My job is driving me insane

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Something in me has snapped and I feel like I just cannot force myself to go on doing this job anymore. I can't stand all the double talk and rhetoric, and the way we are asked to do things that are unethical, and the way the manager lies to us, and the way they want to nitpick over little petty things while big problems get excused and ignored.

I know this probably describes 99% of the other companies out there too so I don't know what other kind of work I can do. It would just be easier if I could work for a manager who has some common sense and doesn't take everything the company says like it is gospel truth.

Sorry to hear that. I quit my job as soon as I could afford to, though it took me a long time before I'd saved up enough to make it a reasonably safe option. Often the only thing that kept me going was the fear that unemployment or another job would probably be even worse. Hope you find a viable alternative to your present predicament.

All I ever wanted was to do a straightforward day's work for a straightforward day's pay, but my employers always managed to make it complicated, stressful and thoroughly unpleasant, in one way or another.

I get you. Work was so hard for me. I left many jobs; in fact, I climbed out of the window and just walked off
of one job! Here's what might help. Start looking for another job. Seriously. If you can afford to work a 6
hour day or on call (I did that for a few years), this will really help. Next, do yoga daily BEFORE you leave the
house. I had to do 20 min of yoga every day for years to survive my job. It does make a difference. Take a walk
during lunch. Stay fit, eat right. Have a pet waiting for you at home. That friendly face will save the day!
Take vacations. Go out of town if you can swing it. Get away, really away. I wish I had done that more, it would
have helped. Best to you, Alice

Exactly. Really it's not the job that is driving me insane...I like the kind of work I do. I like my job. It's the company culture that just sucks all the joy out of it.

I work out of my home and car, and they send a ton of stuff to my home that has to be unpacked and organized and loaded up into my car (and inevitably a lot of useless, excess junk has to be disposed of). They pay admin time for that, but lately all of a sudden they are trying to get us to reduce the amount of time we are spending on that.

So now we are supposed to have regular discussions on how to reduce admin time. Gee, I don't know, stop sending useless crap to my house?? It's one thing if they tell me to cut down the amount of time I spend doing something out in the field, because whatever it is I can leave it there and walk away from it. But the stuff the UPS truck dumps at my front door, I'm stuck with, and they damn well better pay me for the time I spend dealing with it.

They've actually had lawsuits over this kind of thing before. So now they are just sooooo careful about how they phrase things and they say of course they want to pay us for any time worked. But they go on and on about finding ways to reduce the time. I've been doing this long enough, if there was a way to reduce the time, I think I would have found it by now.

I just cannot stand the way these people talk. Especially when they get into lawsuit-sensitive issues and all of a sudden they don't want to put things in writing, they only want to talk over the phone. They try to make it all sound so pleasant and nice and employee-friendly but really they just want to argue until you just give in. It would be easier for me to work in an openly hostile work environment rather than listen to this phony, nicey-nice horses**t. I just can't stand to hear it anymore.

I'm sorry to hear you're finding things rough there, dianthus.

I've regularly had similar experiences: where the work itself is fine, but it's the petty politics and the "culture" within that workplace that drives me crazy and has driven me to quit. Things would be fine for a lot of people, I think, if their actual jobs were not complicated by what goes on having to do with the humans involved.

I hope you can find a way to hang in there, or maybe find a new position; easier said than done, in either case, I know. But just to say, I feel for you.

Sounds like their equivalent of the appraisals I used to get at my workplace. Always based on the assumption that the employee isn't already working efficiently enough. I used to distract them by raising complaints about issues I knew they were unlikely to do anything about, to filibuster the time away.

I'm familiar with the management-speak style too, word-twisting etc. It's amazing how they can make an assault look like a favour.

Hope you manage to stop them (effectively) cutting your pay. I suppose if their suggestions aren't workable, it should in theory be possible to explain to them why they aren't, in practical terms. It might be helpful to speak slowly to them and to pause a lot before answering - that way, you get more time to think, and they might feel they're running out of time, and give up. Also, the verbal-only thing can work both ways; you can't prove what was said, but neither can they, unless they record it, in which case they'd have to tell you first, and you could always record it too.

Yes yes yes. Or the assumption that I don't know what I'm talking about, or because I have different information than they do, my information must be wrong. But yeah it always comes back to productivity and how many minutes are we spending on task x vs. task y.

What's hilarious is that the amount of time we spend discussing such things, is usually equivalent or greater to the time we are trying to "save" on something else.



Good idea.

That reminds me of the time we were told at a meeting, that everyone was welcome to ask any questions or bring up any concerns, then immediately after the meeting my (previous) supervisor criticized me for "derailing" the meeting with a question I had asked.

Just once I'd like to feel the sheer pleasure of just saying what I really, really, really think about it all. It's what I fear though, I'm always trying to rein myself in so I don't say too much. I just feel like I can't play the game anymore.

Oh yep, the "Feel free to raise an issue" thing -- at one job I had many years ago, I was warned early on about that kind of thing, by a co-worker. He said that in meetings with the staff they made it seem like they're open and friendly to anyone asking a question, raising an issue, proposing an improvement, etc. And he said they then take what you said and manage to turn it right around on you! He said they will make even a good thing you said into something negative and use it against you later.

AGH! This is why I became self employed at something that's not great and pays terrible, but at least it got me away from that BS.

There was something where I was told i took too long. I asked to sit in on my boss who was "more efficient". The time would have come from my productivity.

Somehow the complaints evaporated without him having me sit in.

Maybe something like that, if people suggested that they want to spend less time unpacking and to go to each others houses (paid) to observe for what could be done better? Because this sounds like something where they want to get what they can get away with, rather than invest in a solution.

Yep....feel free to ask any questions, as long as they're sycophantic enough.


I knew a number of people at work who would have loved to tell the management what they really thought. Self included, though I never did. Didn't want to make powerful enemies.

Yep. It's amazing how they can do that.

At my current job at a place I'll call MegaMart*, they will sometimes schedule people to work till 11:00 pm and then come in 7:00am the next morning. I talked to the main manager, including disclosing that I'm Spectrum, which I described as patchy social skills and seemingly less filter on sensory issues in the environment. The conversation went well, and she said she would adjust the schedule so that this back-to-back wasn't inflicted on me.

Several days later, I then talked with my immediate line manager. I think to include him in the loop, or to be open, to be an low-key advocate for autism rights. He was put off. He was hurried. To the issue of what is essentially a double shift, he said "well, these are the hours you give as far as availability . . . " and he continued with the corporate swill. I smiled. And he was against me from that point on, including treating me harshly and unfairly on several other occasions. It was immature of him to take it so personally. It was unprofessional. But all the same, that is what happened. Fortunately, he is now at another store.

So, finding it humorous, like a Dilbert cartoon, is not necessarily the answer.

Never is getting pissed off all the time.

Maybe kind of like zen compassion, since the managers are put in the impossible task of improving numbers while still following 'ethics.' (cough, cough) Of course, that's easier said than done.

At MegaMart*, I've kind of decided my main job is preventing younger people from getting fired for nickel and dime reasons, and being an informal leader. Sometimes that works, but other times, not so well.

Good luck in a difficult situation.

My anxiety level is skyrocketing every time I have to talk to my supervisor. Whenever I know a discussion or meeting is coming up, the anxiety is just gut wrenching. I mean literally, I feel sick to my stomach, like it is twisting and turning into a thousand knots.

I don't know how much longer it can go on like this, before it really starts to affect me physically...I dunno, maybe it already is doing that more than I realize.

One of the company values is we're supposed to be "open to change" but I have certain routines and ways of doing things that work well for me, and I don't see any need to change them...and my numbers are all good, even this one little metric they are concerned about regarding the admin time is actually fine. So I guess I just don't understand why they are quibbling over it.

I'm familiar with the "open to change" rhetoric. It sounds wonderful at first glance, until you realise that it's a one-way street. How would they like it if the employees were forever pestering them about making changes to improve pay and conditions? And of course change for the sake of change is pointless. It's just management-speak for screwing more out of the workforce, IMHO.

Sorry to hear that it's upsetting you so much. I was always terrified of most of the authority figures in my workplace, but it sounds as though, like me, you've got your bases covered pretty well and that you won't end up getting sent to the salt mines. It's probably the anticipation that's worse than the event. People do survive these things. If the stress really gets too bad, it might be worth a trip to the doctor, to get it officially recognised that you're not well, and then hopefully they'll cut you some slack.

Let us know the date of the confrontation. You might feel better for knowing that your chums on WP are thinking about you when the time comes up.

Thanks ToughDiamond, and the rest of you who posted. We had a conversation this morning and it went okay. I thought the admin time was going to be the major issue but we barely touched on it. We have a face-to-face meeting coming up next week though and it will probably be brought up then.

Good to hear no casualties so far