When I first started at my previous job, last year, it quickly came to my attention that there had been at least three people before me in the role in quick succession. I filed that away as just terrible luck for the company. But then I started to understand why that may have happened…

Supervisor & Coworkers

My direct supervisor managed to sound like a reasonable human being during the entire interview process. But immediately upon hire her insult comedian act started up and never stopped. Personally, I can’t stand when people I don’t know, particularly those in positions of power over me in the workplace, start insulting me. It’s weird, it’s uncomfortable, and there doesn’t feel like there’s much you can do unless you want to be labeled a square and make the person in charge of you hate your guts.

Said supervisor was also the type of person to leap to the worst conclusions. When I said my husband had a job interview with a big name company, she immediately told me that he probably signed an NDA and now I had just ruined his chances of getting hired. He hadn’t signed an NDA. Also, I am not dumb enough to know my husband signed a NDA and immediately go tell everyone about it.

I went to two social events at her house and found out that she was a binge drinker, who thought her repeated public urination, and alcohol-induced blackouts were hilarious. She once criticised me for being unable to make friends at a party where people were actively ignoring me when I tried to talk to them and claimed she could go into a room of complete strangers and everyone would be her best friend at the end of the night. I’m sure the alcohol was fueling these delusions.

Because I was trying as hard as I could, I invited her to two events at my house. One she canceled about two hours before the event was going to begin. The second she had agreed to weeks before and then told me her friend was having a party the same night, so she was going to hang out with her. This was after I had ordered custom name cards. I never invited her to anything after that.

I also found our very quickly that the only other coworker in my job role was angry that I was hired as a senior in the position when she hadn’t made senior yet. It’s true I had about 10 more years of work experience than she did. But she was quick to complain about me to the supervisor when I didn’t instantly understand and execute everything perfect.

Which, of course, the supervisor told me because she was fond of saying, “I never told you this, but…” Which instantly made me uncomfortable since if someone tells you things you are not supposed to know, they are probably telling other people things about you they don’t need to know either. She also mentioned that my coworker had been put on a PIP shortly after she started, but had managed to stay.

The Job

The job itself was utter chaos. There were no training materials. My former supervisor insisted that there was no one “right” way to do the job. Unfortunately, she was pretty quick to let me know I was doing everything wrong. Everything.

It was a lot of, we always do this, except when we don’t and “You can ask me any questions!” except when I asked questions and she responded by being snarky and telling me I already knew how to do this. I didn’t. I had never done it before. I also didn’t feel comfortable asking my coworker when I knew she would probably use it as more ammunition.

This was also a new type of job and a different industry for me. I tried to get my bearings, but I didn’t pick up this new engineering information quickly enough for anyone’s taste. My attempts to build an acronym dictionary and create documentation to help me make sense of it was treated with an eye roll. My supervisor told me to delete business names from my dictionary and was frustrated when I pointed out that I needed to know the abbreviations for businesses as much as anything else.

Any suggestion I made to improve workflow or just make things make sense was regarded as irritating and ridiculous. Even when I had been asked to do just that. In this world where nothing made sense, trying to make anything make sense was an act of war.

Mitigating Illness

When I started working I was still dealing with lifelong illness. I wasn’t sleeping well, I couldn’t breathe properly, and after 40 years of this, my body was going absolutely haywire. Navigating daily life was a minefield of migraines and pain because almost anything could upset the fragile system I was living with.

I am unsure of exactly what reactions and issues I had because I was so sick. But I quickly felt like I couldn’t do anything right. Once that feeling took root, it was hard to remain motivated.

The End

Towards the end, I felt terrible about myself as an employee. I felt like I couldn’t remember anything, I couldn’t execute anything, I was constantly being monitored and all I was doing was failing. One day I drove into the office crying out of futility. Later that day I was essentially put on a PIP. The regional manager didn’t believe in PIPs, but I had 30 days to turn things around. The next day I went on short-term disability after I finally admitted to myself that I was too sick from withdrawal to continue.

For a second, I thought I could do it. I could come back from short-term disability stronger and able to figure everything out. But two days later, I realized I was not only terrified I couldn’t do this job, I didn’t want this job. I couldn’t handle this environment and I was so exhausted trying to make it work.

Moreover, I didn’t enjoy the proposal process. I never got my head around the engineering behind what was going on and I was apparently supposed to have enough of an understanding of it to catch the engineers’ mistakes. There was also the realization that if I did the 30 days, I would be under even more of a microscope than before and I was already crumbling from the pressure.

When I got the psychological test results, it only served to reinforce that this was not the job for me. The test revealed I had above average intelligence and my linguistic and vocabulary skills were in the 99th percentile. I also have an average to above average memory. Which came as a shock as I have always thought I had a terrible memory. But somehow, even with all these abilities, I could not figure out this job.

Suddenly, the fact they blew through three employees before I even showed up made a lot more sense.

Reflection

I’m not sure where all the blame lies for this fiasco. It’s probably a mixture of all factors. But whether it was me, my illness, or the madness this job required, at the end of the day I knew one thing: this job was not for me. I resigned my position on what would have been my first day back to work after short-term disability.

Of course, not every person can succeed at every job or in any environment. But I am deeply disappointed things played out the way they did. I am too much of a goody two-shoes to not feel heavy from a failure like this. However, a clean break was the best thing I could have done. When my supervisor didn’t respond to my resignation letter, I felt that silent kind of resolve that feels uncomfortable, but also the only option.

It’s been a few weeks since my resignation, but the entire year I worked there still feels like a fever dream. I’m just so glad it’s over.