I’ve been trying not to write about this because I didn’t want it to sound like I was hating on my previous boss, company, or team. But I can’t stop analyzing it, and recently I had some breakthroughs that I felt were worth sharing.
First, the bare facts: I put in my two weeks’ notice at the end of June. I’d been unhappy for upwards of a year, but continually talked myself out of quitting for fear that I wouldn’t find anything better or that my problems were all in my head.
I think it was the day I ended up in the emergency room on the advice of my PCP that I decided I couldn’t live like that anymore. The doctor took my symptoms seriously, but he ultimately didn’t find anything wrong and concluded it was stress. Bang goes an afternoon and several hundred dollars.
But I realized something that day. I had been waiting for something like this to happen, to validate my wanting to leave and to call attention to the insanity of our work culture. I thought if someone was finally able to demonstrate the physical harms of our company’s habits, it would inspire a call for change. This incident in the ER made two truths clear to me:
- I didn’t need to wait for a medical emergency to do what was best for me.
- When I finally did have a medical emergency, it made no difference.
As soon as the crisis had passed, it was business as usual. No one but me saw this as a symptom of a larger problem. It was assumed that this level of stress was normal for our field, or even a badge of honor that you were working hard enough.
I was waiting for someone else to believe I was as miserable as I said in spite of decent pay and benefits. But no matter what anyone else said or believed about me or my job, if I didn’t take this leap before it was too late, I would have no one to blame but myself.
When I couldn’t change the culture, it was up to me to respond by either accepting the way things were and waiting for it to kill me, or committing to do something about it. Since I couldn’t change the situation, I could only decide not to participate any longer.
Leaving a job as demanding as that one has weird side effects. You go from feeling like you can never take a day off without it being a half-day’s extra work to prepare for it, to feeling depressed to lose that feeling. I guess we just like to feel needed, even in a toxic way.
Even months later, even with another job, I’m still sorting through the fallout. My heart still does the weird thing that put me in the ER, so I guess that’s part of my life now. But by far the biggest struggle has been learning to trust myself again. Our department, and particularly our team, had some toxic habits I’m working to unlearn.
Here’s what I realized a few days ago:
- There is a vast difference between “I understand how this system came to be and why” and “so it can’t possibly be any better.” Whenever I tried to fix things, my boss reacted strangely. I finally found the word: territorial. Probably she helped to improve or even build some of the processes, or she was close with the people who did, and so she was defensive of how things were, and thus not willing to conceptualize—or allow me to conceptualize—how they could be improved.
- My boss reinforced second-guessing ourselves. I don’t mean that she merely encouraged us to consider others’ feelings and perspectives. Whenever we tried to explore new solutions, she would metaphorically pick us up by our scruff like a mother cat and deposit us back in the self-doubt phase of the plan…indefinitely. This reinforced several other self-destructive tendencies:
- We hesitated to challenge the system or offer improvements.
- We hesitated to ask for help and tried to deal with our problems alone to the point of burnout.
- We blamed ourselves and turned inward when others treated us poorly.
- The rhetoric was to prioritize our mental health, but the culture included taboos against setting boundaries or sticking to them. For instance, we were expected to log extra hours during busy season without extra compensation, and most people could be reached by event managers, clients, and team members at any hour of the day, even on PTO.
- Any feedback other than praise was perceived as complaining and negativity.
- We began to silence each other whenever one of us challenged the status quo.
So anyway, here I am. I’ve written more fiction in the past month than I did in the entire two and a half years at my last job, and my family has repeatedly remarked on how much more like myself I seem. I’m currently working part-time at the local library and trying to get into the groove of an author who could one day make it her sole profession. I don’t make enough money to sustain this place in my life, so I’m still figuring it out, but I know I made the right decision.
If you take anything away from my experience, please let it be this: A unified company culture can be nice, but when it starts to feel more like folie à deux, it’s time to get out.
