I am so burnt out from work that I am seriously thinking about telling my boss that I got Covid so I can at least just be able to work from home for 2 weeks, bare minimum. I work for a grass roots, educational non-profit in a title I district that belongs to a board that is made up of brokers in the finance industry—does that say enough?
I am neurodivergent and have adhd, and am in a managerial position. I made the mistake of showing how capable I am by putting in 150% when I started here because I wanted to prove myself. Now anything less than is unacceptable. I always get tasked with brunt work that other colleagues put off because they know I’m the type of person who will put in 150% to get it done right. For those wondering, I make salary ($55k), and I was just made eligible for health insurance and 401k after working here for 6 months. But I do live in one of the most expensive states in the country (rhymes with assachusetts) so most of my paycheck goes towards debt and living expenses.
As a full-time team of 4, we’ve been buckling under the pressure of trying to make up for the shitty resources and lack of teacher support in our city’s public school system via privately funded grants (aka “old money” or as I like to call it, begging local tycoons who have more generational wealth than all of the schools and state departments combined to give us less than a percentage of their dollars to help students who have to wear winter coats indoors because our city’s only public high school can’t afford to fix their HVAC system.) We also have never had an HR department to report to to date since this organization’s inception because we can’t afford it. As the public school system crumbles, we are facing the pressure of our board, who insist we all attend work in person (we’ve been working from home 2 days every week, the board now wants to eliminate all WFH days going forward; our office is 600 sq ft, infested with mice, and is in the upstairs rectory of a church), they do not give us holiday time off (they voted against allowing us to take off the week between Christmas and New Years, even though one of our board members took off on vacation that same week), and they do not provide or even go out of their way to offer adequate support to any of our full-time staff members. They do not volunteer any of their time or resources to help mitigate the burn out we all are experiencing. To make matters worse, they voted against raises for my supervisor (employee of 4 years) and my boss (executive director with a Masters and over 20 years in non-profit management) which has decreased morale significantly.
TLDR; I feel like I’m the only person at work who recognizes how unsustainable this is, but anytime I bring this up it’s met with reassurance that WE’RE ALL EXHAUSTED and that time off or accommodations for health are not within our bandwidth. I’m so sick of everyone gulping the non-profit kool-aid: just because what we do goes towards a positive cause does not mean that the poor treatment of staff is justified. Just because YOU are exhausted does not mean we all have to be. Just because YOU decide to take calls and check emails until 11pm every night and on weekends does mean we should be expected to do the same.