So story time….during the early part of 2020 when everything went to hell I had just started going to school to get Associate's degrees in the IT field. Seven years of retail management had made me suicidal (I legit still have nightmares about working at Walgreens and I quit there in September of 2019) and I realized it was either “get out or die”. And as part of my studies and with the pandemic my community college moved a lot of classes to remote, as many others did. However the IT staff at the college didn't want to service all the student tickets (forgot password, how to set up, how to install X, “it don't work”, etc) little things that are part of working IT (to be fair they are busy keeping the staff computers up and running and still had to service the buildings with their various problems) so their solution was to hire a few IT students, pay them dirt, but have them help the other students.
They hired five of us, one didn't ever show up. Two of us lasted a few weeks and then quit. One other guy worked about six months and then graduated and left. Yours truly was THE only IT person assigned to students for their laptops (and apparently everything else, not that i ever got asked about that. But my name, number, and email appear on the website as point of contact for students for IT help) for a college that enrolls over 5000 students a quarter; resetting and cleaning laptops, ensuring their functionality, helping with set up, answering questions, etc etc….all on roughly 20 hours a week for $12/per hour, working another 20-30 hours as a Geek Squad Agent, and (until last August) going to school full time.
In the intervening time the Student Services people and the IT people liked to keep talking about hiring me on full time…..and talk, and talk, and talk but never take any action. Always “one more hurdle to get over“, “one more meeting to have“, “one more person to sign off on it“….so I found a different job. Working at a locally owned, but large company as an IT support person for staff; fixing printers, tablets, laptops, displays, and whatever else may be needed. Quite literally 2X as much money as I'm making now (yeah thats how low I'm paid at both jobs), benefits, holidays, etc etc etc.
But when I broke the news to my supervisor that “Hey just fyi next week will be my last week” her only response was “How could you do this to us????”
Seriously….how could I not?