/rant.
I just need to put this out there. I just need someone to know. And as the past few months I’ve seen me rant to my friends, I feel like I need someone else. I don’t want to exhaust them with my bullshit. I wish I had some thing else to talk to them about, but… It’s not like I’ve had a lot of time to myself to give myself a new topics. This job has become my life. I hate it. I’m scared.
Have any of y’all heard Eskew? I feel like David writing this. Use his voice when replaying it in your head; it’s euphoric for my trans ass.
The manager that I’ve had since becoming a lead is resigning. He believed in me. Not sure if that’s a good thing. And now him leaving feels like everything is going to fall onto my shoulders. He came in and made a lot of changes. I mean a lot of changes, and not all of them were agreeable, or good, but I still have no idea what all of them are. He put more effort towards The higher ups than his own team, and I would take a lot of the pressure for my team. We’re all over worked, underpaid understaffed etc. etc. and all I wanna do is help them. For a time I also wanted to help him. I felt for his situation. He hasn’t even been there for a year. I haven’t been a lead for a year, in fact he made me a lead, and now I’m sure he would put me as the manager if he had a choice in it. It would more than double my income! Probably a good thing. But I cannot take on that responsibility. I’m taking on too much stress and pressure as it is, and it feels almost like a betrayal of values.
My covert lead doesn’t know how to write an email. He frantically calls me in the middle of his shift, dripping sweat and effort that his team won’t put him behind him because, it Has to be him. Narcissistic asshole. Struggling, but also we should know how to do basic shit like write an email. Or split the work. There’s a difference between splitting the work and putting pressure on your team and I try to walk out line, but when your team is small, understaffed, sick.
Last Thursday I was alone all day, or at least until the night crew got there. Both my manager and my supervisor decided they would “go nitpicking” without looking at the rest of the situation. I found myself in the middle of the floor, talking to a coworker from another department and probably more loudly than I should have, replying “no”. My supervisor confronted me about it afterwards, and it took almost everything in me not to maniac laugh in his face. And when I tried to talk to my manager? He’d gone on a supply run. Our company doesn’t do supply runs. They’re brought to us in a big van. He was grabbing a new uniform shirts for us all to wear, it’s system he’s tried to implement the whole time. But as he won’t wear the shirts himself…
I try to lead by example. I am working with my team, not above them, not managing them, not supervising them; I am on the front lines to. So to watch him demands that I wear it at some thing that he refuses to wear? He’s resigning anyway. What did it even matter.
And now, I’ve been there the longest besides my supervisor. The other workers have tried their hand at supervisor or leader ship roles and promptly stepped back down. I completely understand them now. But I’m young enough to still dream I suppose. I still want to pay off my student debt. Sample, still want to save up for top surgery, still want to live in a place where the fire alarm doesn’t go off every week. Still want to feel like I can treat myself without having a mental breakdown over my finances. Still want to be able to help people. But when the stress of this job has become my life, to the point where I have to justify taking a sick day, well.
As a lead, sharing my responsibilities with another lead who constantly freaks out when I’m not there, and another lead who is brand-new, I am terrified. The last manager aerial shift took three weeks to get underway. I have no idea how long this one will take. In the meantime, I have to uphold the systems implemented, have to work with the supervisor who got along very well with the manager and doesn’t really like me, and continue to uphold the standard of work which has utterly exhausted me. I don’t have anything lined up, I don’t have any other opportunities or an idea of where I go. We’re about to get Wright a raise again… They’re doing a reevaluation throughout the entire place. That will take until June, July the latest. Part of me wants to stay, just to see if that raise is worth it. If it’s not, then I’ll look for somewhere else. But I feel awful doing it. I’ve come to really like the people I work with, I feel for their situation and don’t want them to Course against the sandpaper that I have in the past few months. Better me than them, I tell myself. No excuses, I tell myself. Besides, there’s nowhere better than here, so may as well just avoid the guilty of leaving. Everywhere will just be the same.
I’m barely holding it together. I think my team can see that, I think other departments can see that. The last week held a lot of people saying you’re doing so well we see all the work you’re putting in etc. etc. I believe they’re not lying. But I also believe they’re trying to keep me or at least keep me sane. It hasn’t worked, my pills are no longer working, in fact they are giving me nausea. I work through it, because I have to, but I don’t know how much longer. If I prioritize the higher-ups, my team suffers. I prioritize my team, I’ll very easily lose my job. So then it becomes something selfish. I’ve always been taught to be selfless.
Quite the conundrum.