keep my J1 laptop active. This is smooth sailing so far.

After the initial meeting at J2, we went into break-out rooms. I’m a bit nervous that something will come up in J1, but nothing happened, and today is no exception. J1 ends for the day. J2 ends for the day. Holy crap I did it.

I feel like celebrating for just getting through it because I pulled it off, except I’m not telling anyone. Not friends, my parents, no one period. I feel like bragging even though I never brag. I push this all down. I’m resolute. I’m not telling anyone what I’m doing at the moment. My one confidant is the business owner who gave me a virtual high five.

Prior to J2, I was working a few hours of focused work each week and then just making up busy work to stay active and busy. I hated wasting my life. I went searching for a new job to be “better.” But I don’t know what “better” is anymore. I’ve been searching for better for a lot of years now and it is all just the same crap with different (albeit mostly nice) people. For the first time in years, I can honestly describe my situation in one word. Exciting!

Day 2 – Grass Is Not Always Greener

J2 is a wreck. Normally this would bother me but now I couldn’t care less. Their onboarding system stinks and takes forever to get done. I contacted support for help and then switched over to J1. This is awesome. I feel bad because a lot of people in the support chats were complaining like crazy. But I love it. I was wondering why an entire week was blocked off to fill out onboarding stuff so now I know why. They were all over the place and disorganized.

Day 2 is filling out paperwork. Tons of paperwork. I’m getting paid for this. Give me more paperwork. This is easy stuff. Consider taking jobs just to go through really long onboarding processes and then quitting (but not really, just crossed my mind). Not sure if that would be a viable career after a few go.

J1 is humming along. A small hiccup came up that was annoying. Someone at J1 says my project is stalled. My project isn’t stalled. A pow wow is convened. I feel like I have to go to the principal’s office, but I smooth everything over. Crisis averted.

This would have happened even without J2 because J1 has a bunch of inexperienced people. It wasn’t anything new. It’s been like this for years. J1 and J2 end for the day without any other adverse events. To mitigate an escalation like this from happening again, I decided to send emails not only to the product manager but to the entire managerial chain.

Day 2 is a wrap.

Day 3 – Easiest Day So Far, Overemployed FTW With J3 Surprise

This has got to be the easiest day yet for J2. I have to go offsite to sign some paperwork. J2 made the appointment for where to sign it in a completely different city that takes a while to get to. Normally I’d ask them to come directly to me. Instead, I use this as an excuse to blame traffic for doing nothing for J2 for a few hours. For J1 I just monitor my phone and get the work done when I get back.

I received my laptop for work for J2. The laptop is very underpowered, small screen, horrible resolution for coding. It’s perfect. Another excuse to do average work and for why I’m not continually on that machine, “hey boss, I’m doing research on my bigger monitor.” The thing takes the rest of the day to load. I laughed. What a piece of junk. I don’t even care. I get J1 work done early and start working on my other side project that I’m having fun creating. J1 gets done and I call it quits a bit early. Booya.

Hold up, recruiters for J3 calling. I thought I was bounced out because of some strange thing with a background check. J2 got the same snag but they just overrode it. The snag was my start date of all things. J3 wants me to start next Monday. I say something about giving a two-week notice and it’s basically ignored. J3’s laptop shows up. I say I’ll start Monday. I feel like some kind of wall street trader that just landed a big deal. What the heck is going on?

I start researching if this happens to anyone else and found a news article. It led me to Overemployed.com. I have…a…tribe? Here I’m sharing my Overemployed journal. Simply amazing.

Day 4 – Two-Job Setup And Real Work For Once

I get up early and ravenously read the Overemployed website, looking up hardware that could help me out. I consider buying some stuff with my first paycheck. J1 is business as usual. Zero hang-ups or problems. The biggest thing for me is keeping the laptops from timing out. I’m doing some onboarding training which seems to keep the window open but otherwise they have a 5-minute lock screen timer. I try setting it to an hour but no joy. I immediately order a “mouse jiggler” that is “beautiful” and “elegant.” What marketing team came up with this nonsense. Whatever, one-day shipping, and awww yeah keep jiggling baby. Day 4 resources and two-job setup done.

Just for kicks, I review my J2 machine’s processes and they definitely have some remote monitoring configured. I don’t know if I really care, I’m only doing company stuff on this laptop. Any internet surfing even for actual work I’m doing on my own laptop. There’s a bit of a mental switch, but it’s pretty easy because the laptop they sent is so small and annoying to use. I’m only using it for actual work.

Boop! I got an out-of-the-blue message from J2. The first time, I saw it immediately. Someone wants me to do actual work. I’m a little bummed as I thought I had more time although, might as well see what this job is all about and if this is going to work out for the longer term. Super nice, doesn’t want to waste my time, schedules a meeting for the next day. J2 is pretty much done. J1 is done. I’m almost through the week.

Day 5 – I Don’t Got Time For BS Anymore

J2 contacts me five minutes into the start of my day one hour early, which seems unusual. Maybe because I was showing active in MS Teams so that’s why? I get a second meeting request at the same time but for an hour. Strange. Both meetings have a long list of people coming. I email back that we already have a meeting scheduled. I put the meeting on the calendar as tentative and got clarification on the duplicate invite to make sure all is good. Moving on.

J1 starts and I have some things to get through that I’ve been putting off for a few days. I start chugging one hour before my J2 double fake-out meetings. I get a response telling me that I’ve accepted the meeting and everything looks good for the original start time. Okie Dokie, perfect.

Meeting time comes and I go in. Only a few people. Ok, whatever. We start discussing some stuff, and my phone is blowing up. My…personal…phone. I’m getting texts, more calls. I glance at my phone. 

“Where are you”

“Please join the meeting”

“Client is waiting!”

Ok, what the heck. I’m supposed to be talking to a client right now? I freaked out. I ask my current meeting people if they know what’s going on. They have no idea. I apologize, they ask me what I need to do. I have no idea either, “Let’s just continue” we all conclude. My first meeting snafu is with the same company? I’ve been dreading having overlapping meetings all week and J2 does this with…J2? Holy smokes. 

23 minutes elapse and I try to get to the other meeting as fast as my computer legs will carry me. I, of course, have to install some software and go through a VPN. This is not as easy as the last meeting. I get on. The person that asked for the meeting says thanks for joining. The connection to the meeting is terrible, breaking up like crazy. Fantastic. I just listen and they basically say the meeting is now over and they’ll try for Monday. Ok then. No word from anyone afterward.

People from this cluster of a meeting say they’ll contact me later in the day but never do. J2 finishes out. J1 wraps up. Phheeeewww. I sigh a bit and feel a bit accomplished. J3 is supposed to start Monday though. I’m getting anxious and nervous. I’m getting a bunch of pressure from J3 to start training and do everything before I even start. I call BS on them and just say I’ll look into it Monday. I’m dreading Monday a bit but I’m also going to pull the plug on J3 super quick if things look too stressful. J3 will either be my bonus gravy or a no-go regardless of the money.

The anxiety sets in though, and I stew about it. Going a little stir crazy, I finally reach out and start talking about it to my one confidant (in real life) and do normal real-life things. I go to the grocery, I talk to some people I know about normal stuff. I tell myself, one day at a time, change is hard, stop overthinking it, relax brah. Getting fired or quitting in this new world isn’t the same as it was before. I run through all of the worst-case scenarios one more time and then finally start calming down a bit.

Exciting: yep. A bit stressful: yeah. Is it worth it? Not sure yet, when’s my first J2 paycheck again?

Stay tuned. More to come next week.