I’m supposed to hear tomorrow from the new hiring manager on all the details (we’re all off today).
One of the strange things about being in limbo between jobs like this is you start to realize how messed up things really were at your previous job. Just like with my last job when it wasn’t until I got to this one that I realized that my previous boss’s absentee problems were probably caused by a massive cocaine habit, it’s only now that I’m starting to see things in this one a lot more clearly. For example, the ridiculousness of another director’s attempts to do no discernable work whatsoever. She is totally incapable of making any decision that might affect her office, and instead dumps those decisions on anybody–her underlings, her boss, even people in other departments. She does the same thing with phone calls, which she’s gotten down to a science. “Hey, can you call X for me?” she asks someone else, who thinks, oh, she must be busy, which she is if you count her endless coffee runs as work. Now she’s managed to convince the administration that she doesn’t actually need to meet her sales goals for the year because she is “so busy” managing a massive office of, uh, three other people. And even though she’s managed to whittle down her actual work to one set of tasks, she’s currently planning to pawn even that off onto one of her underlings. It’s kind of remarkable that she’s managed to do all of this, even as I’ve pointed out subtly (and, later, not so subtly) to the VP what is going on.
So I’m not upset about leaving this place. I’ll miss some of the people, yes, but the dysfunctionality of this place–which the above is only a tiny example of, if you could call the fact that the second-highest ranking person in our office does no work at all a “tiny” problem–is something I won’t miss.
And do remember that you helped push me away from this place. There were so many times when I talked with other people and they would say things like, “ugh, all offices are bad, there’s no point in leaving because the next place could be worse.” I realize now that all that attitude was bringing me was the feeling that I had to carry this entire department on my back, dealing with everyone’s problems and picking up the pieces when others failed or failed to even try. You made me realize I didn’t have to do that. And, yes, the blatant attempts at our VP to bring in an incompetent dick who sexually harassed my wife at her previous job to be my new boss was also a major factor in my starting a search immediately (in fact I applied for the new job the day after the interview with that clown). But this place was important.
I am amazed at how much work some people put into not doing any work. It would be so much easier to just do the work, but then I’m not a lazy jerk so maybe I’m not looking at it the right way.
I applied for a job doing some back office work. The job was via an agency, so I fired off a CV and they called me later in the day. After a bit of discussion about my last role, the recruiter noted that I had been out of work for a bit, and asked what I had been doing. Answer was along the lines of an extended holiday. She then asked if I could prove that I hadn’t been working through evidence from the benefits agency. Well I’m not entitled to claim benefits, so she then asked if I would provide bank statements to prove I hadn’t had income. I refused, and the call ended after she said this wasn’t negotiable.
I had googled the company before applying, and I had some misgivings about other matters, but I was prepared to hear their side. However I have never been asked for bank statements from any employer in the past, and I think today I may have dodged a bullet.
The last part especially resonates with me. I’m the one telling myself that I can’t leave my current job because (among other things) the next one would be just as bad or worse. I’m so miserable but have no clue how to figure out what I want to do with my life instead.
It’s good that you were able to get out of your own toxic work situation.
I’ve worked for many temp agencies, and I have never had an experience like that. I think you dodged a bullet, too - whenever I have an extended period without work to explain, I usually just tell them I was gardening or taking time off or whatever, and that’s the end of it - it’s temp work - they don’t care.
Some jobs have great work, and lousy people. Some jobs have great people and lousy work. If you have lousy people and lousy work, if you can find a job with either one not lousy, your job will be better. If you can find great people and great work, that’s the dream, man.
He is oppressed by creeping vines.
He moves uncertainly and says, “Movement brings remorse.”
If one feels remorse over this and makes a start,
Good fortune comes.
Changes to Hexagram 6 (Conflict)
My commentary: Creeping vines, a slowly changing and growing situation holding us back. holding us in place. We try to move and feel fear, anxiety and regret, the last often because it brings us into conflict with others, who want us to remain who and where we are. But if we instead feel remorse that we have allowed the situation to trap us and make a start to change it, better things will come.
But it doesn’t make it any easier to make that start, or to know where to go.
My coworkers are great and some have commented that they’ve only been able to hang on this far because we have each other for venting. Today wasn’t a great day as customers/issues go, but management has been the main problem for the past few years. It feels like there’s a big disconnect between management and the employees. It also doesn’t help that I don’t get along with my current manager and wish that they’d put me back on my old manager’s team. They also restructured our jobs and had us compete for a small number of the highest seniority positions. I’m not exactly disappointed that I didn’t get it, but since I’ve been doing that part of my job for the past six years and still couldn’t get the job, it’s shaken my confidence as far as getting a job somewhere else.
Or it showed how idiotic those managers are at understanding your abilities and strengths, or how unconcerned they are about finding good job fits for their employees. At my new job I occasionally tell people about things my old manager did and they are utterly flabbergasted.
That’s the really insidious part of it. I spent seven years at a toxic job where you came to see yourself as management did … which was nearly worthless and replacable (the big boss actually used the phrase “Designers are a dime a dozen – I can walk downtown and come back with ten that’ll start work this afternoon”).
The production manager and I would have clandestine conversations where we did a sanity check. They always started with “Is it just me, or is what just happened utterly insane?” Those talks gave me the courage to apply for other jobs; it took her a few more years to see herself as valuable enough as a human being to even look for a job!
(The second she did, she got one, at a sane place)
I’m not sure it was the fear of being easily replaced that kept me from looking. My current job requires some fairly specialized software skills, and my predecessor was fairly incompetent (which makes me look good even when I don’t feel I’m at my best), so nobody’s going around claiming they could pick someone off the street to replace me.
I think a lot of it for me has been inertia, and the slow apocalypse of this office. It’s not like one or two events happened and the functionality and the morale of the office plummeted immediately. There were a few incidents starting about three years ago, and at first there really was an office camaraderie that “we’re going to get through this together”. Then as incidents piled on top of each other, factions started appearing, people were attacking each other, and others took advantage of the problems to do as little work as possible. This honestly wasn’t an office that was always like this–I turned down another position eight years ago because I honestly felt their environment was toxic and I felt ours worked. But now we’ve got directors who are barred by HR from talking to some of their own employees, a VP who sits in his office with the door closed about 90% of the time while chaos reigns outside, and people who endlessly question the same procedures which have worked for us for 10 years solely to be able to say they’re doing something. Yet it’s all happened so slowly I didn’t recognize it until now.
The call from the hiring manager is supposed to happen today. I have to say I am getting really nervous.
I think a lot of why we stay is “Better the evil we know than the evil we don’t”. I think we tend to inure ourselves to the crud that goes on, because who knows - it could be worse elsewhere. Taking that leap is scary.
FWIW, Cog, I think a fair amount of us are darned proud of you.
Let me throw in a couple of votes for “get your ass to grad school, finally, like you’ve been thinking about for all these years.” Because I did, and this thread really honestly helped keep me from burning down the building before I left, which would have landed me in jail and almost certainly would have kept me from being able to be a teacher. (I mean, I’m pretty sure arsonists are right out, except maybe if they need Chemistry teachers.)
PS - I have stayed in touch with several people since I left (it’s only been a week, but still) and found out that one of my arch-nemeses is leaving the department at the end of the month and my former manager is in a whole hell of a lot of hot water. FUN TIMES.
I promised myself I wasn’t going to cry today if I had to announce my resignation to some of the people I’ve known here for 10 years (many of whom have no idea I was planning to leave). But now I already am.
I’ve kept my door closed today so I don’t have to hear it. Of course it’s now 1 pm, which means a lot of people aren’t back from their 90-minute lunch.
Still no call One of the problems with being nervous most of the time is that in situations like this you get REALLY nervous.
One of the problems with being nervous most of the time is that in situations like this you get REALLY nervous.