Regular readers of Inside Laura’s Head will know I’m not a full time blogger. I was, for a short period about five years ago, but I wanted a mortgage. I was earning a very respectable amount from Inside Laura’s Head BUT this amount varied each month and I needed more certainty to feel comfortable buying a house, so I got a full time job. This job was 37.5 hours a week, which I increased to 40 after buying my house, and it was evenings and weekends as well as through the day, which wasn’t ideal. It wasn’t my dream job, at all, but I didn’t mind it, I had some good colleagues, a supportive manager and I didn’t hate it, so I would have stayed until I figured out what my dream job was. The universe had other plans, though.
The company I worked for, who shall remain anonymous to protect the not so innocent, decided that, despite our customers really valuing the UK call centre, they wanted to outsource 300+ people’s roles to South Africa. Officially this was because they couldn’t get decent staff in the UK (a huge compliment to their already excellent staff, to be honest) but most likely was due to the large cost saving they’ll be making each year. Anyway, my role was outsourced and because moving to Cape Town wasn’t an option, I was made redundant at the end of August.
Now, I’ve known about this for a few months, and initially was very blasé about it all, assuming I’d get another job really quickly and have my redundancy in my savings account and all would be good. It turns out it’s not that easy-not when you’re being a bit choosy about which jobs to apply for, anyway. I may well have picked up another call centre, unsociable hours job quickly but I’m taking this as a chance to get something with better hours so I can have more of a work life balance, and due to my Fibromyalgia I’m only looking for fully remote, work from home jobs too. This complicates things a fair bit.
As I’m writing this, mid September, I’m still on full pay (the work transferred to the new company on the first of September, but as they wanted staff in South Africa and I’m not there, they have just paid me in lieu of notice, so effectively I’m being paid to sit at home doing nothing-well, applying for jobs!) and I’m hoping to find something new soon. Redundancy is not fun and I don’t envy anyone going through this. If you’re reading this and you’re in a similar situation-feel free to reach out to me on social media if you need to vent about how rubbish this is with someone who understands.
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