My Friday Five:
1. I still haven’t made a decision about this job offer! I emailed Resourcing Monday morning and they gave me this week to get answers to my questions before responding to the offer. They also said the suggested bench for me to work on would be Marine forecasting (shipping forecasts, high seas, gale warnings etc.), but to contact the hiring manager for more information.
2. So I emailed back to ask who the hiring manager was as I wasn’t sure. I finally got an answer Thursday afternoon and so I emailed him with questions… but I got an out of office response to say he’s on secondment to another government department and won’t be checking that email account very often. Luckily, he replied this morning to say that the job offer isn’t supposed to be a secondment after all, but a temporary position with option to become permanent (filling in for someone going away), and that there is an option to put me on the EU bench for 6 months (to cover a detachment), then the Marine bench for 6 months.
3. On top of that, I’m still waiting for a response from the Relocation team. I emailed a second time on Tuesday… still nothing back at all. So I’m still stuck in job offer limbo. The Resourcing lady said to just email her when I have my answers so she can update the job status, but I hate that this is all just being left hanging. At this point, I don’t know whether to just accept the job anyway and hope I get relocation answers eventually, or whether to decline... because the communication has been so terrible that I don’t have enough information to make an informed decision within the allowed time.
4. As well as dealing with all that, I’ve had a really bad week emotionally. At first I thought it was just PMS making me weepy, but it seems to be grief coming back as well, plus I haven’t slept well due to night shifts… so every time I’ve tried to think about the job offer, or what t I’ve burst into tears... and as a result, I haven't been in a good frame of mind to try to make a big decision like this right now.
5. On a more positive note, we’re going to Portugal as a family for the week between Christmas and New Year. As it’s the first Xmas without Dad, we didn’t want to do the same thing as normal and be in the same house. We can't easily just go on holiday because we have to cover shifts over Xmas, and so leave booking is blocked until the shifts are covered. At first, I was going to have everyone up to my house for the holiday, as I have to work night shifts on the 23rd and 24th Dec, but now we’re going to have it at Mum’s in Bristol and then fly to Faro from Bristol on the 27th… partly because it’s easier to get to an airport from Bristol than from Lincoln, and also because if I take the job offer, I may need to be in Exeter in early January, and travelling from Bristol is much quicker.
