Bad day at the office?

[delalluvia]

I used to feel that way about work, but over the past couple of years something's changed. It's not work, because if anything that's got worse, and in the last couple of months on top of the general shit there's been so many new rules and regulations introduced, it's like . Working in a basement doesn't help, because we get no natural light and management work us on the 'mushroom' principle - keep us in the dark and feed us shit. I work in an office where petty office squabbles and power struggles are the norm, where the rest of my team want to go back to how it used to be when they were a separate team (I got merged into a big new super-team along with them and they've made it quite clear I'm the outsider), and they spend most of their time like kids in a playground looking for minor mistakes others in the team have made so they can go squealing to management, bitching about the surveyors in the next office to us all the time.

I've got a degree and post grad qualifications, and outside work I run a small charity - managing the officers committee, project managing, etc. etc, as well as running a large web forum, a medical support site, and managing a team of moderators and site staff, and at work most of the time they have me doing tedious data input and shit a trained monkey could do. Tomorrow I've got my EPD (employee performance development) review meeting with my manager, and I'm afraid she's gonna it it all, both barrels. 

What has changed though is me. It's partly my post-BBM outlook, and partly having gone back after nearly three years off sick, during which time I had brain surgery twice, spinal surgery twice, two DVTs and a pulmonary embolism. It's partly I realised that work's just really not that important in the scheme of things when it comes down to it. I go there for money to pay the bills, but they get out of me what they pay me for and no more. What's changed is that they don't get *me*. I go along everyday like a good little employee, play their games, and do as I'm told (mostly), but the "me" that's there those 8 hours a day isn't the real me. There's usually some soundtrack playing in my head, and I fill those 8 hours doing whatever needs doing with those songs playing in my head. They're never gonna get me though - not the real me. They're never gonna know the real me. They might get glimpses of me (last week as news of my new tattoo's spread through the department, someone down the corridor asked if they could see it, and said "You're a bit of a rebel, aren't you?") but they're never gonna know me and never understand me.

It's taken me a hell of a long time to get here, but I'm at the point now where once those 8 hours are done, they're done. I walk out of that place at 5pm or whatever and I forget about it, and don't think about it until the next morning when I walk back through the door. They don't pay me enough to worry about that place and get anything of me - they just pay me for my time, for being there, and don't appreciate me or respect me enough to get anything else out of me. Their loss. (and yep, over the past couple of years I've turned into a stroppy cow - at least where work's concerned  )

[APPLAUDS]  Brava, madam!! [APPLAUDS]

I'm there now.  I never bring work home in my head if I can't help it, I've long since not been very much of a 'team player'.  They're asking me now what "incentives' I need in order to give 110% (when I'm perfectly happy just giving my 100% and not busting my ass, which is what they want).  My answer is what they don't want to hear - "working 40 hours" aka no overtime.  But I can't tell them that.  The downsides are, of course, that you will never be considered for promotion, do not have the respect of the supervisors since you're not "dedicated", first one thought of when layoffs come around and I basically have no real friends there.  My co-workers are more like very friendly acquaintances rather than friends. And to me, it seems a really big waste of one's life - you will the spend the majority of your life at work - and it seems a shame to dislike it so much.

[BlissC]

The downside is, of course, that you will never be considered for promotion, do not have the respect of the supervisors since you're not "dedicated" and I basically have no real friends there.  My co-workers are more like very friendly acquaintances rather than friends. And to me, it seems a really big waste of one's life - you will the spend the majority of your life at work - and it seems a shame to dislike it so much.

I suppose that's one way of looking at it. I guess in a way it is wasting your life, but I look at it as a necessary evil. I need money to pay the bills. They pay me for my time. The office where I am now I've been with them nearly two years now, and I've tried being friendly and chatting, I've tried explaining how my health problems affect me, I've even tried explaining why I turn up for work wearing a cowboy hat, and I've tried ignoring their childish little games. It's a clique though, and I don't fit in. I'm not prepared to just sit there and keep quiet. There's one who's taken charge of collecting the tea money and making sure time-sheets are in order at the end of the week etc. which is fine by me - one less thing for me to worry about. She's always been "queen bee" and I'm not about to upset the apple-cart, but if there's something work related I know more about, I'll speak up and say what I think. Last year I had a few ideas about how we could improve some of our systems and procedures to make less work for us, and save resources, so I took my ideas to my manager, who agreed with me and the new ideas got introduced. The others don't like it though because it's "not the way we've always done it". Not my problem.

We're not even very friendly acquiantances - conversations with them are very one-sided. I've only got one real friend left at work who I know I can trust - everyone else with any initiative and free thinking has bailed out over the past five years. I'm stuck there partly because of my sickness record because filling in application forms for other jobs, when it asks on the form how many days sickness absence you've had in the last three years, it doesn't look good when you cross out "days" and write in 'months'!  It's convenient in many ways, and I know within reason they're supportive of my health problems (though it does help that I have friends "upstairs" - a legacy from when I was first there and full time and ran our section before we were restructured). Sometimes I think it's a case of "better the devil you know". 

In my favour though (at least for the sake of my sanity) I'm only part time. When I first went back to work on a phased return I'd intended to work my way back up to full time hours, but my body's just not up to it. I've actually just reduced my hours again slightly because my health's not good at the moment and I've been struggling with the 18.5 I was doing, so now I'm down to 16.5. When I'm not there I do web design part time. It's quite a long story how I got into it, but it was something totally unexpected, but something I've fallen in love with, and at least with the web design I get paid for something I love doing.

At the moment I'm doing mainly freebies still to build up my portfolio, though I've got a couple of paid projects at the moment. Long term ideally my aim would be to go full time with the web design, but how things are with my health I don't think that's going to be possible - at least with my other job I get sick pay when I can't work (though they're getting a little antsy at the moment about my sickness record) whereas self-employed I'd be on my own, and it's a risk I can't take at the moment.