Okay so I work at this job I hate. It’s horrible. Turnover is high, we’ve gone through so many changes in leadership since I’ve been here (not even a year BTW), the team morale is so low, my workload is heavy & generally, I am just sick and tired. I’ve been applying for other jobs and have some interviews lined up.
I know you’re thinking “what is there to tell you? If you want to leave & it’s that bad then leave.” Here is where I make it hard (literally myself, my brain & an old manager who is my mentor of sorts). The place is awful, but I have this old manager, turned BFF, who mentors me through Corporate. I am a sensitive person & I let things in more than I should but I’m also very respective to feedback. Actually I love feedback. Who doesn’t want to be a better person? My last job was my first corporate job and I was there for two years & I was laid off last November. Took this new job in the middle of December because I was desperate for cash around Christmas time.
Anyways, I tell her all of the crazy & insanely traumatic things that go on and she helps me process & realign to reality and not my anxieties. It’s more often than not what I want to hear (I just want to be validated & be told I’m always right to avoid the shame of being wrong) is not what she says. She’s real with me & helps me adjust my thought processes so I can learn from this rather than punish myself for making a mistake. Until lately, I always felt her advise was as good as gold. She is truly everything I want to mimic in my career.
What happened today would take T O O much to explain & really I don’t know who would read it all. Short story, it was something that caught me by surprise & just pushed me to a feeling of D E E P awkward pain that I could feel in my stomach (nothing X-RATED). It really just was the final straw for me. Truthfully there have been many last straws & everyone, including people within the company, have told me to leave. Except her. She has told me to stay & ride it out.
I knew when I walked out of the building today, I was going to put in my two weeks. After talking to her, I feel I must stay. Face the music. Suck it up buttercup. Granted, what happened today had some fault of my own but not really.. at least I am giving myself some grace after all I have been through & all I do. Again too much to type on here but I’ll write a book later in my life so be on the lookout!
Back to her. She said how I felt and I knew I didn’t like hearing it. I said so. And I agreed with her points as to why I should stay but this was just another shitty thing on the long list. HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH!? How much trauma is enough to take from a job? I want to grow. I want to be a better person in life & work. The only way to do that is be put in situations where I’m tested and can put my efforts to the test. I get that.
We have very similar backgrounds growing up & she’s overcame a lot of the traumas in her past that I am working on now. It’s what drew us closer. I know she isn’t perfect but I look at her and see myself in 15 years, if I’m willing to put in the work. Well, I am putting in the work & honestly, I don’t know if I have what it takes. Embarrassingly, I haven’t been myself at this job at all. It has seen the WORST side of me. I’m so embarrassed everyday. Don’t get me wrong, the work I put out is great but the situations I’ve been thrown in have knocked me down. HARD. I have handled so many of them wrong & said the wrong things. After today, I don’t know if there is redemption from the way I feel about myself here.
I am at a loss here. She always says don’t take fruit from low hanging trees. I didn’t take the fruit but I am swarmed with flies & they are laying maggots in my brain. I know you shouldn’t put people on pedestals the way I have with her & I know that most of this is very emotionally driven. I’m just a traumatized, generational curse breaker, anxiety having girly pop trying to figure this crap out on my own.
If you’ve read all of this, thank you. I know it was probably really weird & wordy. My mom is the Redditor, not me. I’m just looking for some guidance. What would you do? Would you stay & keep learning hard lessons, on top of literally every other way a job can be toxic? Or would you leave? How do you know when the hard lessons aren’t worth it when it comes to a career? Also if you could please explain why either way, that would be really sick.
Yes I am a Pisces if you’re wondering.