For context: I wrote several months ago about problems with my workplace and its increasing toxicity:
-They’re making everyone RTO and refusing to let us work hybrid next year even though we’re currently working like that because “company culture” means being in office
-Everyone is overworked and burned out, but our concerns are brushed off because everything is apparently high priority
-There is way too much context switching in this job. Like, seriously. I’ve expressed this multiple times to my manager and nothing has changed.
-There’s probably more but I can’t remember now
I’ve been feeling this burned out since before I made a post in this subreddit, but it somehow gets worse and worse and more and more people have left for better jobs. I’ve been looking too and have had interviews but no offers so far. The toxicity is so bad at this point I’m willing to jump to almost any company that seems remotely decent. I’m willing to make less money to never have to put up with this BS ever again.
Last week, one of my coworkers started a slack channel just for coworkers, and we had a zoom meeting venting our frustrations and proposing solutions to our problems (like pushing lower priority assignments aside so we don’t feel so overwhelmed, etc). I’ve lost a lot of hope for this company at this point but many of my coworkers are amazing and I figured, hey, if I’m not the only one who feels that way maybe they’ll listen. My coworkers even put a fucking PowerPoint together to discuss our pain points and solutions AND acknowledged upfront that we know management is busy and appreciate what they do for us—we just want things to go better, since morale is so low and turnover as a consequence is so high.
One of our coworkers presented this PowerPoint detailing pain points and solutions to management at a meeting today. He laid everything out, we gave our input as needed, and then started asking questions. One of the questions was asked about pushing back a few projects a new manager (who doesn’t really know our day to day responsibilities and is new to the company as a whole) asked us to do, as we’re already feeling overwhelmed and burned out. A compromise.
The new manager said no, and was pretty much backed up by the rest of management by this. I argued that we didn’t have time to take on extra projects even though I saw the value in it (which I did), but he didn’t change his stance. I’m literally fuming at this point, as are my coworkers. After the meeting, I started a text group chat for us to vent and support one another—I’ve already started texting some of my coworkers to get out our frustrations, so that’s just extended to a larger scale.
I am so so tired y’all. And disheartened. And angry. I have been spiraling back into depression because of my shitty workplace, and I struggle to get through the weekdays every single day. I’m beyond burned out. The lack of respect I’m getting from higher ups makes me want to scream. I don’t want to keep living like this, nor should I have to. Neither should my coworkers. We deserve so much better.
I’ll keep cheering on those who take on new jobs and get away from this toxic workplace, and I’ll keep manifesting myself a new, better job where I’m not burned out everyday and actually fucking respected as a worker and individual.