Okay, so in the past year I have switched to three different jobs and each one seems to just get progressively terrible within the span of a month. I have been a manager at all three and I live in the southern region of the USA.
Fast forward to my current job. It’s been the best one I’ve had thus far, but that’s not saying much…it’s still emotionally draining. It’s getting to the point like I was at my past jobs where I cry because I don’t want to go in, cry in the bathroom, and cry myself to sleep at night. We are really understaffed. It’s me (a trainee), an assistant manager, and a store manager.
It’s a car rental place. I mainly stay here because management is nice and there’s opportunity to move to the west coast. I desperately want to get out of the south.
There’s a lot of issues that put me under constant stress. Firstly, when both of the manager’s are outside renting cars, I’m inside alone. Customers at the desk and on the phone get really angry when I don’t know the answer to stuff and there’s nobody currently inside to give them answer. I mess a lot of stuff up and the managers are understanding about it but I can still tell they’re irritated at me. Sometimes I feel like I have to make spur of the moment decisions because nobody is there to help me, and sometimes it’s the wrong one because I’m a month old employee. There’s so many rules to renting a car and it’s hard to remember all of them.
Secondly, there’s a national car and chip shortage. Our customers throw the biggest fucking tantrums because there’s long wait times for cars. Plus we rent a lot of cars for rental replacement and insurance agents will tell their clients that can just show up and get a car from us the same day without booking a reservation which is not true. It causes a whole other wave of problems and hostile customers. We are processing 30-35 reservations a day with another 20-30 car returns. We’re doing the best that we can. I don’t even get a lunch break most days. I run in the back and stuff my face in like 30 seconds while the phones rings off the hook and customers are lined up at the desk with no employee in sight.
Lastly, the hostility of the customers scares me at times…a lot of theses people aren’t smart or rational. We’re an open carry state. Just a few days ago the hospital down the street from me was shot up with multiple deaths and casualties. My grandmas doctor was killed. The shooter killed two doctors and the receptionist because they wouldn’t prescribe him opiates. It’s a constant fear of mine. Especially since our customer are allowed to have guns on-site and in their rental cars.
Management tells me I shouldn’t take angry customers seriously and my boss gives me the getting into a positive mindset talk a lot.
I also have anxiety because the company drug tests and I will get drug tested when I get promoted. They still consider weed an illegal drug. I have tried to stop smoking weed a few times since I’ve started, but I am always under so much stress that it’s the only way I can even relax slightly when I am away from the office. I don’t know what to do.
Not to mention my parents picked up and moved to Seattle in the middle of the pandemic and seem to be having the time of there life compared to my sibling and who are barely staying afloat mentally back home. They are kind of passive about the situation and only say that I just need to stick it out for six months until I get promoted and then I can come to Seattle. That’s what has been keeping me going recently but now that just feels so far away and I don’t know if I can keep going for that long.
I dreamed for so long about being able to live somewhere where I don’t feel scared to go outside every day. It’s kept me going for so long, but now that day feels like it’s never coming because I don’t think I can do what’s necessary to make it there. I work 50 hours a week in the office and I don’t know if I can handle it for much longer. I’m already so tired. I can barely get out of bed most days. Plus it’s hard to get by when you feel constantly gaslit but your coworkers and family who wont acknowledge how awful the situation is. Does anyone else feel this way that lives in the south? How do you cope with it? What’s your advice?