Venting, I guess. I (28F) have a tendency to job hop, with the longest position I've ever worked being about 3 years (tech call center). Moved to a big city in the U.S. for better job opportunities, got picked up by a staffing agency, and now working for them as a contractor. (I'm thankful they vet jobs for me and offer insurance! Wish I could earn PTO, though.) First place they hooked me up with, another tech call center, had shit management, kept pushing back my contract end date, understaffed, and in the process of being bought out with zero confirmation of who is staying. I left after 6 or so months.
Now I've been working at this place (tech support) for about 6 months and I feel like quitting again. But this is the highest paying job I've ever had (18$ USD an hour), the best direct manager I've had, our team is super small, and I actually enjoy working with them! Most days the job is slow, with easy things like printers and user creations, but sometimes it's complicated or a LOT at once. Learning isn't a problem, it's not having the resources to learn correctly. With our team being so small, and the program being so specific, there is a lot we have to manage and work through together.
Also, to be petty, I despise working in a corporate office setting. I despise how none of the higher up employees respect our very CLEAR policy of how to contact us. I've had higher-ups open my door and walk in, while I'm on the phone helping someone or at a meeting ACTIVELY TALKING, because of some tiny bullshit reason.
I feel guilty, I don't want to leave my team high and dry. I care about my team, and the non-corporate employees. The work is easy most the time, and I enjoy learning new things. I WANT to learn and master the programs we are working with. This isn't necessarily an entry level position, either. It's from printer installs, active directory, print servers, Iguana, PCI compliance, SQL, etc, and I want to learn so I can hopefully move up in the tech world. But, on the other hand, I hate driving here every day because corporate “highly advises” we work in the damn office, I hate being disrespected by upper management because they refuse to either understand what I do or whatever the fuck. I hate that I get zero PTO despite having worked here for so long already! I hate that it's never clear what my job actually IS. Corporate treats me like I work for them, when my direct manager treats me like I work for [LOCATION] that corporate manages. One day I'm treated like I'm personally responsible for the office wifi being slow (despite them never listening to my advice of updating their laptops and stop using 999999 open tabs) and the next I'm being hounded by [LOCATION] to create 70 new employee user accounts/email/logins for employees that started last week but only got the request in today! Meanwhile some random employee emails me directly asking for access to XYZ inside ABC program that I A) not familiar with [LOCATION] jargon to know where to even begin to look for that access B) not an expert on this program because it's not our program C) the company who set up the program for us already trained someone on the ins and outs- which isn't with us anymore!!! (Good for them though, go get that better bread) I hate coming home drained every day.
I don't want to lose this job, because I feel maybe I'm just being a brat and should appreciate this opportunity more. There are tons of places hiring, but I don't think I'll get this lucky getting 18$ an hour with weekends off. I don't want to work 40 hours anymore, but part time wouldn't be enough to pay my bills. I don't know what to do anymore. Should I suck it up and deal with it? Hop anyway and move on to a different but probably equally as unsatisfying situation? Go back to school (I already have a bachelors) and get some sort of certification to help get something more specific?
Thank you for listening to me vent/rant. Any advice is appreciated and if not, that's cool too. I hope all of you are given a reason to smile today.