- An extreme workload.
- Dishonest hiring practices.
During my interview process, I was told directly by the department chair that it was "a 16-hour per week" job. He also told me that my salary (~$75,000) was half of what a full-time salary would be (~$150,000) because it was essentially half-time work. He used (said) those exact figures - "seventy five thousand" and "one hundred fifty thousand". Those words came out of his mouth, along with "half-time" and "full-time".
Once I started, the realities of the job turned out to be between 8 to 10 hours of work per day, 7 days a week. I literally worked every day of the week for weeks on end. I continue to work 7 days a week most weeks, however Saturdays and Sundays tend to be only 4 - 6 hours each.
Since being hired, I have often wrestled with the questions of "What went wrong? What did I miss during the interview process? What did I misunderstand? How did I get this sooooo wrong?", and so on. In the end, the department chair told me "16 hours a week" and "half time work", and I believed him. These were words that came out of his mouth. A co-worker who was hired a month or two after me told me that she was told the same thing - "16 hours per week". However, she was not told directly by the department chair.
I mentioned my workload to the department chair a few months into the job. I mentioned it very casually. He didn't have much of a response. The tone of his response was "Hmmm.". His tone wasn't even "Hmmm. That's interesting.". It was just "Hmmm.".
