Cat Loves Her New Job!

Well… Cat has been working at her new job, at a company that I’m calling “Dot Matrix”, for over two weeks now, and it’s working out better than she hoped!

The commute sucks– it involves a fast ferry ride and an electric scooter ride through a warehouse district and past areas of homeless people (“unhoused” is the PC label) which is over an hour each way. That part Cat eagerly complains about of course.

However, her new boss is very supportive, and she’s no longer in a subtly sexist environment either. It’s becoming apparent that Cat is basically being allowed to dictate the parameters of her own job! She gets paid for learning new programming without anyone giving her grief. And she told her boss she’s not that great with people, so she doesn’t want to be a supervisor– but she would like to be the expert that people go to for answers to detailed questions in her department. And her boss was very satisfied with that declaration.

She’s very slowly starting to get to know her colleagues, and building up familiarity with new routines and such. Eventually, Cat wants to bring some of the best things from her old job’s culture (when they had an office) to her new one– like Cookie Monday and Bacon Thursday!

She’s also adjusting to a new level of physical exertion. She has to carry a very heavy electric scooter down stairs, up stairs, into and out of her car, and then keep a good grip for miles of travel. Her arms are starting to show definition from all this! But she’s also been more easily straining her shoulder and other joints, because she is nearly 54 years old! But she says using the scooter is the only truly fun part of her commute, so she’s going to drive in only on extreme weather days, if it’s too cold or snowing, etc.

As predicted, Cat is complaining about how much time she’s lost so she can’t DO anything else with the long commute. But again, I saw clearly how she didn’t use the time she had when she worked from home, so I don’t really care anymore. It’s more a matter of motivation being killed by under-treated depression, but she’s still stubborn about getting help. However, I have noticed her attitude being slightly better just getting out of the house and having a more positive job environment and boss than she had before. She even admitted she loved her new job.

I’m vastly relieved, because it was a risk, but one I thought she needed to take. I’m glad she took the leap!