Once Upon A Time . . . I was made redundant

 I was made redundant.  Doesn’t that sound awesome?  Redundant; business speak for, “You and your skills are no longer necessary.”

The specifics of it were nothing exciting – the mining company that employed me decided to relocate the lab I worked in from a capital city to a regional area, closer to a refinery.  I was “offered an opportunity to relocate”, as were my colleagues.  Given that I worked part time while my husband had a full-time job in the city we lived in, everyone was aware that I was unlikely to take that “opportunity”.  On the day that this announcement was made, the five affected employees were handed two sets of documents.  The first included all the information on a relocation, the second had details of the redundancy policy and a calculation for your own personal payout.

I was in a very lucky position, because I was not the major salary earner in our family (three of my four affected colleagues were the major earner), and because I had been working with the same company for sixteen years.  Company policy stated that you were paid out according to your years of service, so my payout was rather good, thanks very much.

The move to a regional site and the subsequent redundancies weren’t a surprise to any of us, but they came a year or two earlier than we’d anticipated.  The logistics of shifting everything out of the lab we’d been in for about 13 years took a lot of effort and six months to complete.  I managed that part of the process, and on my third last day of employment, I handed the keys to the laboratory building back to the company that owned it. 

Until that point, I’d been in some form of paid employment my entire adult life.  I’d worked full time, part time, shift work, nights, weekends.  I’ve worked in hospitality, in education, in laboratories, in offices.  And then, suddenly, through no fault of my own, I was unemployed.

At the time, I was in my early forties.  I have significant experience in a relatively specific field.  I worked part time, by choice, because my children were young.  I took three months off, didn’t even look at job vacancies.  Once I did start looking, it because apparent that there was a real lack of roles that were actually suitable for me. For starters, there are not a lot of part time jobs in my field.  There are a reasonable number of full-time, higher stress, travel and weekend/evening work type of jobs available, but I don’t want any of those things.  I was considered overqualified for the jobs that I did apply for.  In three months of applying, I wasn’t even called for an interview once.

Personally, I found it frustrating that I wasn’t even considered for some of the roles I applied for.  Yes, I will agree, I had far more qualifications than the job required.  Let’s be frank – I spent ten years at university, so I have more qualifications than many jobs require.  I had applied for jobs that I knew I’d be good at and that I was confident I’d enjoy.  Being thrown out of consideration because my education and work experience was more than the role required was frustrating.  I understand that employers may have assumed I’d be bored in the roles, but I had gone to the trouble of applying, which should have indicated a fair level of interest on my part . . . but apparently it did not. 

I kept looking for part-time roles and started volunteering – on the P&C at my children’s school and also at the local Kindy.  I also started editing and reviewing technical papers for some former colleagues. 

Nowadays I work at a Kindergarten as a teaching assistant.  The hours I work fit within my children’s school hours, which means I can still do pick up and drop off, and get the kids to their (many, many, oh-so-many) activities.  In addition to my own kids, I’ll often have an extra child or two to take to said activities (my friends and I remain committed to the notion of sharing the load when it comes to getting our kids to and from activities).  I’m finding too that the older my children get, the more just-being-around time there needs to be.  When they were toddlers, they’d tell me their entire life story in the twenty minutes it took me to cook dinner.  Now that they’re older, I find they might need to hang about and not talk for a while (and then be asked the right questions) before they’re ready to tell me about something from their day.

In all honesty, I always enjoyed the work that I did.  I would never have chosen to quit my job, because I did find it interesting and challenging.  Redundancy gave me the chance to spend more time with my kids as they got older, and that has been a lot of fun.