Hey all,
tl;dr: I put in after-hours work for the org with stars in my eyes. When COVID hit my work got thrown to the wayside and I was left worse than I had begun.
I am a 21-year-old from Perth, Australia. I generally consider myself to take initiative and be well-read for my age. I work a normal retail sales job for a large TELCO here in Australia. I chose a sales job to start because I thought it would be an important skill to have in whatever jobs and business' I do in the future.
Well anyway, at the beginning of the year I had approached my state manager asking for more opportunities to develop myself and to contribute to the company. After talking with him we decided I would get to work with my territory manager (my bosses boss) to work on starting 2 initiatives to roll across the stores in the state. I began working on this putting in the hours after my shifts and on weekends, but just as I put in a proposal for an initiative I wanted to do ( A different self-review system for sales reps that made the experience less cumbersome but more directly answered the questions management wanted to know.) COVID hit WA. Understandably with everything happening the idea that the young 21-year-old had become a low priority. Yet what made me start self-reflecting was the fact that my shifts were cut and I began earning the equivalent of $380 USD a fortnight. In fact, because my company is too big and stable I do not even qualify for any benefit packages from the government so I am now earning less than those I know who lost their jobs.
So here I was, thinking through a little bit of initiative I had opened up a career path for me. 6 months earlier I was flown to work in the head office in Sydney for a week and enjoyed the experience and made contacts there saying I could reach out for a job later. Yet when a crisis hit it was all thrown to the wayside and my extra work meant nothing. To add insult to injury now a few months later my state has rolled out an extremely similar review system to what I had proposed but I didn't get any credit for it. Now the company is big enough that this could have already been in the works because I don't believe I am so special to have been the only one to have seen the problems. Yet even if that was the case that highlights in an organisation where the right-hand doesn't talk to the left it would be hard for my work to ever really mean anything.
I have been reading entrepreneurship books since I was 12 or 13 so I knew this was a path that was available. Up till now, I have done a few small web-design projects and I am in the middle of doing marketing work with a state-level politician so I have some rudimentary skills. My goals now are to first replace the pittance I am getting from work but then to race towards the Fastlane before I have a family and kids to care for. Reading through the golden and notable threads here I have already noticed that the quality of the content is so much higher than the other online communities I have seen. I hope I am able to contribute and one day provides value myself.
Best Regards,
BetterShepherd
tl;dr: I put in after-hours work for the org with stars in my eyes. When COVID hit my work got thrown to the wayside and I was left worse than I had begun.
I am a 21-year-old from Perth, Australia. I generally consider myself to take initiative and be well-read for my age. I work a normal retail sales job for a large TELCO here in Australia. I chose a sales job to start because I thought it would be an important skill to have in whatever jobs and business' I do in the future.
Well anyway, at the beginning of the year I had approached my state manager asking for more opportunities to develop myself and to contribute to the company. After talking with him we decided I would get to work with my territory manager (my bosses boss) to work on starting 2 initiatives to roll across the stores in the state. I began working on this putting in the hours after my shifts and on weekends, but just as I put in a proposal for an initiative I wanted to do ( A different self-review system for sales reps that made the experience less cumbersome but more directly answered the questions management wanted to know.) COVID hit WA. Understandably with everything happening the idea that the young 21-year-old had become a low priority. Yet what made me start self-reflecting was the fact that my shifts were cut and I began earning the equivalent of $380 USD a fortnight. In fact, because my company is too big and stable I do not even qualify for any benefit packages from the government so I am now earning less than those I know who lost their jobs.
So here I was, thinking through a little bit of initiative I had opened up a career path for me. 6 months earlier I was flown to work in the head office in Sydney for a week and enjoyed the experience and made contacts there saying I could reach out for a job later. Yet when a crisis hit it was all thrown to the wayside and my extra work meant nothing. To add insult to injury now a few months later my state has rolled out an extremely similar review system to what I had proposed but I didn't get any credit for it. Now the company is big enough that this could have already been in the works because I don't believe I am so special to have been the only one to have seen the problems. Yet even if that was the case that highlights in an organisation where the right-hand doesn't talk to the left it would be hard for my work to ever really mean anything.
I have been reading entrepreneurship books since I was 12 or 13 so I knew this was a path that was available. Up till now, I have done a few small web-design projects and I am in the middle of doing marketing work with a state-level politician so I have some rudimentary skills. My goals now are to first replace the pittance I am getting from work but then to race towards the Fastlane before I have a family and kids to care for. Reading through the golden and notable threads here I have already noticed that the quality of the content is so much higher than the other online communities I have seen. I hope I am able to contribute and one day provides value myself.
Best Regards,
BetterShepherd
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