Hello, Dear Reader! Welcome to Part III of this excruciatingly tedious multipart series of posts on my experience with, and feelings about, money, and how those things and my job experiences brought me to wanting to FIRE. Here are links to Part I and Part II of the series for those of you who are guttons for punishment who’ve not read them already.
The Beforetimes Part 5
It was in law school that I took the equivalent of a graduate-level personal finance course. The lessons were many. For one thing, as I wasn’t living at home anymore, and the Bank of Dad and Stepmom had closed up shop, stuff got real. Real quick.
Also, while said bank had underwritten the relatively low bill for my in-state public university undergraduate education, no such generosity was extended for the eye-watering expenses that I was incurring to attend law school, and to live on my own. And while I was paying for law school by way of loans, the payment start date for which was, in my mind, years off and would come after I’d secured a well-paying job, I definitely knew how much things were costing me. I also realized the financial hole that I was digging.
My second year of law school, I took a part-time law clerk job. The work was as easy as the wage was meager. A baller I was not. Instead, I put most of my earnings toward my expenses and took correspondingly lower amounts of student loans. While I sort of knew at the time that that was the smart move, my future self would get down on his knees and thank my younger self profusely for doing that.
The Beforetimes Part 6
Boss #2
After graduating law school, I took a full-time temp job with Employer #2. The wage was better than anything that I’d ever earned. But it was nothing to write home about.
By this point, my law school loan payment deferment period had ended. That brought home the full scale of the financial hole I’d dug myself into. Realizing that I couldn’t make my loan repayments in the amount set under the default 10-year repayment schedule, I consolidated my loans in exchange for a 30-year loan repayment schedule and a significantly lower monthly loan repayment amount. During the process, I received documents detailing the amount I’d pay in interest over a 10-year repayment period as opposed to a 30-year timeframe. I was . . . uuummm . . . alarmed. Nonetheless, I felt that I had no choice but to consolidate.
In retrospect, I made the right decision for me. I just hoped that some good fortune would come my way so that I could make the monthly payments and, ideally, pay off the loan (well) in advance of the 30-year end date.
In any event, given the still-significant monthly loan repayment amount and my low income, I was barely scraping by. Now in my mid-20s, my hardwired senses of frugality and financial precariousness were hardened yet further.
My boss in this first temp job, Boss #2, was unfailingly nice. Maybe too nice, in fact. Although they never said it, some of my coworkers appeared to not completely respect Boss #2, and to take advantage of and walk all over her a bit. Not unacceptable insubordination. But enough that even I, someone naive and early in his working career, could sense and be alarmed by.
The lesson was almost the reverse of that I learned from Boss #1. Namely, being overly nice and flexible as a boss can engender a lack of respect by employees. And a little unnecessary and unproductive anarchy, too. That, I find, leads to lower individual and team performance and lower morale. And a sort of sad workplace. One that one doesn’t get excited about being in.
I also was getting my first lesson that bosses are very different and have their own unique strengths and weaknesses. And that they direct, and mold, different work environments. This isn’t exactly rocket science, I know. But these were all new experiences for me. And they resulted in my realizing that while part of my job satisfaction derived from how much I enjoyed the substantive work I was doing, another major component was the work environment, my boss, and my coworkers. Put another way, I started to realize that even if I absolutely loved the work I was doing, I still might not be satisfied with, or even hate, my job if those other elements were screwy.
Boss #3
I left Boss #2 on good terms to take another temp position with Employer #2. My new boss, Boss #3, was sharp, and a go-getter, in a generally good way. She ran a tight ship, and worked hard.
But Boss #3 was a SINK (single income, no kids). It was clear to me even then that SINKs (and DINKs (double income, no kids)), being unburdened by obligations that their married and/or parent counterparts often have, can at any time turn their entire focus to their jobs, without much care as to any consequences to themselves or anyone else. And to demand the same of their employees.
I realized that I therefore could at any unexpected moment be expected to do (more of) this or that thing on the job and be subject to my boss’ whim. Thankfully, that never happened to me under Boss #3. But the lesson—that I didn’t want to be completely subject to a boss’ whim—was learned.
The Aftertimes Part 1
Bosses #4 and 4.5
I left Boss #3 to, finally, become a full-time employee of Employer #2 in a different part of the organization. I consider this to be my first real, grown-up job.
For the first time in my life, I earned a salary instead of a wage. The salary amounted to a bump in income such that it provided a very little more space between my expenses and revenues.
This was a novel and welcome development. But I also came to the painful realization that my income now was capped. Whereas as a wage earner I’d always been able to earn more money by working more hours, as a salaried employee that wasn’t the case. Sadly, the idea of taking on side gigs was nowhere on my radar at that point. Now in my mid-20s, my hardwired frugality and sense of financial precariousness was going nowhere. In fact, they were being even more hardened.
In my new job, I reported to my immediate supervisor, Boss #4. But also to her boss, Boss #4.5, who ran our group. Boss #4 and I shared similar backgrounds in many ways, tho she’d been in the workplace some years longer than I had. But Boss #4 was an always-on-call type of person before that sort of thing became ubiquitous. For as much as my prior bosses were on the ball during working hours, I never got the sense that they were always “on,” or that they expected their employees to be. So, Boss #4 was a creature I’d never come across and eyed warily, lest she demand that I, too, be “on” all the time.
As for Boss #4.5, he was whip smart and knew how to get stuff done in spite of formidable challenges. But he had a noxiously negative attitude, which permeated the workplace. I admit to being a born cynic, but Boss #4.5 made me look like a starry-eyed optimist. He seemed to almost take satisfaction in sinking the mood of his employees. Boss #4.5 also allowed, if not fostered, a cliquey workplace.
Echoing my experience working under Boss #2, my sense that the workplace environment could make or break my job satisfacton was solidified. No longer, I realized, could I merely look for or take a job based on whether I thought I’d like doing the actual work of the position and could do it well. Instead, I had to consider the workplace dynamics, the boss’ temperament, and the spirit (or lack thereof) of the group I’d be working with.
Some Dear Readers of this blog may recall a prior blog post that I wrote about Bosses #4 and 4.5. The long and the short of it is that I came out of the experience prone to job-related new stressors. Those stressors continued—and in fact were exacerbated—throughout the rest of my working career.
Although I didn’t then know it, working for Bosses #4 and 4.5 marked a major turning point in my career. More than any prior experience, it cultivated the seeds of my work-related desire to FIRE.
Boss #5
Bosses #4 and 4.5 both left Employer #2 while I worked there. This was the first time that there’d been a change of leadership on my watch.
Boss #5 ultimately was hired. At first, I was her golden child and could do no wrong. Not that I was doing wrong. But it was nice knowing that I had Boss #5’s complete confidence and unconditional support.
Until I didn’t.
Out of nowhere, things changed and I became the black sheep. I could do no right.
I came to learn during my time working for Boss #5 that she was bipolar. I chalk up my change of fortune to this (my coworkers all agreed). In time, Boss #5’s erratic behavior (which went far beyond her 180 as to me) and senselessly punitive decisions landed her squarely on her own boss’ Very Naughty List and to her ultimately being fired.
But the impact on me of having worked for Boss #5 had been done. I learned that bosses not only can be good and bad on the merits, but that external forces (mental illness in Boss #5’s case) can make them awful to work for. And whether your boss is subject to any of these external forces (or becomes so sometime after they become your boss) is a crapshoot. This reinforced my prior realization that workplace dynamics are critical for job satisfaction. It also made me see for the first time that an unforeseen nasty shoe could drop in the workplace at any time. Put another way, I began to realize that I could love my job today, but might come to hate it tomorrow, for any number of reasons.
And in the end . . .
OK, for those of you Dear Readers still awake who’ve read this far, thank you! Next week, in Part IV of this unending series, I’ll detail a period of my work history in which I had my first truly awful job.
