Nobody asked for this and I haven’t, in my nine or so years of working, risen to be like an industry expert/leader/big wig but I’m writing my work story anyway!
My Work Story: First Job
When I was 19, I was very lucky to be hired about this woman who had a small copywriting agency. I think I found her on Bizcommunity, but it’s highly possible for it to be the other way around. She didn’t just have this business, the core part of her business/income was that she freelanced for bigger agencies. She physically sat there daily.
For the most part, this was great! I worked out of an office she rented and shared with friends of hers who also had small media/marketing businesses. In the almost-two years I worked her, it’d be generous to say I saw her in that office even 10 times.
We did meet at clients sometimes or randevouz elsewhere. But increasingly, I found myself so anxious that I was letting her down and just generally being not-great.
With hindsight, of course, I realised that I was shockingly depressed and anxious by the tine I resigned in 2013. But while I was in it, all I could feel was self-loathing and the feeling that I was letting everyone down.
Yes, it wasn’t part of her job, but I do think I was missing a lot of mentorship and guidance in that role. I would have appreciated it/think it would have served me well.
This is the boss we all have to thank for me being online consistently lol. After starting, she gave me a blackberry curve 8520! Hello BIS. I wish we’d done social copy and gone after social clients at this time. It would have been incredible (for me).
Did I mention that the first few months after I started I was working Mondays to Wednesdays???
Back to the anxiety I was feeling: So at the beginning of 2013 things didn’t seem to be going well. One of the friends I shared the office with was doing project management for my boss and I just was not liking the vibe! Something changed in May, I think we lost a client, and I was feeling uncertain. So I wrote an email and resigned. I do not recommend it lol. At least wait to be asked to leave with some severance is now my motto.
I spent the next five months (June – November-ish) applying. I still was not okay but the rent’s due, my baby. I think I’d paid for rent up to September/October. We still lived in my old backroom with the land women so months of advance rent wasn’t a lot but it was?
The next phase
My next job in my work story was going to be a month-long gig with this online store owner who worked from her home. She liked me, I guess, because we parted way seven months later.
I honestly liked working there. She had a baby whom I called Jakalasi and held a lot. Working the admin of the store taught me things and was interesting. When Madiba passed, we took flowers to his home, it was in the neighbourhood, and it didn’t feel corny.
She sent me on training for InDesign to better help her and, tbh it was two days so no wonder I still flopped.
On my last day, I went to Hyde Park to collect books, get my favourite red velvet and watched maleficent alone in the entire cinema.
Then there was nothing.
I think it was the end of July 2014 that I started stressing. There were no two ways about it, I needed to start making money, and soon. I still felt fragile so in my head I was like, look if I made R2, 000 monthly, we can eat and pay rent. That’s all. But it wasn’t happening.
I remember my one land lady sent me a message, I think, after two missed months and said they needed the money. WHICH, fair. I sold a camera I had bought and all the proceeds went toward that. And a pie I bought after leaving Cash Crusaders in Randburg Square. Is the Pie City still there?
All hell breaks loose
Some time that November, I applied for a scriptwriting job with a production house that makes a children’s show that (still) plays on SABC 1. Part of the application was to send a script as well. I didn’t get the job but they emailed me saying they’d liked my script and would be using it and this what they’d pay.
Just checked my emails and, I kid you not, my script was about blogs. Lol. I was somehow invited to write more and ended up writing two more scripts (on salt and trains, I still remember).
I was offered a job to come on as a scriptwriter around Feb. I counted it and if I managed two scripts a month, my sister and I would THRIVE. They wanted to do some retreat thing at the production house in Linden and I went. Two things happened: 1. My taxi got stuck in Braam 2. The house was sooo far from the main road I was sweaty af when I got there.
I met the old scriptwriter, a black guy, probably a couple of years older than me. Among the new recruits was a much older white guy, a bushy-tailed white girl I found the producer gushing over in terms of her ~freelancing~ and little old me. I don’t remember anyone engaging with me.
I got my two-page contract, took it home to sign. Sent my sister to scan it and I don’t know if I was about to send it back or if I’d already sent it and they emailed me saying, soz, we actually don’t need this many scriptwriters. My heart sank. I had a panic attack and cried.
My work story: Back to square one
When things were not going well for us financially, I felt so ashamed that it was my fault. Whether because I’d left jobs or because I couldn’t get new ones. I was even ashamed of the fact that my brain made me feel susceptible to these feelings of work anxiety.
2015 was the worst part of a near-two-year spell of joblessness. The girls were broke AF. I interviewed at an agency my internet friend worked for in June but they went quiet.
Then I got one of the worst jobs I have ever had. It was billed an internship and was based in the butt of Randburg. To this day, I’m not really sure what we were supposed to be doing but looking back, it seems like a fake news mill. The man who supervised us was vile and stank of cigarettes. He’s a marketing industry “thought leader” so whenever I see his name on websites, I always remember that office.
I went to that job exactly three weeks and ran out of transport money. I was fielding an internship offer from a traditional agency (can’t remember if it was PR or advertising) and it would have paid me two thousand more.
That’s right, with almost two years of content and digital writing experience, I was in the internship game! I emailed the HR woman at the bad job to explain that I was out of money and that I hated working with that man. That since I couldn’t afford to keep coming in, I was moving on. She emailed me something like good luck. At the end of the month, they paid me money for the days I’d worked.
I paid my back rent with money from the terrible job and waited to hear from my newest internship offer.
My friend’s content agency employer finally got back in touch saying they’d gotten a big client and wanted me to come on board full-time. NGL, I gasped when I saw the offer. It wasn’t a lot but considering where I’d been, it was the world.
And that’s how the world of work got me. My salary quote is still so low, after all these years. And I’m way too old for it.
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The content agency was okay, as far as work goes. Were there too many white women? Sure. Did I run out of English? Of course. There was also a lot of passive-aggressiveness on slack and my 23 – 25-year-old self was constantly like, nope.
There was plenty of girlboss-ism (yay! Pizza yay! Snapchat yay! Some other stupid thing) and not enough wellbeing care for the staff. People were often working themselves ragged. Not to mention the company was based in Sunninghill, which is so far. By the time I left, I was over it.
In Early 2017, I was told that the contract I’d been brought in on was going inhouse. It was my primary job so that did leave me anxious. My contact at client reached out to me to let me know that she’d be keen to bring me on and that I must send in my CV. Meanwhile, the agency was retrenching as well so I figured it was probably time to move on anyway, even though I’d survived the retrenchment. There was no clause preventing the move in my contract.
My favourite part of working at the girlboss agency was definitely working with the editor who came on a few months after I started. She was excellent and encouraging and liked my writing and brain.
Then I got HELLA anxious. The new company I’d be working for was huge. I’d also be working with men daily for the first time (other than the trash boss of three weeks). But I was excited! I’d be inhouse and I had so many ideas.
My first year there, I was knocking at burnout’s door. I was overworked. I was underpaid. They were deducting money for things they made compulsory and I was earning a few hundred less than I did at the previous job.
I was low-key resentful of the men on my team because I felt I was doing so much work and working weekends and running around and still earning, maybe, half their salaries. If not a little more.
The culture was also not great. I remember one of my team members who started after me got a job in a different city at the end of 2018 and they were trying to woo her with increases. We were both in the same underpaid boat. But she left. The culture wasn’t worth the few extra thousands (I got shy and never actually asked her what they had offered.)
Last year, after growing increasingly, extremely unsatisfied at my previous job — especially with the money! — I interviewed at a big magazine publisher to be a digital editor for one of their magazines. Sometimes, I include this blog in job applications when I believe it’s relevant as a part of my portfolio. I have had it on my LinkedIn work history for years lol. Anyway, back to this publisher which has a building and a canteen-like area. During my interview, the editor, to whom I’d be reporting, asked something-something about how I felt about there being a post of me in my bra. Sis! It’s a review.
This year, a month or so after my retrenchment, the publisher I interviewed with announced they were stopping their magazines department. I imagined what that would have meant for me if I’d gotten the job. Although my most recent job retrenched me, I had been there for almost three years, which meant a little severance.
I’ve often said that I don’t desire a career, which has gotten even more true as I’ve progressed in my twenties. However, there’s no escaping work as money is how we survive. Speaking of which, hire me to write some words for you or your business.
Thank you for reading! What has been the most significant part of your career story? Let me know if you’re interested in my work story as it pertains to my freelance writing, which has appeared on Mail & Guardian.
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Babalwa Nyembezi says
Thanks so much for sharing this. I was speaking to my friends the other day about how having a dream job/career is actually such a scam and I’m coming to realise it’s fr not how life was meant to be. There’s so much more to ukuphila than a job. But you’re right – earning a living is so nb also.
Nomali Cele says
Sisi! I just want to write, eat mango, never feel cold. But life has said otherwise for my twenties.
Thank you for reading 💖
Lungi says
This is interesting for me because I’m quite interested in the world of work for people outside of my field, especially in the creative field cos it’s so diverse.
My significant career move was leaving my first job after 5 years to study full time, the job and the company were not a good fit for me and I HATED being there towards the end.
Nomali Cele says
I think we’re all curious about how work works for other people. I know i’m jealous of people who have these intense mathematical/science skills.
Thank you for reading!
Nonhlanhla says
I’ve been employed for 11 years this year, I’ve made no big moves and I am no industry expert. I’ve felt that anxiety and fear has prevented me from growing as I could’ve, I’ve seen my peers and even people I am senior to soar. I’ve considered resigning ever since I started and I am in a space where I’ve accepted this job.
Nomali Cele says
When i was younger, i used to think oh i just want a lifetime job in government admin and then i won’t have these issues and fears. But, thank goodness, i grew the fuck up and realised labour is labour and my brain will be like this wherever i end up. I just need to mitigate as much as i can.
There’s still time for you. I think, without even leaving the current company, you can still change your trajectory, if you want. Just removed the what could have been or all the ppl who’ve “surpased” you. There’s no need to punish or judge yourself.
Sandisiwe says
Unemployment is the most demoralizing and depressing thing and it makes you feel so alone even when you know people in the same situation as yourself. Thanks for sharing your work story. I laughed a lot when you spoke about girlbossism because institutionalized enthusiasm is really such a thing often at the expense of those of us who are cynical and know that we’re being exploited. I don’t want to exceptionalize SA but the job market and pay in this country is the gutter whew. I also dream of a world where I don’t have to labour. Lately, I’ve been fantasizing about moving to the village and just living there but the lack of internet fibre and also water scarcity and other necessities sometimes stops those fantasies as soon they begin.
Nomali Cele says
Thank you for reading! In my early twenties i was soo obsessed with moving out of gauteng, it has never felt good as a place to be. But ke.
These really bad labour and pay practices keep most workers down, six years of working and you are still were you were and, usually, making less.