Second job?

I had an interview today for a second job. It was really more of a meeting than an interview, it was with H&R Block who I worked for last Spring. They wanted me to come back this next tax season and I wasn't quite sure whether or not I wanted to. After my interview I was positive whether I wanted to come back, and quite excited about the answer!

The answer is no.

I will not be working a second job for H&R Block come January, and I couldn't be happier about it.

There are several reasons why. One of them is that I just want to spend more time with my wife and the other people in my life that mean a lot to me. Working two jobs would mean not a lot of quality time, and I love me some quality time. I'd always heard about those people who are workaholics and never spend time with their families, but my experience last year helped me understand them. The thing is, extra money is nice. Very nice in fact. But is extra money better than spending time with people you love? Heck no.

Another reason is so I can focus more on my job search. I've already posted about it, but I get my MBA in December and I'm going to start looking for a job hardcore come January. They say that looking for a job is a job in and of itself, and had I started a second job I would have a lot less time to spend looking. I'm excited to actually devote some real time to job searching.

I feel like I don't devote enough time to my current job as it is. Being an RD means only a little scheduled work time and a lot of unscheduled work and just spending time with people. Last year when I was working two jobs (and taking grad classes) I think I fell behind and didn't do the best job I could.

Spending time in a branch office today during my interview really reminded me what being in a tax office is like, and what H&R Block is like as a company. Don't get me wrong, there were some very good things about working for them. The people I worked with were great and we had some good times. The problems came more from the corporate side of things and just serving the public in an office like that. I like people, but I don't like having to sell things to people. I had plenty of that in my time in retail, and I ain't going back. I really don't appreciate how H&R Block sells additional products to their customers. A lot of the little commissions you make come from selling unnecessary financial products to people who shouldn't be buying them, and I refuse to do that.

Also on the corporate side of things, I dislike their compensation policies. I like to spend time thinking and talking about incentive management, and H&R Block does not do it well. They have a bonus available based on commissions, but it's a replacement commission type thing. You make an hourly wage but have the ability to "bonus" at the end of the tax season. The thing is, the bonus is just the difference between your hourly wage and the amount you would have made had you been straight commission. Therefore if you don't make enough commissions to exceed your standard wages you don't get any of them, and if you do make enough commissions to exceed your standard wages it doesn't matter how many hours you worked. Personally that makes me less motivated to both earn commissions AND work more hours. Maybe it works the opposite way for some people, but if there's a chance that I won't actually get the commissions I earn, I'm not going to feel super motivated to earn them.


All in all I just feel like a huge load has been lifted. My schedule over the next couple of months has lightened up as I don't have to worry about doing all of the training things that they make you do. Yeah, we'll have less money in the Spring. That's ok, we just might not go anywhere for Spring break and spend more time doing things that don't cost money. After all, the best things in life are free. By that of course I mean love and board games. Though come to think of it board games aren't free. But I have enough, I don't have to buy any more. We can just play them. Anyway... kind of wrote myself into a rut there... so I guess I'm done. Peace!

My last first day of school!

Yesterday was (hopefully) my last first day of school!

I'm taking two classes this semester and I will graduate with my MBA in December. I've been slow-playing my MBA so it will have taken me three and a half years by the time I'm done. I am so ready to be done with classes. I was ready to be done with classes when I finished my undergrad, but I knew I would eventually get my MBA. Now that I'm almost done with it I'm very much looking forward to having no more classes.

I always told people that your undergraduate major isn't that important because an undergraduate degree really just means that you know how to think (with some more technical exceptions like nursing). A graduate degree really teaches you more in depth about your subject matter.

With my MBA I feel that that is only partially true. I certainly do know more about business and various aspects therein (accounting, finance, management, economics, etc.), but the end result of my MBA doesn't seem to be a lot of technical knowledge.

I feel that my undergrad taught me how to think, but my MBA has taught me how to analyze.

What I mean by that is that in my Bachelor of Science in Business Administration degree I learned the various aspects of a business that must be considered and how to go about making decisions based on those areas. In my MBA I have learned what parameters to use when analyzing aspects of a business and how to integrate those parameters into decision making.

The class I just had last night is Business Policy, which is a capstone class in the program. The subject matter is how analysis leads into decision making which is implemented through policies. In a word, strategy. I am generally interested in strategy (as evidenced by my fascination with board games), and I definitely do find this class interesting. I view this class as taking the various parts of running a business that I have learned in other classes and putting it into a comprehensive whole.

One of the things I'm very thankful for in the class is that I will not be writing a paper. I will be doing a presentation to the class, so that will be a decent amount of work, but I really dislike writing papers. The presentation will be better because the topic will be assigned and most of the information will be given to me, I just have to analyze it and present it in an organized way. This is so much better for me because I am not an ideas person. I am the kind of person who will take someone else's idea and implement it.

We'll see in my other class (which starts on Monday) whether I'll have a paper to write at all. I may very well be done with papers for life! Unless of course I start another masters, which I'm certainly not ruling out. At the moment though I am very much looking forward to being done with my MBA. I feel like I really will have accomplished something.