Oh I’m sorry but hopefully still positive. Hope the tooth is feeling better. Or you are. Or both of you. Mainly you actually. Not that I don’t like the tooth but I think you’re more important. More fun to play games with, for sure. I mean I hope it went well, really.
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Did they advertise the role at a higher grade?
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They did advertise the position as a higher grade. So yes there are questions and frustration. Timezone differences mean he has not yet had the opportunity to ask if this is maybe just an HR blunder (I don‘t think so). He also has a coaching session tomorrow with his mentor and we‘re considering that he try to wait to question the offer until he had that session.
@Lordof1 tooth is not doing so well, it‘s been gone for months. But I am doing fine 
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If they’ve advertised it at a higher grade and they’ve offered him a different one, I’d say the least they can do is explain.
I’ve done it before (I work in Talent Acquisition) when we think someone is really good but not yet ready to take on some elements of the role, so its been downgraded (usually temporarily). But this has always been explained to the candidate at offer, and usually has an agreed path back up the proper grade
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That‘s what I am saying, he needs to ask why the position was advertised as higher grade than the offer and if there is no clear path to obtaining that higher grade maybe he has to turn down that offer. It‘s not his problem that his new manager has already introduced him all over the place.
PS but even if there is a path ready for him to get to that grade if it has anything to do with „not being ready“ it is destroying him. He is questioning his worth… we all know this probably. Too much of our identities and self-worth is tied to work.
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I’ve just spent the last year in a new job which made me question my worth and skills, because I’m struggling at things I used to do automatically.
Turns out my boss is just really, really bad to work with, the team can’t train people in anything coherently and all their systems are terrible. It’s taken me a LONG time to check that it’s not me. It’s not me Out of here when the contract ends in December…
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True - and why a good line manager will be very careful about how they explain it!
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When I got my current job, I interviewed for a role, which was open at a range of levels (which is our standard practice, most technical non-management postions get filled from a pool of fresh meat^W^Wnew hires, and not by hiring a specific person for a specific job.) I got offered at N, and pretty flattly said “Nope, but I’ll consider N+1”. (Which was pretty ballsy, as i was seriously underemployed at the time, but there was a required relocation, and not only is the pay better at N+1, but the offered relocation was massively more generous. In the end, I didn’t relocate, because remote rules changed between when I started and when I was going to be required to be in an office.) They came back with another offer, it took them a while and I was pretty sure I’d made mistake, but it worked out.
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It would be good to at least have them show an interest to review the grade or pay in a period of time. For my new job I knew they were not paying me top grade as I had no managerial experience, but they will review my performance after 3 months and we will go from there (I am happy with that as I wanted a change and I still get a higher salary than what I have now, but I know they are having me a bit on the cheap).
If he could discuss this with his manager, in order not to be underpaid indefinitely, I think it would be good in two ways: now I will show them, and I have something to look forward to.
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Nobody will believe the explanation. This is like from a bad soap opera…
Originally, the offer was for the higher job grade and then his „new“ boss talked to his old boss and her boss (aka boss^2) they said they didn‘t want to create precedent for someone advancing a job grade through a „lateral“ move (he is actually rising in the organizational level to the level of his current boss) and asked his new boss to downgrade the offer. (Fast forward some communication issues due to HR timing) So next he talked to his new boss about it all, she told him all the above and said the path to the higher grade was clear, they just have to wait a couple of months for the job upgrade. Which is fine by him.
Sometimes, I hear, people get a counter-offer from their old boss to stay. I have never yet heard of a case where the old boss managed to make the new job worse so you might stay at the old position instead.
I want to add though that a month or so ago when things were moving awfully slow I told my partner that he should beware his current boss^2 might want to interfere just because they can… and so they did.
My head is shaking so much, it is almost ready to fall off in disbelief.
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So my work is incredibly busy at the moment. I decided to go in earlier yesterday to try to catch up a bit as I was getting stressed with the amount of deadlines looming.
I arrived at the office an hour and a half earlier to get started only to find the security guard in the revolving doors. Turns out he’d locked himself in the door 20 minutes ago without his keys or phone and there were no other entrances open.
So instead of work I had to spend the extra time phoning around to find a key holder who could come and let him out.
This was not how either of us had planned our day.
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I bet he loved to see you drop by early… do you think sometimes that these things were meant to be?
Like the cases where somebody goes out of their right routine for whatever reason, and then something extraordinary like that happens. When I was doing work at heights training (my present role involves loads of Health and Safety, so there you go) our instructor told us about the time he fell on a warehouse building work and was left hanging on a harness, and it was just after a break, so he thought that he would be left there for hours, but somebody came back just 5 minutes later because they had forgotten something like a torch, and spotted him.
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When I lived in London (Ontario, the boring one) I would go every Monday to a little coffee shop (“Symposium”) that had horribly overpriced hot chocolate and a really, really cute waitress. I would order a hot chocolate, tip heavily immediately while apologizing for taking up a spot for a few hours (right off the bat so it wouldn’t be an inconvenience or a surprise), and then sketch people as they came into the shop for a few hours. It was a way to get out of my apartment and practice drawing.
One week I couldn’t make my usually Monday timeslot, so I went on Tuesday instead, but the cute waitress wasn’t working. Unwilling to spend the ridiculous price on the expensive hot chocolate and upfront tip without her there, I decided to go to a different coffee shop (“Williams”) just down the street that had a much more affordably priced hot chocolate.
While sitting there and drawing the customers, I spot an attractive woman seated in the booth next to me, reading a book. My drawing skills being… humble… I decided not to draw her because I was worried I would screw it up, and so do my usual quick sketches of customers as they walk in or take their seats around the shop.
Two minutes later somebody sits down across from me and says “Show me your drawings.”
Not “Hello.” Not “Hey, sorry to bother you…” Just butt in chair, “Show me your drawings.”
I look up, and sure enough, it’s the attractive woman who was seated in the booth across from me.
She insists that she has no idea what came over her to be so forward. She had been studying in London (from Montreal) for a few months and I was the first person she met who went to a coffee shop alone, and she panicked trying to strike up a conversation.
We’ve been together 16 years now.
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That sounds like the plot to a movie. A sappy, lovely one. 
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A movie would have it be the cute waitress from the first place.
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I’m not crying, you’re crying…!
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Not nearly as good a story as Marx’s, but my wife, who doesn’t drink or go to bars, somehow ended up sitting next to me in a tiny bar (capacity: about 10 people), and things went from there.
(No, I don’t think it was “meant to be”, but I do like such coincidences, and how breaking routines can lead to them)
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Unrelated to meet-cutes (I think I’ve shared mine anyway), lots has been going on. We moved house properly a couple of weeks ago, and have been unpacking, building furniture etc. It’s a new-build, so there are still lots of things you wouldn’t normally need to sort out. For example, we can’t just buy curtains, we also need to obtain and fit curtain rails, which means I first had to get a stud finder to check the walls, which were out of stock… etc. Plans to buy a TV at last are currently stymied by the special TV wall with the middle-of-the-wall aerial jack and sockets being, as far as I can tell, entirely unsupported plasterboard?
Work is gearing up for graduation and important meetings. I’m meant to be on strike during the crucial week, which I’m fine with - glad to be taking some action that will actually pack a punch for once. Then it turns out that might sabotage my wife’s visa renewal this summer, so we need to calculate exactly how much income I’ll have after strike deductions. Ugh.
On the plus side, work is vastly smoother than this time last year because we are fully-staffed for the first time! And thanks to @RogerBW I’m having fun revising some scenarios and playing with layouts and stuff.
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I want it to be known the security guard and I are NOT now in love. But there is a knowing nod between us when I go into work.
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I like those knowing nods. There’s a chap that I always bump into as I’m on my way out of the gym and he’s on his way in. It’s progressed to an “alright” recently.
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