A long time ago, I was working in a pretty toxic environment. As the person with the lowest seniority, I could be called in to work any shift with basically no notice. The manager had clearly watched The Devil Wears Prada while taking notes rapturously. I was sticking it out because my family needed insurance, and I was under the impression that I was the reason I just couldn't hack it. It was an intensely low time in my life, but it gave me an extraordinary gift.
As I created work to look constantly busy in front of the camera on an overnight shift (management would watch the tape first thing in the morning, as she was looking for problems), I wondered what had gotten me to this point. I would hem sheets in Hell to keep my family afloat, but this surely couldn't be the only job I could do. What had made me so desperate that I took this job?
I had told myself that the job's eight-hour shifts would allow me to develop my own business, but things had not worked out that way, between the stress and the exhaustion of shifts at different times of the day. At a break, I made my first freedom chart. I listed out every single necessary expense for each month--mortgage, childcare, gas and car upkeep, utilities, groceries, debt repayment, etc. I then listed out what the expenses could be if I backed out of this job--less gas, less childcare, slightly more utilities, etc. I could see that I couldn't back out and not do any work at all, but that, with careful planning, we could squeak through. It especially helped that the Affordable Care Act was making it more plausible for us to have insurance without a job that offered it--this might be possible.
I then allowed myself to dream big, and made a column of what the expenses would be if we didn't owe any credit card or student loan debt. At that point, I saw, we had a chance to have flexibility and even a future retirement. It's not like I saw a way out of it, but it was nice to see the numbers for the other side.
When I started coming home still crying after the hour-long commute, Fuzzy declared that it was time to let the job go. We would beg our parents for help if necessary, but this was over. The management responded to my letter of resignation, in which I extended my notice period to protect my coworkers' vacations, by pointing out that they could still fire me at any time. I refrained from responding, "Would that mean I would get unemployment?" They immediately switched me to all night shifts, due to a whole variety of circumstances. It conveniently meant that I could never go to Human Resources with parting observations.
My mother has always said that people get what they deserve without any help from us, and in this case, it was true. Within the next year, the difficult manager would be fired for her treatment of employees, and her name appeared on a Yelp review for dressing down employees in front of guests at her next job. I just wish I could have been in the room to see her lose her power. They could have sold tickets. Lots of us would have attended.
It's been almost eight years, and we didn't always have the best luck, but my list nowadays looks a lot closer to the dream column. We have a few more expenses nowadays, but they are manageable from month to month. I actually have a retirement account with a chart that indicates I'm on a good path to retire in my mid-60s, and while the pandemic has been stressful, no one has told me that I am no longer allowed to speak unless completely necessary or that having lit cigarette ashes land on the sleeves of uniforms is always the employee's fault (smoking was allowed on the floor).
I am so lucky for the life I have lived since walking away from that job. I have reconnected with my chosen career path, found dozens of wonderful people, and have had the opportunity to truly explore what I honestly want from my life. To those who are in a mental position like mine back then, I say this: There are other jobs out there. They want you to believe that you are not worthy of any of those jobs, but you are. Keep applying. Keep making connections. Get out of Dodge, and leave the smock as you go.
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