Boom Goes the Dynamite

Work has been...tough. Not the job itself, which I love by the way, it's the everything else that's made my life miserable.

And tomorrow? Tomorrow I'm about to gleefully pour liquid nitrogen into boiling water.

(...Okay, so technically that doesn't do much but create a heavy fog due to pressurized water molecules, but I still think it's a pretty intense reaction. )

I could stop and press pause, I guess. Like right now, there's a small part of me that's like, "Gee, Lainey, maybe you shouldn't do this. You might get fired!".

And then there's the other part, the bigger part, the life-is-too-damn-short-to-keep-silent part, that's like, "Meh, fuck it. I ain't nobody's bitch. You wanna fuck with me? Then, let's mother-fucking do this. If I'm about to set my life on fire, I'll be damned if I'm not holding the match."

So...yeah. That's me. I'm known to be loyal, generous, and goofy, but God help you should you ever piss me off.

Friday- I got an email from my boss, and her boss checking in on me. It's all very proper and passive aggressive polite. They're saying all the right things, but if you knew the whole story, then you'd realize it's all for show. And I was meaning to write back an equally polite and professional email. You know with enough passive aggressiveness peppered in there so that an outsider looking in would think everything was hunky dory between everyone involved.

That was the plan and it pissed me off but I had no choice but surrender to the heavy yoke of necessary bullshit around my neck.

But then I woke up this morning and I decided to change the rules of the game.

I wrote a different sort of reply. The kind of reply people dream about writing but never send. And I'm too much equal parts dumb-ass and smart-ass to prevent myself from pressing SEND tomorrow morning. I know this. You don't have to warn me that what I've written is going to make life rough for me. I know, and I agree.  I'm so so stupid. Don't be me.

So, before you continue reading, I'm issuing a warning: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.

Hi __,

While I appreciate your email, by now, I’m wise enough to know that informing my superiors of any problems would be a waste of words; it only worsens my problem. If I had just learned to live with a queue, bursting with a caseload that neared 400, then maybe my time at work wouldn’t have turned into something I dreaded. 

1.     My manager wouldn’t have asked to meet me in a huddle room on April 13^th, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see my director/ her boss (you) in that room.

2.     I would have been spared the bizarre and humiliating half hour spent with a shrieking manager who went from ordering me, “When I say for you to do something, you do it!” to suggesting “If you didn’t take your lunch break, then maybe your queue wouldn’t be such a problem” to the vaguely threatening “I see you with your headphones on when you’re working at your desk, and I haven’t said anything.”

3.     I wouldn’t have lost faith in you after seeing firsthand your allowance of your subordinate’s unhinged manner to an employee. I’m still shaking my head recalling at how never once did you step in to tell her to calm down, no matter how loud her volume, how erratic her speech, how violent her body language.

At the time, I sat there, surprised, because I had never seen a person display such horrifying behavior in an office setting. And then as the meeting went on, I turned mute with shock that you, her boss, would let her treatment of me continue without a single reprimand. In fact, after she finished so thoroughly lambasting me, you seemed meek in comparison.

4.     I wouldn’t have had my competence questioned, as my queue was then pulled up into the conference monitor for examination. The way you both perused through it, your eyes eager to catch a mistake, made your underlying intentions clear: You weren’t there to help me but to find proof you needed to blame me for incompetence.

I’ll stop here with the timeline of events. It has only gotten worse, but the foundation for such dysfunction started on that fateful day, and should I continue to want to survive in this environment, I’ve learned some things since then.

Lesson #1- Never go to a manager if I have a problem. 

It would be the same as having a finger severed to remove a simple splinter.  My workload has only gotten heavier, as not only do I have to manage my still 350+ case queue, I now have the added task of keeping my manager abreast of my every move. She wants to know every engagement, every case closed, every referral, etc. that I’ve made in a weekly basis. I have no idea what this will accomplish. If she wanted to monitor my progress, I’m sure this data is easily found in metrics or better yet, she could do it herself instead of giving me the needless chore.

Lesson #2- Never go to a manager if I have a problem. 

Yes, same lesson learned a different way.  The aid I initially requested only manifested itself to my becoming the sole beneficiary of a manager’s unwelcomed spotlight. At all times, I feel the oppressive heat of her stifling attention as even logging out of the computer for ten minutes to fix a program malfunction resulted in an instant email asking where I was and what I was doing (5/1/17) to more recently when she pulled my clock in and clock out times to make sure I didn’t log off a minute too late or log off a minute too early.

I’ve been here for nearly eight months, and five of those were without the interference of a manager.  I can assure you that my work has been above par from the beginning: I work hard and I work fast and my clients are pleased, in fact, my previous manager informed me that I was thriving in my new role. 

If only I hadn’t thought to ask for help. I chastise myself now for that thoughtless action. Had I known it would result in being treated more as an errant employee, incapable of managing myself or my time, than as someone trying to do her best, I would have stopped myself. 

Since the changing of managers in February, I’ve asked twice if there are any part-time positions available, initially for work-life-balance, and more recently, to save my sanity. I thought limiting my exposure to this kind of environment could help me endure my new working conditions. You have told me no, each time, as I unfortunately knew you would, but I am becoming desperate: I have a manager who watches my every move and wants to see me in her office more than any other person in the team. I have a director who will only go so far as to inquire how I’m doing but permits mistreatment of me when she sees it. And I still have my original problem, a caseload more than twice the average employee’s.

But the past month has been a steep learning curve, and I've always been a quick study.

So, to answer your question, how are things going?

Everything is great.

 Lainey

.......

....So that's what I'm about to press SEND on. ...Thoughts? Warnings? Advice?  Yeah, you can leave those, but you already know I'm bull-headed and won't heed them, because I'm too pissed and too past caring to heed any advice.

Again, do NOT attempt this. I'm walking into this eyes wide open. Let's see what's left after the smoke clears, shall we?