Jay-Bug; Work-Bug

Surprise! My friend Jason (nickname: Jay-Bug, but only to me) was in Nagasaki for work (randomly), and he took the train up for a quick visit! It was such a treat! He's getting married to my college roommate this May, so excited for them! I gave him a little tour of our lovely town of Sasebo, or at least I tried to, but I was thrice cut off by my work's "on-call" phone. Yes, my part time job, called me 3 times on Sunday, to check on jammed ATM's. It was totally ridiculous, but more on that later. We thought about trying to make an appearance at the hot air balloon festival, but all the trips back to the base for the ATM's nixed that option. So instead we just grabbed some fruits at the local store to bring to Casey on the ship, did a little mini tour of the house, and stopped in on the USS Patriot, while it has some repairs done. Casey gave us a neat tour of the ship, since it was Sunday and no one was working on board. It was neat! (If anyone is interested in some Navy-approved pictures of the ship under construction, here is a link to their facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/USS-Patriot-MCM-7/359718106353).

After our ship tour we decided to sample some local specialties, and went to "Big Man", for the famous, Sasebo Burger. I'd had another version before Jay's visit, but this one was much better than my first. It was a nice filling lunch, on our way to the restaurant we perused the arcade, or shopping street, and we picked out Megan a little present! Only to get another call about the ATM and have to head back to the base again. RIDICULOUS. Luckily, Jay busied himself shopping tax-free at the NEX while I tended the ATM again. We also popped in on a small oyster festival, where people were buying bags of oysters and grilling them on hundreds of little bar-b-que sets out in a field. It was very fun to see (I will bug Jay-Bug for his picture of that!).

Sasebo is a really neat town, but it's just a normal small city where people live normal lives and go to work and go to the park. So we exhausted most of our neat places to visit rather quickly, so after a quick drive around the downtown, we drove through some rice patties, and saw a little of the country side, and Jay headed back to Nagasaki on a train before dinner, since he was going to be working bright and early the next day on a Japanese Navy ship. It was so fun to have a little impromptu visit! Very refreshing, the day was absolutely amazing, sunny, but just the right coolness in the air. Fall here is wonderful, I definitely recommend visiting this time of year!

So after I dropped Jay off at the train station, I stopped at the local grocery again to pick up some sushi for Casey's dinner (he's still on duty on the ship). This is when we got to talking about work and the silly ATM calls all day. We finally landed on a very important point. As the employee, I need to be honest and firm with my employers about my realistic commitment to this "part-time" job. Being on-call on the weekend doesn't seem that part time, if you ask me. Also, a huge part of the reason Casey and I selected Japan for our station was for the opportunities to travel and explore together. Casey found out he will be going to a conference in Singapore, and originally I told him I couldn't go with him because I have to work. Now let's think about that for a moment. I was turning down a trip to Singapore with my husband, because of a 20-hour a week, part time job, that I'm doing "for fun". It's just not adding up. There's really no reason I should be putting this job (or any job) ahead of my husband and family, and the plans that are truly important to us. I've decided that the best thing to do is to lay out what I want from this job, not what they want from me. I think for employment to be worth your time you and your employer need to be on the same page, and right now I don't believe we are. Here is what I want:

-to work 0-20 a week, which implies that there may be times when my life schedule doesn't permit me to be scheduled for work.

-to work only a maximum of 3 days a week.

-to have the flexibility to seize opportunities, like the Singapore trip, that come up, often with little notice.

-to spend time with my husband, my family, and my friends when there are important events happening (and sometimes Casey being not-out-to-sea is important enough for me).

I know this all may sound a little selfish, but I'm OK with that. There's no reason an employer should be getting the most valuable pieces of me. Ideally, this would have been a discussion for before I applied for this job, however, I think I also needed this job to help me get my priorities straight. My position would obviously be different if this were an income-necessity situation, or if this was a serious career move, in order to better some greater goal in my life, but being a part-time bank teller is none of these. It's a way for me to get out of the house during the day, meet people, and make "fun-money" for those spontaneous trips we plan to go on.

So, I think by letting my job know what I need from them, we can come to a mutual decision about whether working there is really a benefit to both sides, and if it's not, then it's not an arrangement I should be in, is it?

I welcome thoughts and comments!