To start this off, I’m just looking for a place to vent, maybe a little advice on how to proceed.
I’ve worked for a small business for a little over a year now. The work we do is incredibly niche and incredibly hard, but it was, at one point, very rewarding. I am a project coordinator, and I get to manage a small team of free lancers. I get paid decently, but definitely on the lower end of the spectrum for my job. I’m 23, and this was my first real professional job outside of retail or food.
I am really starting to resent my job. My former boss was a fantastic mentor to me and they taught me so much. I really thrived as an employee under them. They, however, were also treated poorly at the company and ended up quitting back in October. For the remainder of the month, and also through November and December, our division was entirely without a Project Manager. We had 2 other project coordinators. Me, and two others, one of which quit after two weeks, and one who had just started in November. I acted as PM and basically controlled the entire portfolio for those months, as well as trained up our other new employees. Our division continued to be profitable, our vendors were happy, and our clients were happy. For my efforts I was given an award and small bonus at our Christmas party, which I very much appreciated.
Since we got our new PM in December, things have been terrible. They never bothered to learn our process and the way we do things, and they constantly pick apart my work both in front of others and privately, they don’t listen to me, and they constantly talk to me and my other PC as if we are helpless, terrible employees who can’t do a thing on our own. But they never actually do anything to help us. I feel I am very good at my job, and it’s getting to the point where I cry at least once a week because I feel so beaten down. The landscape of the company is also changing so quickly that I’m hardly doing anything that I was actually hired to do. Almost every single one of our systems have changed, we keep getting new and unrelated projects, and I’m being pulled into things by every company department (but of course being kept out of the loop on critical information on these projects, making it even harder). I used to pour my heart and soul into this job, but due to some difficulties at home I’ve decided to work with a little bit better work-life balance. I feel like this has made the disparities at work even worse.
My parents want me to stay because of the benefit I have of working from home, and the fact that I don’t yet have my bachelors degree. I really am just at a loss here. I’m so upset and I feel so defeated. I don’t do well in an office setting so finding a new job is going to be really difficult, especially since I need relatively high pay because of the cost of living in my area. I know this post is a bit of a mess but I just needed to get my thoughts out. Any ideas on what I should do?