I now owe my friend John a beer because he bet I wouldn’t last three weeks at that new company. My stepfather said on the phone today, “I’m surprised you stayed that long”. Oh ye of completely realistic-sized faith!

Although I wouldn’t presume to call myself the most honest person around, I am not good at make believe. The truth is, I didn’t want the job, and I was applying and interviewing elsewhere while starting this job, and I felt completely shitty the whole time that I was deceiving them. I think the dental pain showed up when it did because I was grinding my teeth at night from the worry, when I managed to sleep at all.

Friends kept saying, it’s just a job, it’s better to have a job while you look for something else, at least it’s a paycheque, etc. whenever I said I should quit. I think I’m going to be judged for turning down any job in this recession; however, for me, the only good thing about it was the paycheque (not to insult the company, they are good people). As for the bad things:

• I’d leave my apartment at quarter to 7 and come home after work at a quarter to 7, having not done anything but work and commute that day.
• The company is not an IT company (but a company with an IT team, which is different).
• I did not feel at one with the IT team.
• I wasn’t going to learn anything new in this position except for things specific to the company itself.

The second point isn’t a biggie, but the rest are, especially the last: I wouldn’t be completely adverse to a junior position if it was something new that would be challenging and give me some new skills, but this wasn’t going to be the case. It seems I set up my workstation so quickly they didn’t have any work for me and were going to have to scramble to find me some; and, I mean, I’m not that awesome. So it didn’t seem fair to them to pay me to twiddle my thumbs for several days while I slyly send out resumes in my off-hours and pray to God to make me a DBA again.

Speaking of which, this was one of the reasons given for why they hired me for a position which I considered too junior for me:

Well, you see, I don’t consider MySQL DBAs to be real DBAs.

Touché!