When I was younger, I felt the epitome of having arrived was to have a "good" job. Of course, in my world a job was going to be a necessity, but I dreamed of the day when I had my evenings and weekends free at a full-time job that paid a livable wage and had benefits. Fuckin' A, my dreams came to fruition. It's funny, but it never occurred to me that I would be unhappy if I got this list of things I wanted.
It's just soul-sucking at a different level, now, see. I have a boss who is a strange mixture of politically motivated/wants everyone to like him. So, he'll kiss the ass of someone who doesn't like him and he can't understand why, but he takes for granted the people who he feels have to be there for him. The job is comprised of approximately 4/5ths male employees, most of whom are an appalling mixture of extremely sexist/need their didies changed. One of these assholes suggested I should be trained on using their checklist for gathering their paperwork to submit to the DA. I think I fucking know how to use a checklist, moron. I can only check off the shit you give me, not the shit you're thinking about giving me. That's why the goddamned checklist is for you.
The boss kow-tows to another bag of shit who has a huge control complex and puts all of us in positions where we can clearly see how much control we do not have, but it doesn't bother the boss because shitbag's lips are firmly suctioned onto boss' ass.
The other two women who work there dislike each other and I get put in the middle. I see so much condescension from one to the other that it boggles my mind, and I know how they treat each other when the other isn't around is how they talk about me when I'm not around.
I'm not really helping anyone, and being helpful is a big motivating factor for me. I do what I can with the log chain around my neck, but the only people I generally can assist are people who don't deserve my assistance. I have to try to find contentment with being nice to whoever I can find it in my heart to, and most of the time, I'm so pissed and angry about the horrible ego-agenda-babies that I'm surrounded with, that I lose any joy and good will.
Is this what I have to do until I'm 70 years old so that I have healthcare and a roof over my head? I hear this theme from most working people. Most of the other people I see each day are welfare rats who spend their days trying to get their pals' foodstamp cards signed out to them from the jail so they can defraud the government.
I have sold my soul for a "good" job.
Any chance of a transfer to another department? Even if it's a lateral transfer?
ReplyDeleteThis is beyond soul-sucking. At this point I think I'd be so desperate I'd take a position that keeps me out in the field most of the time even if it means chasing down people who would prefer not to see me and a ridiculous caseload.
TW
Really no chance for transfer - plus it's a smallish county, so no other offices in that courthouse would hire me as to not step on the toes of the boss in our office. I keep looking around me trying to decide what I have learned - like, is this job a life lesson? The biggest thing I've learned is that I've made a pretty crappy choice. To paraphrase Mulderfan, I need to learn how to make this place my tool for getting the money to be able to do what I enjoy and not let myself be the workplace's bitch. I tell ya, when there's the opportunity to run a vehicle to one of the cities for maintenance or to be a ride-along matron, I jump at the chance...
DeleteMulderfan left me this comment which I accidentally deleted from my blog account but which, thankfully, was also sent to my email account:
ReplyDeletemulderfan has left a new comment on your post "The State of Making a Living in America":
I started teaching when I was 19. Back then there was a teacher shortage so they trained us for one year after high school then, basically, anyone who was a warm body got a job. $3,000 a year and I got to leave home. Evenings and weekends taking university courses finally got me a masters degree and pretty decent pay 26 years later. Then when I was 52 the gov't decided to dump older well-qualified teachers as a cost cutting measure. I didn't do the math and walked away from a job I'd come to love.
Along the way, I had principals similar to the boss you describe with very few giving a crap about the kids. I was fortunate enough to work for a very large school district so when I found myself working for a complete asshole I just transferred to another school. I can't tell you how many schools I rattled through hoping to work for someone who gave even a tiny fuck about those kids. By the time I got to my last school I ended up with the biggest bitch of all running the show, but under her watch I reached the magic number...age+teaching experience=85. I turned my back on it all and retired with a less than adequate pension.
Substitute teaching paid well but instead I started a retail career to supplement my pension and found the same kind of management everywhere I went.
Here's the thing I learned, no matter what the job or profession people are promoted to their level of incompetence so the only way to survive is, instead of letting the job use you, make the paradigm shift and use the job as a means to an end.People pleasing and being every one's doormat were the legacies that my parents gave me and I learned to leave that crap at the door every time I went to work.
I've been wondering if I found a way to leave, would I be jumping from frying pan to fire, and it seems like that's pretty likely. I have to find the least sucky of all my choices, and that really might be right where I'm at. One of my college instructors made us do a paper on paradigm shift a very long time ago, and in retrospect, I think what you've just mentioned is an element of what she was trying to get across to us without scarring us with bald-faced truth.
DeleteIn the end, the transferring every few years taught me a valuable lesson. I stayed at the last school for 13 years because it suited my purpose by being a five minute drive and the school my daughter attended so I didn't need before and after school child care. I had carefully interviewed the principal that hired me but within a year he was replaced with the bitch who was determined to climb the ladder on the backs of the kids and her staff. Lessons learned made me stay put. Why make a move and end up with yet another asshole when the location I was at served me and my family so well?
DeleteThis what I mean about using the job instead of letting it use you.
Good thing I no longer work, my BS meter is set so low, I'd be a boss's worst nightmare!