In the last twelve months, I have worked at five different architecture offices, without counting my freelancing gigs. I had been laid off, terminated, or fired from five of them.
I am not sure what to do.
The first one, I had been unhappy working there because the boss was paying me 12/hr, even after I had gotten my Master's in Architecture. It was a work study that had continued even after I graduated, and he refused to give me a raise, even though my job responsibility more than tripled. I was also doing more work, faster and better. So I was disgruntled, and told him that I was looking for new employment. It took me longer than three weeks to find a new job, and he had asked me to leave at that point.
My second job, I had gotten laid off because my boss didn't like the job that I did. It was a relaxed atmosphere, where my co-worker would leave after coming into work for a couple of hours and finish her work at home. I just thought that my boss' expectations were low. In hind sight, I could have worked harder on this job. But I'm also glad that I didn't continue that job, because I really didn't like the boss, or the office. My boss had a Japanese 'thing' and I noticed how he'd look at my b***s. Creeped me out.
The next job is the worse job I had ever gotten, where I was working for a n**i. I had to work New Year's Eve with my boss to finish a drawing, and I worked very hard on the drawing, but there was still mistakes on the drawing. She had pulled me from drawing all together, and put me onto office jobs. Answering phones, running errands, etc. She had started to micromanage more and more. She would get extremely angry at me if I had failed to answer the phone word for word as written in the employee handbook. At that point, I stopped answering phones, and let my other co-workers answer the phones. They answered the phone as they liked, but she never corrected them. She was bullying me. I got fired, and I told her that she was bullying me. After I left, she had started to do that to my co-worker, and he had left the firm three weeks after I got fired.
The next job was great. I got along great with my boss, and he really appreciated me and my work. I worked part time for him, and part time for another architect.
My job with the boss that I got along with ended because he decided to close his business. So I started to work full time for the other architect. He was initially thrilled with me, and with what I can do. And offered to give me a raise. But after working for him for many months, the job responsibilities grew. I had worked really really hard. I took work home, even. Because I really liked my boss, I really didn't want to fail him. I got laid off because of lack of work, and because he didn't think I had enough experience. He wanted me to be a job captain when I was just an entry level architect.
I wake up in the morning, panicking a lot of times. I'm depressed. I struggled but had done well in school. The longest that I had ever worked for at a job was 9 months. I admit that I am naive about many things. For example, it's not always clear to me what the boss' expectations are. So I am getting better at asking for the boss' intentions.
My mother asked me to go seek psychiatric help. She thinks that there's something wrong with my brain because I can't seem to keep a job.
I really like my proffession, and everyday that I worked, I was looking forward to working. It was challenging, and I learned a lot everyday. And I really like working hard.
I am looking for employment, working on my own projects, and volunteering. But I really do wish that I still worked at my last job. I'm not sure what to do. Is it my personality? What can I do to make sure that I can stay at the next job?
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