So I started a new job about two and half weeks ago. I had some serious reservations about it, but I'm coming back into the workforce after three years of disability (dialysis, ended with a recent kidney transplant) and it was the only offer I'd had in four months of very intense searching.
First two weeks were OK. I was given a bunch of papers and binders and told “sort these”, with the occasional “take this to FedEx or the bank or whatever.” Cool, I can do that. Despite my initial misgivings, the boss seemed friendly enough. Some weird idiosyncrasies and hangups, but nothing too unreasonable all told. I began to think “maybe this situation is alright.”
But now, in week three, I've started doing the real job in earnest and I'm hating it. As her assistant, my desk is in her office, which would normally be fine. But the way the office is set up, her desk literally overlooks mine. She can see what's on my monitor and watch what I'm up to. She's literally been on Zoom calls with important clients and stopped to ask me what I'm doing (thinking she's caught me doing personal web browsing, even when I was literally doing research she'd told me to).
It's basically a constant source of stress when I'm already nervous because I'm new and the other office support people have been pretty lackadaisical about training me. All the red flags during the interview process are burning bright in my memory, including that I had actually been hoping not to get offered the job in the first place. But we were getting really desperate for money and the stress of that was starting to break my fiance (who's also been having trouble finding work).
The only consolation is that she can't be bothered to show up before like 11 AM, so at least the morning is relatively relaxed. Or would be if I weren't dreading her arrival.
So, yeah, thanks to sheer desperation, I'm stuck in a really uncomfortable situation that I knew was going to be bad from the beginning.
It's going to be hard to even find new work, because after an entire afternoon of tension, the last thing I want to do with my precious few hours of free time is the full time job of looking for a job.