My job is driving me insane

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Me too. If a job caused physical pain, would the answer be to take pain killers and carry on, or to adjust the job?

The sad thing is, that's how a lot of people would see it...even if you are in physical pain, you are supposed to just do whatever it takes to get on with the job, whether it means taking pain medicine, or even having potentially damaging surgery. That reminds me of a woman I knew who had carpal tunnel surgery on both wrists, rather than reassess the demands of her company, and she ended up out of work anyway because the surgery did more harm than good.

I am actually in physical pain a lot of the time, from headaches...either migraines triggered by sunlight, or sinus headaches because I have a dust allergy and have to go in some really nasty stores where they never clean anything, or else just tension headaches caused by stress. Plus, since we started using iPads for the job, I started having headaches a lot more often, and I don't know if it's actually from looking at the screen, or more frustration from using the pathetic apps we have to use.

This time of year, I come home a lot of days with heat exhaustion from getting in and out of a hot car all day. It's only a part time job, but the amount of time I spend just feeling exhausted after work, or else recovering from work withs and meetings and such, takes up so much time that I might as well be on a salary working 60+ hours a week. The only thing that ever made this job worth it, was when they stayed off my case and left me alone most of the time, and the more attention they put on me, the more "coaching" and other crazy s**t I have to listen to, the worse I feel.

The VR counselor just keeps saying it's a good job and you have some tenure in it, so we want to try to keep you in it, and you have to be willing to medicate yourself.

I actually went to see a doctor last week, when I was so upset I couldn't calm down. I got in to see a nurse (seems like it's impossible to see an actual doctor around here anymore) and she just lectured me that I needed to be more like a man and stop letting these managers get to me. She wanted to put me on some anti-anxiety meds temporarily, just to get through this crisis, and I said no but she insisted on writing a prescription anyway.

She told me I needed to find a way to "control" my emotions...but really it clicked when she said it, I realized that's how I got in this mess to start with, because I was trying too hard to control my emotions. For years I've suffered through meetings and work withs and the like just feeling like I was going to e x p l o d e. The memories have all come flooding back to me, all the times I just wanted to run away screaming, but somehow stuffed it down and tried to act normal.

One thing at least, I have broken out of that, I'm not putting on the act anymore, like it or not they are getting the real me. And yeah the last thing I want to do is to try to drug it back down.

Something I keep remembering, because it's such a good example of how bizarre this company is...I forget how it came up exactly but I said something about feeling criticized. And the manager (my manager's manager) snapped at me, "We NEVER criticize people." LOL, well okay then, never mind.

The more I hear, the more I think I need to get FAR away from these people, because they are all looney tunes.

My own manager hardly said a word through the entire meeting...he started off obviously just saying whatever they had told him to say, but then when things veered off into me reading my paper and all that, he just clammed up and let his manager do all the talking.

Oh yeah, and since we didn't work any stores yesterday, they want to have another work with in a few weeks.

It can start to feel like people are doing this on purpose to confuse and upset you, and I don't think they are. I try to remind myself that I likely confuse others just as much as they're confusing me in difficult situations. That doesn't mean stay there. Just understand they have no idea how strange they might seem. To them, what they are doing is rational.....no matter how irrational they may seem!

Yes I think basically an employer's only driver is to keep profits as high as possible. A lot of confusion comes from the fact that they can't admit this because their "caring" image - part of the business model - would suffer. So there's a facade of reasonable behaviour and when the employee finds something rather less pleasant under the veneer, it can be quite a shock.

It's not a shock to me. I've seen it from the beginning. They are really big on image, in all kinds of ways, and that's exactly what drives me crazy about this company. They just want everything to look/sound good without having any real substance behind it. That's why the company is in trouble and having to cut jobs.

What's mind boggling is seeing just how far they will go to deny things and try to maintain a positive image. Yeah a big part of it is that they want to maintain the image that they we have a great employee culture. It's such a joke, I don't know why they bother.

I wish I could copy and paste some of the company emails here. A real doozy went out last week. They went so far as to say that when our competitors talk about our company cutting jobs, they are just jealous because they wish they had what we have. LOL

If I accomplished anything at all in that meeting, at the very least I think I shattered some of their illusions. They may not remember what I said, but they will remember that my emotion was real.

I'm sure they deserve to go out of business for being so hypocritical, and I hope they do, after you've moved on of course. What scares me is that so many companies and institutions are like that, yet they seem to continue.

At least one good thing that comes from popping their bubbles like you did is that you don't have to keep talking to them in the same corporate-speak as they'd like. Although some might say that it's best not to rock the boat like that, I think that calling a spade a spade is often the only way you can hope to have anything like meaningful conversation with them.

They won't go out of business, at least not in North America. But they have really overestimated their global sales capacity, and I don't think they will ever establish the kind of presence they want to have on other continents.

The jobs that are being cut are basically trimming the fat away in middle to upper management, so things could actually change for the better. I'm not planning to stick around long enough to find out though.

I just feel relieved that I finally stopped playing the game. They just want people who will play along and say what they want to hear, like a puppet. I am never going to be that person.

I never could quite bring myself to live a lie either. Sometimes I didn't say what I was thinking at work, but there was always a limit to how far I'd play their game. Don't know whether to call it pathological honesty or not, but it's there, whatever it is.

Yeah in myself, I would probably call it pathological honesty. I thought I was doing better for myself when I figured out how to hold back that honesty and just play along in a job. But there's a price to pay for it, I end up holding all the emotions in and it literally makes me sick.

Somehow I don't get any emotional relief unless I actually say what is on my mind. Hmmmn.

Again, I really appreciate all your responses ToughDiamond.

Sounds to me more and more like an Aspie thing. It's hard to describe the sheer discomfort of using this "discretion" thing that NT's seem to have less of a problem with. When I feel strongly that something is wrong, it's often all I can do to keep quiet about it. So I'm often in situations where I either annoy people or I feel horribly gagged.


Kind of you to say so. I hope things work out OK for you with this job problem.

Well, the dreaded work-with came around again, and it went okay. Both managers came along. They stood aside and let me do my job in peace. No interruptions, no nitpicking, no interrogation, no scrutiny. Just kind of amazing really how much better it was.

As awful as all of it was, I think the calls to HR and the meeting we had last month did some good. They really changed their approach. And that paper I wrote about customers not getting paid for their contracts, must have found it's way to the right person...because an email went out since then saying that they found a lot of unclaimed money that hadn't been paid out, from 3 years ago! and checks are being reissued.

I think I've gotten a lot out of my system. I feel like I let go of a lot of frustration, and really put the responsibility back on them to deal with some of the problems, which is where it should be since I'm just a part-time employee. What I'm left with though is I just feel more annoyed than ever that my position is strictly limited to part-time with a set # of hours. The company doesn't value what we do enough to allow anyone to truly earn a living at it, or put in the time necessary to really do the job well.

I'm late to this conversation but I read the entire thread and it sounds like that place is knee deep in hierarchial bull$hit. I'm glad the last "work-with" went well, but in your case I think you should continue looking for other avenues of employment.

On a side note I absolutely loathe corporate atmospheres-- they're like microcosms of everything that's wrong with human social behavior.

I completely agree.

After i read your post i realised you have the same toxic work environment i had.

I worked with a NGO which was into helping underprivilaged children in slums. I had to travel to slums daily and work in pathetic situation.

But weekends and 3-4 months in a year i had to be in corporate office where meetings, discussions were scheduled and there were lot of bullying, politics etc going on

yes they were asking for opinions and when you gave honest opinions they would turn against you and gun you down.

yes they were into cheating, fraud and money laundering and everybody had to act like nothing happened.

Overall the scenario was terrible coming from a NGO claiming to be helping underprivilaged.

One day finally the manager called me in room, kept on shouting at me for an hour, yelling at top of her voice, accusing me of things i didnt do and i had to forciby resign.

So if you feel that things are getting out of control you better leave or else they will make you leave.