Hopper Employed!

 

I started my fourteenth job ten days ago, after a ten-week layoff when I quit my New Jersey job for the move down here to Texas. For those keeping score, I was a

 

Temp

Deli worker

Student librarian

Pager programmer

Warranty clerk

Email Help Desk tech

Computer support tech at the HQ of a Japanese bank

Computer support tech at the HQ of a Canadian bank

Payroll admin for an auto dealership

Payroll admin for another auto dealership

Payroll admin for yet another auto dealership

Payroll admin for a mental health nonprofit

Tax return preparer

 

And now I m a “Payroll Coordinator” for a large soft drink manufacturer. The job is still 100 percent remote due to the Wu Flu, but they are looking to go to a hybrid schedule at the beginning of November. This, however, is taken with a grain of salt, as prior deadlines have come and gone. I could be remote for a while, and a kinda like it. I’ve set up an office in the carpeted front room of my new house, and it’s a thousand times better than the cold, dank dungeon basement of my old home workspace back in NJ.

The company has over 25,000 employees nationwide, so there’s a team of 47 people handling payroll. I am one of a team of 9 who handle disbursement from paycheck withholdings. Specifically, I pay dues to the unions that are pulled from employee paychecks. The difficulty is that there are 96 unions, and some require payment by the 10th, the 15th, or the 30th of the month. So there’s lots of spreadsheets and shared drive activity and WebEx meetings and such.

So it’s very Zen and once I get everything down it will give me the degree of freedom I had up in NJ. That’s something to look forward to. In the meantime, it feels great to be a contributor again to the family finances, in a proactive way!