Part 4
Freedom From Toxicity
Nonetheless, once I left the hiring manager’s office, I felt free. I felt I had finally let go. I was letting go of what was never to be and what hadn’t been for me while I’d been at this particular workplace. Although I grew to know some amazing people, I also grew to know some people I don’t want to ever have to experience in this life again. Those were the types of people to make working in this place more difficult than it truly needed to be, and that’s sad. Despite realizing that these people aren’t happy with themselves, they made many of my days unbearably difficult to want to complete.
It’s hard to have peace in a toxic environment. It’s hard to have rest. Essentially, this job was literally working me to an early death. I felt that many years had crept upon me, and I had aged physically in ways that I hadn’t expected. Aside from aging physically, I felt that I was more prone to accidents within this workplace, and I didn’t want to suffer anymore injuries. In fact, I’d suffered all sorts of foot problems, had fallen several times, and had bruises all over my body that I couldn’t explain. I gather that most of my bruises had most likely occurred from lifting heavy objects. I had also injured my ankle very badly and had suffered a broken toe.
Aside from all the injuries, I still worked hard. I gave the job my all and only found myself pulling back when I realized I was rewarded for my good efforts with a lot more work. Meanwhile, the coworkers who were lazy, in more ways than one, were all rewarded with more time to be lazy (it seemed), and they were never held accountable for anything they did wrong or the stuff that often occurred off the cuff. Instead, those coworkers who worked the hardest were always questioned as to why things were not completed on time when all the work required everyone to collaboratively be on board giving 100%.
Additionally, I no longer wanted to go home from work too exhausted to do the things I desired to do outside of sleeping. I suffered in so many more ways than I thought possible, and if I wanted to pursue finishing my schooling, I’d be too tired to complete any activities. Something had to give besides me doing all the giving. Since I’d given so much of myself and wasn’t getting anything more than a paycheck, while seemingly taking my health down in the process, I thought it was better for me to find something else more compatible with my health and lifestyle.
Working at this job wasn’t all bad, but it definitely did no favors for my health. Although it began good for me, it ended horribly. Walking all over the place did help me to gain a lot of steps in comparison to previous years of exercising, tone my body, and lose a good amount of weight, but my blood pressure, alone, became an issue. My blood pressure was often so dangerously elevated at times that more than one physician who saw me for injuries I suffered at work had to wait for my elevated blood pressure to descend or else they’d have to have emergency services rush me to a hospital. According to physicians, I was in hypertensive crisis (possible stroke level). What’s interesting is that I had actually begun eating very healthy when I began working this job too.
Even more interesting is that my job assignment at this particular workplace was far too easy only to be made difficult for seemingly no reason. The only thing I could conclude as a reason for this is that there was an overall lack of true management and guidance within this particular workplace. There was not even true organization. The place itself was a mess, and no one seemed to care. The actual people in leadership were never around too much to truly see what went on in the first place, and when they were present, they seemingly browbeat everyone down into submission regarding various tasks.
At one point, I was presented with an offer to be a team lead in a work area that I was only vaguely familiar with as it pertained to tasks. The particular manager over that area who gave me the offer thought my organizational skills were astounding. I did give serious thought to taking this position because it would mean an overall increase in pay and a decrease in my level of physical workload, but I eventually turned down the offer because of the way this manager explained the job’s description. In essence, there was no explanation that I could understand, and from observation, it just appeared to me that everyone did what they were told to do even if the people telling them didn’t know what they were doing either.
For me, I can’t work that way. I have to have order. I have to have clear expectations. Even when I read up on the position using Reddit and other social media chat modalities, I was still unclear about what I was expected to do within the actual work setting. For the most part, everything was a mess in the physical aspects of the department, and the explanation I was given didn’t make sense. However, the position all boiled down to my availability.
Essentially, all I was expected to really do was walk around and “oversee” others, but I didn’t want to do this when I didn’t have a clear idea of exactly what I was supposed to be doing, and I didn’t want to give up too much of my availability either. I was already giving this job 40 hours of my time. Giving any more was basically giving the rest of my life away. I was exhausted! Thus, it was quite freeing to give my two week notice and realize I would be letting go of the idea that I was some overloaded workhorse.
Oftentimes, I’ve pondered over how the bulk of the people on this job put up with the toxicity for as long as they have and survived it. Many of them look tired and worn, and oftentimes I wouldn’t see some for long periods of time only to later learn that they had taken time off for medical reasons or family reasons. The workplace is really that toxic that many coworkers have had to take time off to recover. I just didn’t want to be that person. I just didn’t to remain in that situation. For me, that’s just no way to live, but I could see myself being stuck there, and I wanted to get out. I had to get out.
My Voice Unchained 