A few things have gone wrong lately at work and it has triggered some depression. Before Christmas I got a chance to work in another office as the Officer in Charge. It is a learn on the job method of getting into management. The first couple of weeks were really, really hard. I struggled every single day. It didn't help that the person who I am filling in for had left the office in a huge mess. Made it very difficult to even see what needed doing let alone learn how to do it!!!
But I got through that time period and the fog cleared and I started learning things. I have learned how to ask for help more often. I have learned how to focus better. I started to get my confidence back and became truly interested in doing a good job.
Then I heard the rumblings from back in the old office. They were going to bring me back. I knew my co-workers were complaining that they had to work too much over time because of me. They couldn't go home early on Saturdays because of me. So, I thought that was why I was going to be short-changed on my new assignment. Then a friend called and asked me if someone had complained that I got the assignment even though I was not on the official OIC list. Who would make such a complaint? I knew right away who it might have been. One of the sometime psychos I work with had gone out of his way to talk to me about my assignment and quizzed me about how I was picked for it. You see he had previously served as OIC in that office and had considered putting in for it when it opened up two years ago. I honestly thought he was just interested in what was going on there with me. Boy, did he fool me.
If I had any doubts that he was the one who complained, they vanished yesterday when I saw him at work and he avoided me like the plague. He is one of the most selfish employees there who frequently goes on extended sick leave for no reason, or when he's pouting about something. He has left fellow co-workers in the lurch many times through this method. This is the person who complained about the unfairness of me receiving this assignment. He is not on the OIC list either. He gained nothing by complaining and ruining this for me. Just the satisfaction of hurting me. Someone else entirely is being asked to take over for me. She isn't on the list either. There probably isn't even any list anymore since staffing is so stretched the last few years.
I feel betrayed out of all proportion to what was done. I have been dwelling on it all day today. At work, when one of my friends stopped in with the snacks for the week, I talked to him about what happened and ended up having to go in another room and cry after he left. I feel so trapped. I tried this in order to get away from the place for a while and also to see if it was a career path I wanted to pursue. Both nipped in the bud for now. I feel betrayed. Management and upper management didn't even tell me what was going on. I heard about it through the grapevine and from upper-upper management. To my face, they act all concerned. "We support your employee development and will find you more assignments and better ones....." Liars. The one who told me that catch phrase is the one who is replacing me with one of her proteges from her previous unit. She doesn't support me because I'm not the right nationality or right personality type. Everyone new who comes through immediately pegs me as the energetic, hard-working one, the one who can be used in order to spare the favored ones from having to work too hard. If they have to work too hard they will complain loudly and stress the managers who hate to deal with the whining and complaining. "Just make it stop!" seems to be their motto. If I do more than my share and don't complain, then that will "make it stop!" Very useful in that way to management. I'm far less useful to management if I'm away and "developing" my "career".
Some of the people I work with have been putting up with this nonsense for 20, 25, or 30 years. There is real anger in them for this long term, institutionalized disrespect. I know it is not only me. It isn't personal. I know this. But to see how entrenched it is. I have no illusions that it will go any better for me than it has for those who have gone before me. That is part of what makes me feel hopeless and want to run away. If others before me haven't been able to solve these problems in 30 years, it is unlikely that I will be the first one to invent the new wheel. It is part of the system there. It is the basis for everything, this institutionalized disrespect and unfairness. If there isn't a class of overburdened and overused hard workers, why the whole damn thing will just collapse!!! But there will not be any revolution there. There is only my best boundary of "me not being there." And that was taken from me. I have to go back. I have to work around them, rather than them cooperating with me. I have to listen to the liars and do as they say and watch losers rule the roost.
Yesterday, when I ran into someone else who is in another office and is being allowed to pursue her long-held goal of management, I told her what happened and she said, "You always get screwed." Her comment and her good fortune to have a real mentor just brought it all up for me. Every crappy thing that has ever happened to me seems to be tied into how I feel about this right now.
I don't even want to go back to my assignment tomorrow. It seems pointless now. All the hard work, all the effort to learn difficult things, the extra responsibility, all seem like burdens now that all I am doing is tying up loose ends and making the place nice for the next person. It was really hard for me to take this on. My self-confidence has been way underground for years. I had just started to let myself think that maybe I really could do this and learn these things and someday, when I had enough knowledge, then maybe I would want to apply for my own office. I knew I didn't want to rush it. But I started to think I wanted it.
And having all this to concentrate on took my mind off some of my troubles. Now my troubles are back in the front of my brain again. Today I was going to attend a work related ceremony when I got done with my shift. I had known N-co-worker might be there, but thought I could handle it. But when I woke up this morning, I dreaded the thought. So, I slogged through my day, and wasted time so I would be too late to attend. I'm in a weakened position now and knew I could not, in fact, handle seeing N at all. It feels like I have back-slid to almost a year ago in this feeling of dread of running into him and having the badly hurt feelings again. I had been thinking of N very little these past few weeks and started to feel strong about it. This weekend I don't feel strong about it at all. I feel ill.
This is quite a jumble I know. The past few weeks have been a roller coaster ride anyway, but for most of it, it seemed like I was going to have a good result. Growth and progress. Then this slap in the face. A series of slaps actually. I haven't mentioned half of what I have seen and felt. I just feel completely the outsider. Completely B-list. What is wrong with these people I work with? Not all of them. But far too many of them. I really want to cut and run. I don't see it improving to my satisfaction. What am I doing living and working in such a N-Vortex? How do I get out of this? I'm really ready to be done with it.
Pennyplant