Work

So I am sitting at work right now, alas I should be working, right. But to be honest, I don't really feel like it and therefore I decided to at least start a Blogpost, telling you why I don't feel like working and why I don't really like my work anymore. This wasn't the case all the time, I used to really love working here.

I started about two years ago, after I had been sick for a while and also lost my job in December 2010. I had been home for about 9 months and started to feel bored and anxious to get out of the house. I searched the Internet for a while because I didn't want to have a long commute because I knew I didn't want to work more than 3-4 hours a day. So an hour or more to commute would have been pointless.

I found this really small Start-Up Company and applied for a 20-hours a week part-time job at which I also had the opportunity to work from home if necessary and it was only a 10 minute drive from home. Basically it was my boss, his assistant, one sales rep and me, plus the wife of my boss who came in every once in a while to help with office stuff like sorting documents, xeroxing and scanning. I liked it a lot and even though I had lots of stuff to learn I felt comfortable in what I was doing.

About 4 months after I started my boss's assistant had to quit because of health issues and therefore we ended up alone at the office for a few months before finding an intern who stayed 6 months. During that time work was overwhelming and I ended up working overtime, sometimes even on a saturday, plus about once a month I had to work evenings for meetings. Things started to become hectic and then a private disaster happened. My daughter, who was 5 at that time, needed open-heart surgery. I started to be sick again on a regular basis,probably because of emotional stress, my immune system wasn't the best, I worried and had depressive episodes. Through all this time my boss was very understanding, he always said family comes first and health is more important. Whenever I talked to someone about my work, I said how much I appreciate him as my boss, knowing others have a lot more problems at work.

In the end I had to take time off for about 5 weeks to care for my daughter, but as my boss asked a few times if I couldn't come in at least a few hours or take stuff home to work I agreed, arranging with him that those hours will be handled as overtime. Back then it all worked out fine for everyone. As my husband also works from his home-office it wasn't a problem to go to work for an hour or two while my son was at the kindergarten in the morning and my daughter was at home watching TV. In the end I had enough overtime for about 10 days and took some over the christmas holidays because most of my vacation had been used up during the year already.

But, as mentioned before, life sometimes throws you a curve ball and you have to deal with lots of unexpected things all of a sudden. Psychologically I felt better, healthwise not so much and in the end I decided that I need to quit working. I do have a huge surgery coming in September and all in all, even though the job isn't that stressful, I feel like it is draining my energy. I get up, get the kids ready for Kindergarten, go to work, come home, have about 2 hours to do stuff like laundry, bills or whatever the heck needs to be done and then pick up the kids again. Those two hours are just not enough. Throw in a surgery that has an estimated recovery time of around 6-8 weeks and the fact that my contract would have had to be renewed in September I decided to tell my boss I do not want to renew it right away and am unsure if I will ever return.

NOW, we are at the point I am right now. Boss knows I am leaving, we do have a girl here now who came as a 3 month intern, was suppossed to leave in June but has extended her stay until October and is doing a pretty damn good job, so I am basically useless right now. And boss has started to treat me that way. As soon as I tell him I have a problem and need his help I am snarled at, he once told me he thinks "I am playing dumb because I don't want to do it and I am leaving soon anyways". I am getting all the work on my desk that he doesn't feel like doing and he constantly is annoyed if I ask him something or tell him I have a problem with stuff.

Worst situation was when we had a huge Summerparty together with some Business Partners and a) I wasn't asked to work there because it was on a Sunday and he assumed I didn't want to because I have family (and I would gather overtime hours) b) when I showed up anyways because I wanted to help and my kids wanted to see what I was doing he told me I wasn't needed and c) I later found out everyone else including Business Partners, Interns, Sales Rep and himself plus his wife and daughter had gotten some nice Incentive for working on a Sunday (basically everyone except me). I have worked my ass off, spend lots of extra hours at work and usually didn't say no. And that's the way to thank me...plus he argued about my overtime and vacation trying to give me less than I still have left.

I am sooo done with him and the job, just glad I only have 6 more days. At the same time I am sad it turned out this way.

Did something like that ever happen to you? And how did you deal with it?

Irene