For more about the very beginning of this mess refer to
here. I wrote that entry in a bit of a funk in regards to Job A s**t but I had no idea how bad it was going to end up getting.
To recap, Job A is everything wrong in my life juxtaposed with the responsibilities and duties I HAVE to keep doing- currently. It's a corporate job and those of you who know me best know I'm anything but corporate material. It's not that I don't want to work. I do. It's in my basic nature to bust my a** for the things I want; in the right setting I can be an awesome employee (like the setting in Job B) but in the wrong setting I'm only as good as I have to be in order to not get fired.
Settings I do not do well in:
~ Does it involve having to understand more about the personal politics of the group/people than the job itself?
~ Does it mean having to put up with any number of bullshittery just to get through the day? With a SMILE? No matter what?
~ Does it involve dealing with a manager who is so inept that part of the daily grind is covering their a** enough to not bring the hammer down on the entire group? With a SMILE? No matter what?
~ Does it involve being the villain all the time always no matter what just to get your basic personal rights as a worker met?
~ Do you end the work day with a deep seething hatred of humanity?
~ Does your job drain the joy out of everything else? Not because of the work itself but because of the extra crap that comes along with it?
~ Do you enjoy never knowing what your schedule looks like? Actually- schedule? You think you deserve one of those? PFFFFFTTT, THAT'S CUTE!
If the answer to one or more of these is yes than you're the proud owner of a job ranking high in suckatude! Congo-rats and remember to SMILE no matter WHAT!
...Yeah, after so many years of dealing with this kind of s**t my burnout has burnout.
The problem I'm dealing with now is pretty much the same problem that made me leave a job I'd held for over five years- I'm over having to deal with a manager who doesn't want to do their job so they began to invade personal boundaries and deny basic employee rights to get their way.
This is what I've been dealing with for the better part of two years:
~ Schedules that change so often that as of over a year ago I stopped writing them down, making plans or expecting to know when I go in/get out until the very last minute.
~ Being told that it doesn't matter that I requested particular days/shifts off months in advance nor does it matter that even two days ago the answer was "Yeah, I gave you that off." Because that was then, ********, and this is NOW.
~ Oh, I wanted to clock out at the time I was told I'd be able to at the beginning of the shift? No, no- that's not allowed. Stay or there will be trouble.
~ But wait! The manager clocks in and out whenever they please! And they come and go when they please! Three hours late and no phone call? Silly Flare- don't you know managers are above all that?
There's more but at this point my blood pressure is in orbit. You get the idea.
Add onto this s**t salad the fact that since I've started working there the turnover rate is so bad corporate has asked me more then five times in the past year alone what is going on. Minus one employee every person that has come and gone in the past two years I've been there has left for the above reasons. We're training someone new now (well, I am- even she's said that the manager has done nothing on her shifts to train her; it's almost as if she's trying to drive her to quit) but for awhile there was just me and the manager.
Just me. And the manager. Two people. At a job that requires four or more to get the bare minimum done.
It's hard to get people to stay when they get treated like s**t.
It's maddening to not have any control over one's time/work schedule.
Let me say a few things right here: One, I'm not and never will be Employee of the Year. I bit my tongue and kept s**t to myself for nearly two years BECAUSE I know I'm not perfect. When I was younger I had the "I'll rise above it all no matter what and be the better person" mentality that I've since learned just means one's a masochist. I'm not that way anymore. I grew out of Welcome Mat Mode a long, long while ago. I don't give 200% at any corporate job anymore. I give enough and nothing more. The a*****e in me wants to say it is BECAUSE of so many bad managers/shitty companies I've worked for that I'm this way but deep down I know the truth: My heart is not/never will be in any of these jobs.
They've always been just ways to pay the bills- a necessary evil in a society I don't get in a world I'm terribly removed from because I don't get the mindset of wasting one's precious time/energy/creativity/hope running on a wheel that benefits greedy ******** more than it benefits the one doing the running. Why should I run myself ragged to stand still? Just so someone else can benefit from my blood, sweat and tears? I want to break the cycle of going to job I hate just to pay the bills and keep myself in a hole BECAUSE of said job.
Point being, I'm not the world's best employee. I bring my own issues to the table and one of them just happens to be the very thing my manager seems intent on making me lose my mind over:
Do. Not. Waste. My. Time.
I value my time. I have stuff to do. I have a LOT of stuff to do. I'm an impatient woman with a lot of goals and a lot of energy for those goals when given the opportunities to work towards the things that matter. I'll gladly go without sleep to get something done for Job B (and that's exactly what I've been doing lately so forgive me for any sloppiness in this or anything else I've written in the past half year or so) but it makes my blood boil to spend ten minutes at Job A listening to something stupid the manager is saying JUST to keep me from clocking out.
I recognize the issue I have. I'm too sensitive to the sensation of passing time and the weight of the things I want to accomplish. When I think someone is wasting my time I tend to get a little persnickety. I'm not trying to be mean but I wouldn't want anyone else feeling the way I do so I understand when others tell me they have things to do. That's not a kindness I have returned often, though. Mostly I just get the feeling- and have been told more than once- that since I'm so hard to get a hold of that means it's totally okay to soak up my time/attention when a person can. Even if that means for hours on end even after I've repeatedly said I need to go.
Not cool. Not cool at all.
Even less cool when that person is your manager.
And you've told her a million and five times how important it is to be able to have a work/life balance- especially since you're working another job, especially since you're married and don't have a lot of free time anyway and especially when the entire reason you agreed to the job was the promise of certain things that hasn't happened in over a year.
I've spent nearly two years shouldering the blame. Allowing her to paint me as the bad person for something as simple as needing to be out within an hour of what she told me I was meant to leave because there's people waiting outside for me. I gave up a long time ago on leaving on time- but an hour later and there's no clear reason why I'm being told I need to stay?
The past half year has been the worst in terms of work/life balance. I gave her a month's warning that I was about to start a new job. I asked her repeatedly to understand I need my hours kept to a certain amount because I'd be putting in close to forty a week at my other job and at some point I'd need sleep. I know, I know- I'm asking for the world and a half. I even asked nicely for well over a year to understand that there are times when I have to be firm about when I need to clock out- I've asked, mind you. And been told repeatedly no, that I had to stay over, that my job was on the line, blah blah blah.
...And then what happened last week happened.
I like to think Mother Nature watched what's been happening and put her glorious green foot down. She sent blast after blast of winter weather our way, including a couple rounds of ice storms that this area is not used to.
Bear in mind I've been walking to and from work since I got the job. It's close enough that it's not a great chore for me, it's exercise and time to think and gives me time to shift into/out of work/not-work mode. I use the time to obsess over stories, RPs on here and whatever else is going through my head. I ENJOY that time, especially after a bad shift when I need to move to get the negative energy out of my system.
And bear in mind that last winter I walked in no matter how bad it got. It was nasty a couple of times but the worst was having to walk/work with the flu and a temperature that was one point below emergency room visit (on a sidenote I don't remember much of that shift other than being really amused with a sparkly bottle someone had left behind
emotion_awesome )- because guess what? The manager can call in with a headache that lasts for three days but I can't ask someone to take my shift when I'm running a fever and can barely stand.
But I get it.
And I worked it. Rise above and all that s**t.
This winter the weather has been particularly "******** YOU, HUMANS" in this area and we had some icy days, some snowy/icy days, some icier days and some holyshitisittheendoftheworldit'ssocold days.
And all but ONE of them I walked in. And it wasn't a pleasant experience, not coming or going. I've fallen a grand total of five times this winter, sometimes on the road to work but mostly in the very parking lot of my joyous work building. But I did it, because I get s**t done and because, you guessed it, I was told my job was on the line.
The one day I refused there was so much ice and it was so cold that I couldn't make it ten feet from my door without slipping and nearly falling. I knew I couldn't make it all the way down the hill (because I live on a small hill- not enough to be anything when the weather is fine but when it's not it's a nightmare getting down the damn pavement) and so I tapped out. I was thirty hours of work behind on Job B and desperately needed to reclaim that time BECAUSE Job A had been pulling its s**t all month. I felt then and still do that the universe was trying to give me the break my manager refused to.
So for the first time ever in two years I called out. I took tons of video and pictures to show my case if it ever came up. Corporate knew about it and knew about the weather conditions so it was no big deal, it turned out. I was a little confused by this- all this time I've been told I HAD to make it to work NO MATTER WHAT- but mostly pleased. And relieved. I'm flipping exhausted and I need a day off; if it took a ******** ice storm to make it happen than suddenly my favorite time of year was the winter.
Everything's fine. I don't hear anything about it. I return to work and it's back to the way things usually are, late work days and all. A couple of you have heard my whining about this and I'm sorry. And a LOT of you are being made to wait a lot longer on posts than I ever wanted you to wait. I'm sorry. I'm just overwhelmed and there are days I'm so tired I don't eat when I get home, I just head straight to bed with the foolish hope the next day will be better.
A couple of nights ago I was working with the new girl when a gift from above fell into my lap: The manager called me to talk about a few things before she suddenly shifted into talking about the incoming storm. Supposedly we were going to be getting the last major winter storm of the century for this area; I didn't think anything about the warnings for winter weather because it's been beautiful and very spring-y outside. The shift in conversation and what she said to me and how she said it was so sudden I couldn't follow. And I told her so. I asked her to forgive me because I was tired and stupid but I couldn't figure out what she was saying to me.
In truth it was because I couldn't believe how ******** rude and disrespectful she was being.
She told me that no matter how bad it got, no matter how cold it got, no matter how much snow/ice we got that I had no excuse to NOT come in the next day. It didn't matter how bad it was. I'd pissed corporate off the last time I didn't go in and there was no excuse for that to happen again.
I saw red. It wasn't just that she had it in her to say such things- it was the tone and the passive-aggressive s**t she sprinkled her talk with that got me. The insinuations. She's not been the world's best manager but until that talk I really was willing to take the blame for all the crap she's been doing wrong.
...She didn't just burn the bridge with me by calling like that. She nuked the entire ******** TOWN.
The weather hadn't even gotten bad when she called- which only served to piss me off more.
What caused me to really feel the rage in my bones was the talk I'd had with her boss a few days before: a talk that, as it turned out, my manager didn't know about. That talk would be the start of the end for her and she didn't realize when she called me last week the shitstorm she'd bring on herself.
Her boss calls ever so often to touch bases with me and see what's going on with the place. Her boss KNOWS a lot of little things are wrong but I've kept things to myself because up until recently I was working from the place that I was the one in the wrong, not my manager. That my manager was just stressed, overwhelmed and burning out- all things I could relate to. I wanted to have empathy for her.
Rise above and all that s**t.
Turns out her boss has been calling as much as she has and asking the questions she's been asking for a long while now for reasons I just recently learned about. Last time we'd talked about that day I called in; her boss had point-blank said there was no issue with my not coming in because they'd all been worried about all the time I'd walked in when I hadn't needed to. I was a tiny legend in a lot of their eyes because the weather had been so bad they hadn't wanted me to have to be out in it but I'd been a trooper and come in anyway. I was reminded to never go out in the bad weather if I felt it was too dangerous.
...Wait. What?
My manager didn't know about that conversation. I'd been sitting on it and stewing over it because I'd found a lot out during that last talk with her boss- a lot of things I hadn't properly processed because it made my nice-enough-just-bad-with-time manager into someone I didn't recognize.
Someone I decidedly do. Not. Like.
Not even a week later she calls and dumps that number on my head.
I walk home that night so angry I grind my teeth the entire way. It's one thing to be lied to- it's a whole ******** other to realize I've been spending two years being lied to AND manipulated. AND that 80% of my issues and stress with the job should never have existed in the first place. AND that the source of the most major troubles I've had to deal with the past two years were entirely preventable.
I gave her one last chance.
I called her boss and said I had a lot to tell her but that I was holding back judgement because I STILL wasn't sure if it was me or my manager. Right up until the very end I was willing to shoulder the blame- something it turns out that my manager has been using to her advantage since I started.
I didn't get halfway finished before her boss said to pause, to hold onto the rest until we could get on the phone with HER boss. Her voice was shaking with the rage I'd felt for a long while now. She corrected me on a lot of the wrongs I've been laboring under. I was so relieved that even now when I think about it I want to cry. I've been so stressed for so long that even with all the good things going on (and about to go on- guys, I have so much good news!) I couldn't really enjoy them because of all the mess going on at work.
It's been a few days since the last phone call to corporate. This is all a super condensed version of the past two years of my life with Job A and the past few days in particular. I've left out a lot of stuff and skimmed over others because we've all got other s**t to do and there's a lot I can't currently talk about because of talks with corporate. There is a LOT more going on than I had realized; there were other complaints logged with other workers that I hadn't known about- all those phone calls from her boss was corporate trying to figure out if there was anything to them.
In other words, had I not been trying rise above and be a better person I could have saved myself a lot of pain and stress these past few months. But I wanted to be good to her- because despite all of this I liked her. I thought she was a nice person. More importantly I thought she was a GOOD person. I truly believed it was me and my personal issues that clouded the waters between us and was making all of this harder than it had to be.
I had NO ******** idea just how manipulative she was. Not until the evidence was just slapping me in the face.
But that's cool. We're even, I think.
[********]
She REALLY screwed herself with that phone call. But she also did me the biggest favor in the world.
[********]
I no longer care. I like not caring. Not caring means I can put my focus back where it matters.
The best part is knowing I control my schedule again. Ohmygod, I can't stress enough how much relief I feel knowing I can just clock out when I'm supposed to and I can't get fired for it. It's the small things that count- because the small things add up to the big things. It wasn't a single straw that broke the camel's back- it was the ******** weight of all the straws combined that did it. All it took was one more little thing and the burden became too much.
Where do we go from here?
I have about forty hours of Job B stuff to get caught up on before the end of the month. Job B is on track to become the ONLY job by late April- as soon as I can I am quitting Job A. ESPECIALLY after all this I'm done with dealing with her more than I have to. Though from what I hear I might be getting a new manager soon anyway so I might not have to deal with her more than I currently think, anyway.
I'm interested in seeing how it is all going to play out while I'm there. ESPECIALLY since the past few days has been super tense for her and super fun for me.
emotion_awesome She knows I'm not under her thumb anymore and it's KILLING her. I'm loving every second of it.
I don't appreciate being manipulated. I do NOT appreciate my kindness being taken advantage of. That's the reason I've killed many a friendship in the past. I don't have the time to waste on people/things that aren't worth it. As harsh as it sounds I don't NEED people. I love certain people- a few of them on here and you guys know who you are- and don't mean to imply that there aren't some I would give the moon and stars to. Because I would if I could- and therein is the rub. I'm not spending my time/energy being The End All Be All on everyone I cross paths with. When I was younger I tried that and it ended up with me experiencing burnout and a very unhealthy level of anger towards people that, looking back, didn't deserve the emotional energy wasted on them.
I thought I'd learned better- yet here I am, two years later and trying to figure out at what point I decided to let my weaker side get the better of me. The signs were there all along; I just decided to assume the best in her and the worst in me.
BUT.
I NEEDED this. I needed to be reminded that my energy doesn't need to be on her or that place- it needs to be on my dreams and gettin' s**t done. She did me a massive favor by finally dropping the mask. I don't feel bad about leaving that place and I no longer believe I'm being selfish and greedy by doing what I need to do. At least not when it comes to Job A. I still have my moments but I'm getting better every day.
By doing what I need to do for me I'm not doing anything I don't have a right to. And if people are going to claim I'm hurting them for taking care of my basic needs then they aren't needed in my life.
I'm taking back the power I thought I could trust someone with; you know what? It's FREEING. I was disappointed and down for a little bit as I finally processed just what a shitty thing had transpired...but it finally occurred to me that I didn't lose anything that mattered. I lost another leech of my time/energy; thanks to her doing all this I've been buckling down and working even harder on Job B stuff.
Sometimes the universe doesn't send you nice people to help you along. Sometimes you find that the people that help you the most are the biggest assholes you will ever meet.
Thank you for reading over all this. If it doesn't make sense I apologize. I wanted to get this all out somewhere and for the most part I'm pleased with what I wrote. I think it gives an idea of what my past half year has been like. Hopefully it gives those of you who are interested a better idea of why I've not been more active. Supergirl is trying to balance more than one world when all she really wants to do is take a nap.
But it's getting better. It's getting better every day. And why?
Because after so long my well of ******** dried completely up.
