Paging my work ethic. Please come back.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I was working 50-60 hour weeks, getting called in Sunday nights, overwhelmed, etc. I had more work than I could possibly get done. I had a whole page of background for this which you don’t really need to see-- just take me at my word that I was at the end of my rope. For months I’d been promised another admin person was just around the corner. I managed up to this point because I had supportive, encouraging bosses and a co-workers. Then, there were some staffing changes and I get this woman who used to work for the CEO. We’ll call her Dragon Lady. She was supposed to make things better.

Now, she’s one of those people who feel nothing anyone else does is any good. She questions and criticizes everything I do professionally, and if she manages to catch me she mocks my private life too. (Highlights include insisting my house (which she’d never even been near) must stink because I have 4 cats, or calling Hot IT Guy and telling him I’m gay—which I’m not). She also dumps extra work on me and refuses to believe I’m busy when I say I’m busy. When I itemize my monstrous to-do list to her, she says something like ‘Huh, okay,” like she’s surprised I wasn’t lying. We have this conversation Every. Damn. Day.

I don’t need a lot of correction. If I make a mistake, I guarantee you that I beat myself up way more than anyone else ever could. I’m mortified by my own failings. So CONSTANT repetitive criticism is very hard for me to take, because I want to fix the error, but I can never fix it to her satisfaction.

So here I am, stressed out, overworked, exhausted AND now I have a borderline hostile work environment. I often fantasized about driving my car into a tree on the way in to work. (I’d get time off then)

One day, I hit some kind of mental wall. I can’t even explain it. I was just sitting at my desk buried in paperwork, and she made some kind of patronizing comment, and my scalp started to tingle. Suddenly I could not work. I just . . .couldn’t. I felt nauseous and like I’d fall asleep at my desk. I zoned for the rest of the day, puked once, and drove home. I thought I had the flu. I felt like I was dying. I took 3 days off of work.

When I came back, I felt like a different person. I simply didn’t give a fuck. I came in at 9:30. I left at 5:30. I worked 40 hours, and what didn’t get done, didn’t get done. I took long lunches, cigarette breaks, wandered the SDMB. Hey, if they fired me, unemployment would be a blessing. I became a slacker employee. The exact opposite of everything I am. Of everything I believe in. I am, by nature, a very hard worker, and a perfectionist. I used to take great pride in the work I did and my skill at taming the chaos.

My absence (and subsequent transformation) gave Dragon Lady a taste of what my day is like. Suddenly, we’re hiring. Sure enough, our new admin started just 3 days ago. I finally got the carrot that’s been dangled in front of me for so long.

The problem is, I can’t snap out of this. I feel like I’ve completely lost my work ethic. Hunting for another job seems pointless while I feel like this. I sit at my desk and daydream. Re-arrange my pens. It takes real effort to force myself to get the bare minimum of work done. I wish I could explain it better. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t want to be like this, anymore.

Has this ever happened to anyone? How do I shake it? Am I doomed?

2

How do you think I discovered SDMB?

As for your boss, I don’t know how you put up with the personal insults. I’m always on the verge of punching mine in the face just because he’s annoying.

I think more people should take a slacker attitude. The more I work, the less respect I have for people who work hard to make someone else rich. First of all, most corporate jobs seem so stupid to me. Most of it is just puching numbers and papers and spreadsheets around to figure out more efficient ways to push it around. I can’t work as if my lifelong ambition is to analyze purchase data. The way I see it, what’s the point of working my life away so I can (maybe) retire wealthy after 40 years and then die.

IMHO, there’s no reason to work crazy hours unless a) it’s your company b) it’s the type of job where you can become rich and retire in 5 years or c) it’s your life’s work (like if you’re inventing a cure for baldness or something).

Unfortunately, because of my background the only job I seem to get hired for is those high-pressure consulting jobs where you travel around the world doing the shit companies can’t do for themselves and working with the most anal retentive obsessive compulsive assholes in the world.

3

This is absolutely inexcusable. You need to make a complaint to your HR department. Now. Immediately. Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200. First thing Monday morning, before you even turn on your computer.

It’s possible you may be suffering froma mild form of depression. IANAD, so you may want to make an appointment with your physician. IMHO, fantasizing about hurting yourself (driving your car into a tree) is not a good sign.

Talk to HR. Then get thee to a doctor. Are you due for any vacation time? Maybe a week off to recharge your batteries will do you some good too.

4

You can have some of my work ethic if you like. I end up working far too late, and for far too long, simply to get everything done. Apparantly, I’m a workaholic, so, please, take some of mine if you want.

5

While Ivylass may well be correct, I suspect it may be more of a morale problem. Basically, it’s work burnout.

Basically, your employer has run you ragged, and then added to your woes by inflicting the Dragon Lady on you.

Then, when SOMEONE ELSE had to put up with the crap you’ve taken for granted for so long, THEN allovasudden they begin hiring.

Plainly, your attitude has taken a hit at the waterline, and has taken on water pretty sharply. The bad thing about this is that you don’t want a bad attitude; you want to be able to turn into the white tornado who got all this stuff done with elan and alacrity last time around.

This may not be feasible at this time.

I’d recommend a vacation. An extended one. Two weeks minimum. Enough time to get the stench of it all out of your nose, and to work out the stress and psychological crud. None of this ‘working vacation’ or ‘home stay’ crap, either. Go somewhere and do something interesting and different. Perhaps when you return, your old mindset will have proven to have some elasticity, and will have snapped back.

The only other cure I can think of is a new job.

This has happened to me twice in the past; I tend to think of it as “the point at which I lost faith in my employers,” the point at which it became abundantly clear that whether or not I went crazy from overwork or unresolvable work conflicts simply did not matter to anyone; the boss wants X, and he wants it by next Tuesday, and no excuses.

What many employers do not realize is that the “kickum inna ass” theory of personnel management does raise productivity in the extreme short run, but also causes one’s employees to resent the job you’re paying them to do, and you pay a high price in employee burnout. It’s amazing how “taking care of your people” seems to be a lost concept in so many offices these days…

6

Ivylass is absolutely correct. The types of comments you recounted are harrassment, especially any comments about sex, but it sure sounds like “hostile work environment” to me. The problem is, of course, that you’d want to have some kind of evidence that she said those things. She will obviously deny having done so. He-said, she-said won’t carry too far.

I’ve yet to see an employer that has any loyalty to its employees; I’ve worked for public, private, large and small, including a non-profit. What they care most about is the bottom line, which is after all the reason they exist. Working extra hard may advance your career, and if that’s what’s important to you, go for it.

7

Actually, no, at least not at my work. I believe HR is bound by law to investigate all claims of harassment. You can at least report it. We can hope your work history thus far will lend some weight to your argument. If she said it to you, chances are, she’s pulled this crap on other people.

8

HR may be bound by law, but they are paid by your employer. They do NOT have your best interests in mind. Their job is to keep your employer from being sued.
Talk to a lawyer. Take a 6 month leave (if you can afford it) See a mental health professional. If your company has an Employee Assistance Program, use it, but make sure the records of your visits are to be kept confidential. That is, your employer doesn’t have access to them. Some companies have employees sign over the records from EAP upon hiring, so if 5 years later, you need it, you’ve given your employer permission to use it against you.

9

Obsidian, you have my deepest sympathies - I just left a job over being harassed by a co-worker, and she treated me very much like Dragon Lady is treating you (I called mine The Old Bitch in my head, but Dragon Lady fits nicely too). You know that tingly feeling in your head and the loss of motivation afterwards? That was your body doing a “fight or flight” response, and since in a work situation you aren’t allowed to do either, your body is now in “incredibly stressed” mode.

If you want to continue with this company, I strongly suggest you take a leave of absence, and discuss the Dragon Lady’s behaviour with a supervisor when you come back. She has absolutely no right to treat you like she has been; it’s abusive, and it is not acceptable in a workplace. Your employer has an obligation to provide a safe workplace, and that includes not being harassed like that.

As for having more help now but you still not wanting to work much, I’m thinking that that comes from feeling betrayed by your employer. They allowed you to be harassed, and you don’t feel safe there any longer. You probably don’t feel like doing anything for them anymore, because they didn’t do anything for you - employment is a two-way street, and you feel like you gave everything and got nothing in return. If I were you, I wouldn’t feel like they deserved the best of me anymore, either.

Oh, most important, document everything she does and says to you. It might get her fired, but it also might get you unemployment benefits if you can’t stay any longer. It did for me.

10

I think this is what the Church of the Subgenius refers to as “giving up”. Basically, the idea is, once you stop putting actual effort into a goal (say, getting some admin help at your job, or even getting your job done), things suddenly start to happen (wow, they hired some people).

But, litterally puking our your work ethic, that’s just, wow.

I had something similar happen when I was working at Wally World. I did my little cashier job as bestest as I couldest, in spite of back pain that was getting worse to the point of becoming crippling. Also, management seem to be conspiring to make cashiers jobs increasingly difficult. First they forbade us to count our tills at the end of the shift, because they thought we would steal if our counts were over. This left us with no protection when the cash office claimed we were short, and there was very good reason to suspect that the cash office was less than accurate in their accounting. I actually got the notorious “pinks” almost weekly until I started counting, after I started counting, they magically stopped- same thing for the other casihiers who counted their tills even though technically they weren’t supposed to. They took away the ability to suspend transactions for customers who got to the register and found they had left their wallet in thier other pants, because it “created an opportuinity for integrity issues to arise”. Generally, they treated us like criminals. Anyhoo, after repeated requests for a transfer to another departmet where the work wouldn’t be so hard on me physically were denied, even though all, literally all other departments were shorthanded and would have welcomed my help (Wal-Mart actually has a wrtten policy of not transferring employees who become unable to do their jobs because of physical or health problems unless theres a Worker’s Comp claim involved, as I learned when I found the clause in the paperwork for a leave of absence request), I started slacking. Quit pushing to raise my IPH (floated it around the bare minimum to stay employed), begged for opportunities to do “go backs” so I could aimlessly push a cart around the store and think smutty thoughts about James Marsters, and took my dear sweet time sorting those go-backs when I finally did get them picked up.

I hear a lot of people, many of them business management types, bitch about the decline in the work ethic. Thing is, from where I’m standing, it looks like the decline in the work ethic is a direct result of management policies. They seem to reward slacking, take more severe disciplinary action against good workers for more minor breaches of policy than they do toward slackers who commit major misconduct, and generally make it very much not worth an employee’s while to put forth their best effot.

11

I’ve hit this exact point in my current job.
Unfortunately I don’t know what to do about it either. The only thing I can see for myself is leaving here. I no longer respect the people I work under and it’s slowly wearing me down.

I hope it works out better for you.

12

Obsidian, I think you should at least look for a new job. If not actually sending your resume out, perhaps you should just browse through your local classifieds to see what’s out there. I understand where you’re coming from - just this last December, I was thinking the same way you are now. I felt like I was trapped in my job and was hoping every day on my way to work that there would be some sort of accident so that maybe I could at least have some time off or get to work late. One day I found myself crying in the garage when I got to work and decided that even if it was the same shit, different place, I just needed to find work somewhere else. So, I started looking around a little, and that was what made me realize that I wasn’t trapped at all. Then one day, I was having an awful conversation with my boss, and something just snapped - I just couldn’t take it anymore. I asked her to wait a moment while I printed something out, ran out of my office to get it, came back in, signed it, and handed her the resignation letter I had just printed.

Even if you don’t feel that you’re in a position to do something that drastic, looking at the jobs that are out there (even though the pickings may be slim depending upon your area) might give you a little hope. Also, definitely find someone to talk to. If you have a good support network (close friends and family), talk to them. If you don’t, you might consider talking to a therapist about the possibility that you might be depressed.

Either way, I think you need to report your boss, and if possible, get out of that situation somehow.

Best of luck to you.

13

I agree with Master Wang Ka.

Your subconscious is doing what you want to do but won’t. You hate Dragon Lady. You’d certainly like to tell her off and demand some appreciation. But this would almost certainly cost you your job. So you’re anger gets pushed down and comes out as hostility to the work she gives you.

You also hate the job. You hate it enough to contemplate suicide. Your subconscious has come up with a survival mechanism. By blocking your work ethic, it’s making you a bad employee. If this is bad enough and kept long enough, you’ll lose your job.

I recommend finding a therapist.

14

Yes, take a holiday. Get someone from the cat charity to look after the cats and get thee and thy family over to sunny England for a fortnight. The latter half of May and early June are very good times to visit as all the kids are all at school.

Apart from anything else, we need an excuse for another Londope or Brumdope. :smiley:

15

I am pretty close to this point myself, and wish you well. I will therefore second the motions to moving your career to another firm, to getting counselling, and to taking action to defend yourself from Dragon Lady.

Many days, I come home from another awful day at the office, and hit the books with a fair bit of determination. I am working towards a certificate which means that I will be one of the appraisers I currently work for as admin. I have to say, though, that while this is a concrete action I am taking to better things for myself, there are days where I find myself in tears on the way home from work, and knowing I have an evening’s worth of study to get through before I can seek the oblivion of sleep is just too much to bear. I have started counselling - having established that my EAP records are not availble to my employer. And I have started documenting the situations at the office which desperately need changing. Fortunately for me, this is not Dragon-Lady stuff so much as antiquated business systems.

I feel for you. (((((Obsidian)))))

16

I have SO been there. The company I used to work for had an unwritten policy of “first we like to give the responsibilties to see how it gets handled, then we’ll give the title/money” I handled a SUBSTANTIAL workload, accurately, on time and saved them a ton of money doing it.

Their move a year and a half later was to give the money AND title to a guy who had just come into the company months earlier. Six months after that they gave me the choice to leave or double my workload with half the staff. I pretended to be shocked and said I needed time to think, but I was doing jumping jacks in the back of my brain.

Like a bat out of hell, my friend, get out of there.

17

Obsidian’s roommate and hetero lifemate checking in here. Just want to point out I’ve been saying all of this stuff for weeks if not months. The thing is she likes her job except for her dealings with Dragon Lady. It’s been worse the last couple weeks since a lot of her bosses are out of the country so she’s getting extra Dragon Lady time. This woman is just impossible and is very lucky I’m too stressed at work to go over there and smack her around. At the very least I think Obsidian should be rude back, it would relieve some stress and make her feel better.
I think she should talk to her supervisor, because this is by definition a hostile work environment. The minute it started affecting her work was the minute it became his problem. 'Cause believe me, when Obsidian’s not working top speed, the company feels it.
On a bright note, she’s hit it off with the new admin. One thing I’ve learned from my office is allies always make the day easier.

18

I had my new couch delivered today, which took way longer than I thought it would. I also finally crashed and slept some. I’ve been having some insomnia lately.

My company doesn’t have an HR department. The closest person to handling HR is Dragon Lady. (This name was coined many months ago, back before she moved out here, by our VP of Tech, who can’t stand her either.) There’s no one for me to complain to but the CEO, and she was his assistant for years at his previous company.

We only have about 15 employees here in the US, so they’re exempt from a lot of workplace laws, sadly.

Before she came here, I didn’t mind my hours so much. Yes, I was stressed, but there was such a start-up mentality. My old boss was supportive and encouraging. I loved working with all the people in my office. There were lots of great trade offs. (For example, we have a fantastic, 100% company paid health plan & generous bonuses). And I love the other people I work with. Many of them know what’s happening to me, but they’re powerless to do anything. I don’t really let on how bad it is, though. I’ve been getting a lot of “You haven’t been yourself lately.”

I’m just not someone who likes admitting I can’t handle something by myself. Hot IT Guy would happily rip her a new asshole if I’d let him (he and I have a somewhat, uh, complicated personal relationship). He was ready to bring the roof down after the “Don’t you think Obsidian’s lesbian?” incident. It took me so long to calm him down after that I’ve been glossing over everything since.

I guess that’s why I’ve been avoiding searching for a new job. I don’t want to leave my job. I want her to. But that’s not going to happen, and I despise all my remaining choices. What if my new job is worse?

Friday, as I was on my way out the door with an armload of office supplies (for our satellite office), my purse, laptop, outgoing Fed-Ex and a 300 page proposal needing to be bound at Kinkos, she followed me out the door to harp on how she didn’t understand why I’d left all this to the last minute and one day my luck would run out and my car would break down and then wouldn’t I be sorry. . . (Giving myself an hour to get to a destination 11 miles directly down a deserted freeway was not enough time, apparently). I spun around in the doorway and growled. “Not now,” in what I can only describe as an excorcist voice. I sounded possessed. It felt good.

I also wouldn’t be able to take time off. I do have vacation, but the last time I took a half-day, something went wrong. (Miscommunication between me and the VP of Tech that resulted in a consultant missing his plane.) Said VP has gone to her and told her he was to blame. Her verdict: “Well, now I feel bad because I let you leave early. Obviously I shouldn’t have done that. Obviously you need to be here at your desk and I need to supervise the travel arrangements.” She approves vacation time. She ain’t gonna give me any.

God, why am I doing this to myself? I’m reading my own words and I can’t believe how much demoralizing crap I put up with. I just feel very torn, because I’ll miss everyone else. Or maybe I just miss the working environment I used to have, and I’m having trouble letting go. And I’ll never make it financially on unpaid leave, or without unemployment. So I can’t quit. But I feel like I need my damn ability to be a good worker back before taking another job. Talking to the CEO seems pointless. (Hi, sir, your favorite employee is slowly tormenting me into an ulcer)

I want to stress, by the way, that I’m not suicidal or anything even close to it. I don’t want to seriously harm myself. Outside of work, I’m happy person who loves life. I just feel sometimes a broken arm or something would be a blessing—and yes, even just that scares me. But to be honest, I don’t like therapists. I went to one once a long time ago, and I hated it. I just can’t open up to someone who’s sitting there taking notes.

I greatly appreciate the empathy and kind words. I thought for sure at least one person would tell me I should be grateful to have a job at all. Part of me still feels like there’s something I could do to fix this. Like I could be better and the criticism would stop. I know I can’t. It helps to know other people have been in the same boat and got out okay.

19

As a person who is pretty dedicated to her job I normally wouldn’t say this, but Get the heck out of there!

If you can stand it for two more weeks write a resignation letter, giving them that standard amount of time. If you can’t stand it, just write the letter and turn it in. Based on what you have said things aren’t going to change in that office.

Either seperately, or in the letter, write out just why you are doing what you are doing. Give as many details as possible. Use this thread for a reference. And make sure Dragon Lady’s supepior sees it, no matter their previous work relationship. If that office takes a nosedive after you leave, the big boss jus might take your words to heart, get rid of DL, and ask you back. Talk about satisfying! It doesn’t seem as if you have anything to lose.

And come here to vent as often as you need to, it will help bleed the tension. We’ll help you to hate Dragon Lady. I remember a passage from Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars, in which the title character is very angry at a DL type character, and goes in search of her brother. “Clark is a very satisfying person to fume with. He’s always willing to help you hate anything that needs hating, and can come up with more ways as to why the situation is even more vilely unfair than you thought it was.”

20

Sweetie, no job is worth this. No job is worth your health. NO JOB.

Start looking now. The last thing you want is to snap at work and slap Dragon Lady, or finally give in to that impulse to drive into a tree. Don’t you see, no matter how much you love the other people you work with and the benefits, this job is draining your life?

Listen to PucksRaven who lives with you, who loves you, and who can see what this is doing to you.

As for vacation, I’m not quite sure I understand. You are entitled to it, you’ve earned it, and you should be able to take it with sufficient notice.

Talk to your boss. You are not trapped. There are better jobs out there.