When One Door Closes, Another One Opens

At some point I did reach my breaking point on my current job, and it occurred during the form of a worthless team meeting. I say worthless because the meeting was nothing more than a time-waster. Nothing about the meeting seemed productive, and almost no one paid attention to what was going on unless a coach or team lead was criticizing someone for sharing their opinion or asking a question. On this same day, I was coming down with the flu. So, it just wasn’t a good day for me at overall.

The meeting was the last straw, and I just knew that I didn’t want to remain on the job any longer. I could tell that the coach and a few team leads were on power trips, and I couldn’t see a good reason to waste an hour of work time on issues that they weren’t truly willing to address as they occurred with the actual coworkers causing the problems. So, in my head, I began searching for ways out of this toxic workplace because I concluded that even with the small positive changes that had occurred, negative changes were much bigger – making things much worse.

I was even more unnerved when a coach began shouting that “we’re family here and we should act like it”, but then in the same breath, this same coach chewed up and spit someone out over their complaints on feeling intimidated by specific coworkers. The coach did nothing to alleviate that coworker’s concerns and simply riddled an answer of “so” as if that’s the best that could be done. I had made a mental note of this but had hopes that other would make their own notes. This coach was literally giving a play-by-play of how to delve out workplace toxicity.

On top of feeling so sick and tired physically, I was sick and tired mentally too. I just wanted to go home, and I vowed in the moments of that agonizing meeting that I had to depart altogether from this toxic environment soon and never return. There was no way for me to continue on in such toxicity any longer. It was clear that nothing was going to change, and even if there’d been small promising changes as I have previously mentioned, those changes weren’t enough to make that much of a difference in the long run.

When I got home from work, I pleaded with God (as I had done days prior) to open another door elsewhere to a job that would be more fitting to my personality and my life’s path. I could no longer take the toxicity on this job, and I was worn out from working so hard. I felt I had personally given my all to a job that didn’t seem to care about its employees. In fact, I felt my efforts to do good on the job had only been met with more work. I was tired of the way some in positions of superiority responded to me via their insecurities. My presence alone seemed to bring out their inner demons against me, and I was tired of it.

Although I never look for validation from others, I did feel I needed a reprieve. I needed rest – a break of sorts.Time away would do me good, and I had just begun asserting my efforts to taking time off for myself. I had built up protected time off to take some days for much needed rest, and since I wasn’t feeling up to par, I decided there was no time to be absent like the present. Mainly, I was taking days off to get away from the drama and be out of the path of coworkers that really got under my skin. Plus, I was suffering from extreme exhaustion. This job was literally taking years from my life. My body was breaking down, and I ached all the time.

I felt that I had reached such a breaking point that I might verbally react to those insecure superiors and toxic coworkers. I was constantly feeling a meltdown over even the smallest things, and that was becoming a bit too much for me. I didn’t like the person I felt that I was becoming, but then again, I had to wonder if God needed me to see exactly what was still a part of me. Nonetheless, I didn’t like myself at all. Despite realizing the good qualities about myself since starting this job, I’d also seen the negative aspects of myself that I thought I’d dealt with before.

I wanted out of this job even though I liked many aspects of it, but I needed out of this job because, overall, it just wasn’t a good fit for me. It no longer aligned with what I wanted for myself, and I no longer wanted to feel like I had to contend with some coworkers just to be present there. To be honest, I was really hiding on this job. I took it because it was easy, and I didn’t think I’d have to think all that much about anything serious. I simply wanted time to figure something out, and I thought I could coast along on this job and just get along.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. There was always something to think about, but it wasn’t critical thinking in terms of the job duties. The thinking was more about the ways I could avoid being mobbed, being ridiculed, being monitored, and/or being hated for just for being present for the days of my shifts. Don’t get me wrong. I can be hated by coworkers, managers, coaches, and team leads, but I really don’t want to be hated for no reason. Hatred is an all-consuming energy drainer, even when its being projected onto me by others.

Plus, I’m not a competitive person by nature, and a lot of coworkers on this job have a need to compete with me all the time. It’s made me so tired and worn out. I don’t like competing, and there was never really any reason to compete when the work has mostly always been a team effort. I especially grew tired of shrinking myself back, turning my internal light off, and often diminishing myself to make others feel comfortable just to be around me. I couldn’t be my authentic self, and I grew tired of masking my authentic self a lot. I felt like I was growing into a mean person just to protect myself, and I don’t like that at all. It reminds me of what I’d felt I’d become in my previous profession.

Although there were a few coworkers I could be myself around, I found that it was easier to shrink back and disappear so that I wouldn’t be around any drama. While standing in that meeting listening to the same old information, I just couldn’t picture myself within such a toxic environment another month or another year, and I honestly couldn’t understand how others had managed remaining for far so long either. I know it can become easier to do for various reasons or when one feels they have no choice, but I was forcing myself to reconsider other choices. I wanted out. I felt so desperate I was willing to return to a profession I felt I no longer wanted to be a part of anymore.

I believe a true release from this job came long before I’d reached that meeting though. It was during a time that I struggled with whether I was the envious one on the job. I’d check my behaviors all the time, and I’d make sure that I wasn’t intentionally trying to harm anyone else through my actions or words. It was a fatiguing task, to say the least, but I spent an enormous amount of time in self-introspection of my behaviors because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t the problem. Dealing with the projection of envy from others wore me down, and I wanted to get away from it.

Furthermore, I wanted to make sure I didn’t harbor hatred towards one particular coworker that seemed to become my arch nemesis. This coworker was someone I actually liked and thought was cool, but because they were a member of the mobsters, I didn’t stand a chance of ever gaining any semblance of peace with them. This coworker is one I refer to as Sidekick because they are a flying monkey to Damsel in Distress and they are a part of the mobsters who intentionally tried to drive me out of my position for a time.

Sidekick had gravitated far away from me from the start. They were always so distant and quiet and seemed to harbor a true dislike of me, especially whenever Damsel was around. The friction I always felt towards me when the two of them were together was tangible enough to touch, and they frequently signaled to each other things about me behind my back. In fact, Sidekick pretty much stayed on par to monitor all of my actions and report whatever I did back to Damsel. I couldn’t do anything without Sidekick monitoring my every move.

Although I tried desperately to break through to Sidekick to show that I wasn’t a threat … that I didn’t aim to compete, at times I grew tired of the immaturity and would often let things be. When things were good, they were good, but there were just always too many eggshells to walk upon, and it made me very agitated and tired of it all. I didn’t like being monitored, and I didn’t like the silent innuendos as if I was too dumb to comprehend that there were silent conversations going on about me or that the mobsters weren’t always trying to deliberately set me up and sabotage my work.

During my need to know if I was the problem, I broke down one day and just cried over the situation. I prayed for insight. Even though I knew it wasn’t me, I also knew I didn’t want to be in a tussle with anyone. Neither the job position nor the job tasks were that serious, but I just didn’t know how to make things right. I didn’t harbor envy against Sidekick or any of the mobsters, and I didn’t want anyone to envy me. I simply wanted to work in peace. Yet, it’s difficult to work in peace with those who want to create chaos all the time.

It was then that I determined that those who are hellbent on keeping drama going don’t want peace at any cost. So the best that I could do was to avoid them and their drama at all costs. I supposed I got accustomed to being okay to be the villain in mobsters’ story about and against me. It’s their story, and I can’t change it. People’s perceptions of me are based on their own ideas of me and not necessarily because they actually know me.

In fact, most narcissistic individuals create stories and personas of their targets anyway. Those stories and personas are usually never based on the truth of who the targets are in reality – but based on the perceptions that narcissistic individuals hold the targets to – whether good or bad. In this case, I was going to be the “bad guy” or the villain no matter what simply because I existed in the mobsters’ arena. They didn’t want me in their arena and that was their matter of fact.

At first, they wanted me out of the position for which I was hired for, and they did all that they could to make me leave my post. When their schemes didn’t work and they ended up being the ones separated when it proved that I outdid them in tasks, they tried other angles to get me to leave my posts. Such things as blocking me out of assignments, blocking me from completing tasks in general, or one-upping me so that they could take credit for the work that I contributed to the team were all ways they schemed to get rid of me. When those schemes didn’t give them what they desired, they enlisted the assistance of another insecure coworker neither of them could stand.

That same insecure coworker the mobsters couldn’t stand also couldn’t stand me, and when they realized they could use this coworker to attempt to get to me, they befriended that coworker and put them to use. Yet, again, I continued to maintain professionalism to the best of my abilities, even while addressing this insecure coworker about their behaviors against me. I didn’t let any of the disrespect this insecure coworker delved out get me to a point that I’d publicly lash out, but I didn’t let their disrespect and boundary breaking against me slide either. I addressed them and their negative behaviors against me head on, documented them, and then reported the issues to a team lead.

Towards the end of my time at this job after I decided I’d make my getaway, I found it was easier to avoid any time around the mobsters and their drama at all. Instead of steadily working in my assigned department, I’d often ask to go help out in other departments to keep away from the mobsters. When I realized the mobsters were constantly trying to block me from completing assignments, I’d leave my post to complete other assignments. I realized that striving against them was actually triggering for me because I was pushed into finding ways to circumvent their malicious games against me. Circumventing their malicious attacks was a draining task, and I became so tired of it, I somewhat threw in the towel by finding other work to do away from them.

Instead of counteracting the malicious games the mobsters played against me, I documented everything. If they wanted to block me from work, then I simply wouldn’t complete those tasks. I’d find something else to do instead. If they wanted to take all the credit for the work I completed, I’d step away from completing my part until it was realized that without me, the team wasn’t going to finish the work on time at all. In essence, I took the malicious game they were playing, and walked away in favor of peace for myself.

I also asked team leads to allow me to work in other departments when things were slow so that I could escape being around the mobsters altogether. Working around other coworkers who actually enjoyed being at work gave me the peace that I needed to remain on the job. Not everyone there was mean to me, but the mobsters had spies everywhere. So there was basically no one I felt I could trust.

I also planned days off to gain clarity and free myself from negative energy. To do this, I often chose days off that were strategic to the schedule of the mobsters so that I never had to work when the mobsters were all present. When the mobsters were all present and I had to work around them, the work day was so much worse and felt that much longer. It was so much better when I wasn’t around or when I worked around only one mobster at a time.

Finding peace would be hard though because the mobsters would vent about my absences too. No matter the amount of days they’d take off, they’d always complain if I took a day off, and that just didn’t make any sense to me. I’d literally find the peace when they were absent, but they complained about my presence and my absence. I couldn’t win.

So by the time I rolled around with a flu illness, I was just too fed up to even care about being at work. In particular, on one of my sick days off, I scheduled a job interview, and within two days received an offer to accept it. I DID! I accepted without hesitation. Despite me feeling as if the interview wasn’t a success, it went well enough, and I considered it divine intervention when I was offered the position. The very next day, I wrote up a two-week notice letter for the current job. God had answered my prayers!

In fact, I knew long before the job interview that the door at this toxic workplace was closing, and a new opportunity somewhere else just had to open because I was DONE! I also believed I learned lessons that I hopefully will not have to repeat from working within this toxic workplace too. Life is far too short to stick around and continue within toxicity. Sometimes, one may have to stay longer than they’d like when finances an other job opportunities are an issue, but overall, it’s best to look after one’s well-being in the long run because a toxic workplace doesn’t care.

When one door closes, another one opens, and when it opens, I choose to walk through it. The grass may not be greener on the other side, but it’s winter right now, and all I see is snow. So, I’ll take my chances that when spring arrives because I know that even then, the grass will be green enough.

Stay tuned for more …