Working Wednesday Part 6

Working Wednesday is a compilation of stories from various working environments. We tend to spend a large portion of our lives doing it and we can learn a lot from each other's experiences, good and bad alike.

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For those that have been following along on my journey, you'll recall that I recently started a new job. I've been there for less than a month now and it's been interesting to get back into a semi-corporate environment. I say interesting because it hasn't been all bad or all good; as with most things in life, there will always be the dichotomy. Every rain cloud has a silver lining and so on.

The parts that I like are that I get to interact with people. I can bounce ideas off them, we can talk out strategies and many heads tend to be better than one as we all have unique strengths, weaknesses, insights and experience.

I like that my manager can hand over work at a pace that isn't too hectic although I feel this will change as time goes on and I get to grips with the intricacies of the position and all the moving parts.

There are of course draw backs though.

I've been contracted to this position not as an employee but they've essentially hired my company (ie: me) to fulfill a particular function. The part that I'm having trouble with is where the line is drawn. I have not received a job specification per se and my SLA (Service Level Agreement) has not been compiled and signed off even though I've been reminding them each week.

@Bozz wrote a post recently about the level of expectation in the workplace and how difficult it is to fulfil specialised functions and retain the people with the inclusion of the clause "And any other duties as assigned" in the contract. This is a very broad statement and one that could be stretched to however a company wishes to use it.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with putting in extra effort and pulling together during crunch time when the team requires it, but there has to be a line somewhere or it borders on exploitation. Where is that line?

Today I got handed an assignment that is normally outsourced to a design company. I think that my manager was testing me to be honest. At the time I felt rather uncomfortable about it because she is now handing me work that normally is paid to a separate company. She explained it as such "The more we can do in-house, the better because then we don't have to wait on xyz (name of company redacted) as they take too long". See this is where the tricky part comes in. I was hired for this position as a copywriter - not as a designer, but my manager has cottoned on to the fact that I enjoy design work so she's killing two birds with one pay checque and saving the organisation a whack of dough at the same time.

While I'm using the position as a way to improve my CV and extend my experience as well as getting a (hopefully) nice reference, I also don't know where this blurring of the brief will stop and I fear that it won't stop until I say no. Then I have to deal with any kick-back that there may be and that could potentially put all of these things previously mentioned in jeopardy. It's an interesting predicament to be in because while I have no problem helping the company out where I can, I also need to have some parameters in place where I can draw the line.

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What would you do in my position and how do you feel about situations like this?

Feel free to tell me in the comments.