I need someone to talk me down ...

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I haven gotten to a point, in this job, where I have to have a chat with myself to stop the stress and frustrations and irritation I feel when it comes to corporate America and the big machine.

I work for a very large global company and we have gone through some very difficult times over the last few years. While I enjoy my specific little job, the big machine has hacked at it (and all its employees for that matter), making changes, making things more difficult to get the job done and basically throwing wall after wall at us until I now do not recognise my job any longer. It is meaningless drivel that does not provide any of the previous job satisfaction I used to have. I daily have to bang my head against a brick wall because I am tired of fighting with management to make them realize that they are making me do 60% unnecessary paperwork and leaving me only 40% of time left for my clients. I can't understand why they can't see that they are hurting the business!

While I am generally a stick-with-it type of person and have been quite optimistic for the last few years, hoping the tide would turn and things would get better, I am now devoid of all hope and ready to throw in the towel. Right now I am sitting at my desk, typing this, close to breaking point and feel that, with even the slightest nudge I am just going to snap and quit on the spot.

I recognise that no job is worth this stress and I am the first with sage advise to tell another poster to get thee far away from this nonsense, but as with all people who are good at giving advice, I am crap at practising what I preach.

Perhaps I am at a low moment emotionally and I want to cry at the drop of a hat - maybe I'll feel better on Monday - but the only thing stopping me from marching into my bosses office and telling her to shove this piece of shite they call a job is because she is genuinely the only person who understands (she is going through the same turmoil) and she is a friend as well as my boss. The only reason I have stuck it here so far is because I just couldn't land all my work on her already overloaded back and leave with a clear conscience. The company, I could care less about, but her I do care. In this industry the chances of us working together again are very likely and I just don't want to hurt myself professionally as well as personally. If she went and quit on me, I would be devastated. Then I would probably quit also and follow her ....

Anyways, I guess I'm not sure that I really want any advice. This is probably something I have to think through on my own. I know what I should do. I also know what is holding me back from doing that. I decided to promise myself I would stop sweating the small, medium and large stuff. I guess I just want to rant.

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quit. I just did and I feel much better. Your final destination is the ground so enjoy your life.

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Heeven- Do you have any vacation time left this year? If so, why don't you take some time off, just to "chill out" and get away from the job.

Right now you appear too emotionally involved to make a decision as to what is best for your career. When you are more rested, you can begin to think about what is the best thing for you to do.

Oh, if you just want to rant, you have my shoulder and my ear!

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You sound such a nice person, its stressing me to think of you unhappy!!!NOW IM STRESSED!!
Only kidding.
All I know is that we have to work, some people love there jobs and feel appreciated, others you nad me included, dont.
Youare a small cog in a big machine and believe me its people like us that make the world go round.

Alternatively, picture everybody you work with naked, except for a bow tie,itl make you giggle.

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material girl wrote:

Alternatively, picture everybody you work with naked, except for a bow tie,itl make you giggle.

My brain! Auugghh! Somebody stop the pain, please!!!!!!

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Bear! I just spotted your thread on corporations and it's so apt to how I'm feeling right now.
Unfortunately I've let this shite go on for too long and had some medical issues (probably brought on my the stress!) and so I have to have the medical insurance cover for at least the next year while I am getting an MRI update and some medical stuff done. I could get a different less-stressful job but it would sort of be the same kind of work since this is where all my experience is .... but I have decided to spend some time thinking on what it is I really want to do and making a change.

Phoenix, I am taking two weeks off at Christmas and going home (Ireland) to visit all my family. It will be a huge boost for me and it's what is keeping me going for now. They will be excellent to hash all this stuff out with as they are very supportive and smart. I will be able to talk to them and get great feedback.

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COBRA baby, money well spent

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Great, Heeven. You really need to "get away from it all" right now.

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I agree with Bear's suggestion re COBRA. It's expensive, but you don't have to start paying the premiums right away (unless you need to submit a claim right away) and can let it lapse altogether without paying anything if you get another job with insurance benefits.

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This happened to me about a year and a half ago. However, I could not give a rat's a$$ about my boss - he was an a$$, but some of the people who reported to me would have to take on an incredible amount of workload as we already had too much.

I was so stressed that I had these "ice pick headaches". They were so bad and intense that I went to the doctors - fortunately they were benign. Unfortunately they would not go away unless I decreased my stress and increased my sleeping - pretty much quit my job. I didn't as I needed to help feed my family.

Finally something did happen at work to break the camel's back. I started to search for a new job and the first interview I went on I got an offer. I had a very positive impression of the company and took the job. It was very difficult to tell the person who directly reported to me, especially since the person reporting to him just gave his notice. I let him he would get a promotion to my position as a result - he pretty much said I don't think I want that job (after seeing the crap I had to deal with - I cushioned it a bit for my group).

I left - I only had about 2 of those headaches since. The person reporting to me did get promoted - he took the job and shortly after is now at another company (much happier himself). To be honest, you have to look out for yourself. Start looking now - be fair to your boss when you do leave - give the two weeks and help out as much as possible to make it an easier transition. If this boss is as good as you say and you leave on a positive note, your boss will understand and not hold it against you. The funny thing is the company I now work for - a former boss is the head of the department - I quit from that job quite a long time ago and as a result of my good then and the good note I left on - she did not hesitate recommending me to be hired under her again.

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DrewDad wrote:

material girl wrote:
Alternatively, picture everybody you work with naked, except for a bow tie,itl make you giggle.

My brain! Auugghh! Somebody stop the pain, please!!!!!!

My father wears bowties. You can only imagine how I feel.

Anyway, Heeven, you are getting too involved with protecting your boss and are not protecting yourself. Right now, you are enabling the situation. By hanging around and holding it together, upper management -- who are often oblivious, as I'm sure you well know -- get to think everything is hunky dory.

Sit down. Take a deep breath. Now, think about exactly what would be needed that would improve things. I know that waving a magic wand and putting you in another, far less stressful, job, would do that, but let's think practically here. Here are a few things I can think of off the top of my head. Some might be practical, some not. Some are costly, some not. I recently went through something like this at my job and, while I am not deliriously happy, I am less stressed -- but still watching the calendar until my contract is up. But at least I've taken steps to assure that the time between now and then is as pleasant as possible and burns the fewest possible bridges. Okay, here goes. This is gonna be long:

Get an assistant. This is costly in terms of salary but the person need not be full-time for you, and you might be able to sell this as an assistant for your boss. While the easy stuff can be helpful in terms of decompression time, it tends to make it so that the harder stuff becomes a lot more stressful simply because of a time crunch. So, the solution is to palm the easier stuff off on someone else (I like to call this easy-hard). You may be able to sell this to your boss -- seeing as you are friends, you may be able to be a lot more open about things -- as a mentoring and training of a possible successor to you.
Ask for your duties to be changed. It may not be impossible. Again, this is an easy-hard thing, where it's a lot more likely that the easy stuff should/will go to someone else.
To go with the above, whenever something good happens, ask to do more of it. I love training. Every time I do training, I get accolades, so I always ask to be able to do more training. Sometimes I get my wish in this area (sometimes not, for sure). This is the positive side of asking to do something else.
Get more training so that you can be valuable doing something more enjoyable. If you want to be a stockbroker (and I have no idea what you do, so I'm pulling this idea from thin air), if it's at all related to what the company does, see if you can get training. The company may pay some or all of it and you'd be away. And, you'd be able to sell yourself as a stockbroker (or whatever) and perhaps take full advantage of the internal postings. If all you do is Excel spreadsheets, you may just be seen as an Excel jockey. And if that's what you want to do, great, but if it isn't, it will help for you to change others' perceptions of you.
Update your resume and interviewing clothes. If you stay, you got some nice threads and gave yourself a lot of great pats on the back by putting in writing what you really do. If you leave, you have the tools you need to get started. If you want to test the waters, you can do that, too. This makes it possible.
Find ways to change scenery. When I was in insurance, I absolutely despised my boss. But her boss was okay. So I found a way to get a transfer to a nearby office (it was also a strategy on my part, as the company never seemed to promote anyone unless they had shed some blood and changed offices at least once). The hated direct boss eventually left and, in the meantime, she and I had not had to directly deal with each other all the time. I didn't have to smell her stenchy cologne or listen to her grating laugh or watch as she waltzed in late and went home early. I moved back to the old office (the home office of the company) about three months or so after she left. I hadn't loved the other place where I landed, either, but it was still better than being around her.
Get an understanding of priorities. This is what I've done at my current job. I get work from everyone, but now it funnels through one person (most of the time) rather than a bit here, a bit there by everyone. When I was getting work from everyone, it seemed like a rush all the time, and they all wanted something, like being pecked to death by ducks. But in the current scenario, I get to negotiate with one person. She may not be the most organized person on the planet, but she and I try to work together to get a handle on what is needed. I have the exact same amount of work that I did before, and it's the same type of work (hence, I'm not deliriously happy and am still thinking fondly about the end of my contract), but the situation is now tolerable. This might help you, too.
Find out if there's any way to streamline all of the paperwork. In Excel (and, in fact, in most MS products), macros can be written in order to handle repetitive tasks. I use them all the time, to do the stupid stuff, like set the print area and pop in a required footer in every document. Could I do those things every time? Absolutely, but I'd have to remember them and that means stress, plus I'd have to spend the time, which means that, instead of figuring out how to create a monster query, I'd be setting a print area. This is another aspect of easy-hard -- get the technology to handle the easy stuff, if you can't get a human assistant.
Start looking for work now, regardless of your medical situation. It can take months to find a job, particularly a higher-paying one, and the holidays are practically upon us, so finding something right now is not likely. But this is more than just the resume and the clothes. This is also, posting your resume online, checking internal listings and networking. I know that this is work and I am not without sympathy, but it's a helluva lot easier to look for work if you are already working versus if you are not. You may want to quit now, but it's a lot more practical for you to try to stick it out, if you can, if it's at all possible, as you will be far more likely to get a better replacement job if you don't have bills hanging over your head, which would make it more likely for you to just take the first thing that comes along. This will also give you a chance to get your health in gear. Go on interviews if you get them, and see what happens. If your boss finds out you're interviewing, so what? So long as you are not using company resources to look outside the company, it is none of her business unless you start to ask for more money or leave. It is within your rights to be able to look for work. And, if you are as miserable as you say you are, she'll be surprised if you're not looking.
See if you can take a leave of absence. Look into your HR's policies. It may be possible, particularly if you show you are getting some sort of training. It's worth investigating.
Quit. I have done this before, quit without a safety net, and it is good for a brief amount of time but then reality sets in and you have to start paying bills. I don't recommend it, because it takes a while to repair all of that. It's not impossible, but it's not simple. It was in 1990, and I find I am still paying for it in terms of missed retirement account opportunities. It can sometimes take a while to right the financial ship if you do something like this. But it's not impossible. If your health is being compromised, it may be a necessity. But try to explore other options before you do. This really should be the action of last resort.

I hope this helps. Feel free to vent here. Bad working conditionsa stink and they tend to run our lives if we let them. So let it out here.

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Bi-Polar Bear wrote:

quit. I just did and I feel much better. Your final destination is the ground so enjoy your life.

The ground might be your final destination, Bear, but not mine. I plan on being cremated and then having my ashes mixed in with some pellets in a bunch of shotgun shells.

Then I will leave a list of names with my cousin Vilhelm and instructions to take them out.

I can not give you the names of the people on the list because some are political in nature and I would prefer that the black helicopters stayed away from the swamp.

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Its apparent that gus has spent waaay too much time thinking.

Is there anyway that you could negotiate a contract with your company to allow you to act as a free agent. They would be unburdened of the corporate benefits and you could make the trade as salary.

I left a very great position that , after a bunch of years , left me undatisfied because Ibecame a manager of scientists and no longer one myself. I negotiated a partial services contract and have never looked back, my own company is now large enough that its worth more separate than as a division of a larger public company.

Look at your options as jes stated then go and dont play "what ifs"

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I hate to hear you are so stressed Heeven.

I would never, ever , picture you unhappy.

My only advice would be to use your vacation as a complete stress break.
Dont think about your job
Dont think about your stress

Just enjoy your family and calm down for a while.

As soon as you get back, start stacking the pros and cons up.

Browse the market for another job that fits your experience and see if it would be worth it, even if it is a lateral movement instead of a progressive movement, to leave where you are.

Take some time like Jespah said, and try to see if you can get an assistant.

But, if possible, put a time frame on it.

Say - Over 2 months I am going to work on getting that assistant.

If after one month of that 2 month time it is starting to be obvious that you are not getting that assistant, spend the other month browsing jobs.

2 months goes by, nothing changes, start moving into another job with another company.
Maybe, putting a time frame on the possible solutions, MIGHT help reduce the immediate stress as you will know that it can be over in ___blah blah__ time..

I hope my rambling made sence..
Im still trying to finish my coffee and I get de-railed quickly. Wink

( big hug)

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Re: I need someone to talk me down ...

Heeven wrote:

. . . making changes, making things more difficult to get the job done and basically throwing wall after wall at us until I now do not recognise my job any longer. It is meaningless drivel that does not provide any of the previous job satisfaction I used to have.

Oh, man, can I relate to this. Why, oh why do the make it so hard to do the job that is to there benefit, and not ours.

Sure glad you don't want advice; I don't have any.

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gustavratzenhofer wrote:

Bi-Polar Bear wrote:
quit. I just did and I feel much better. Your final destination is the ground so enjoy your life.

The ground might be your final destination, Bear, but not mine. I plan on being cremated and then having my ashes mixed in with some pellets in a bunch of shotgun shells.

Then I will leave a list of names with my cousin Vilhelm and instructions to take them out.

I can not give you the names of the people on the list because some are political in nature and I would prefer that the black helicopters stayed away from the swamp.

actually Gus, truth be known, I plan to have squinney stuff me. I will be placed in the foyer with my arms outstretched for coats and a hard on for hats.

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Well I did some thinking over the weekend, checked my finances, calmed down a bit, and talked to my sister.

I went into my boss first thing this morning and told her how I am feeling. I laid out the issues that I have serious misgivings about, the problems that are frustrating me and making me want to hand in my notice.

I told her there were two options:
1. I hand in my notice today and leave.
2. We work on some solutions or improvements over the next few months to see if things can get better.

Jes, your post was freaky, it incorporated two items that I felt would improve my situation.

One being the assistant. I asked for an assistant that I could train to take a lot of the superfluous paperwork off my hands. My new assistant is arriving first thing in the morning!

The other thing being the training thing. I have been so overworked and stressed that I have not had the time to take part in advancement education and classes that I really wanted to. I've watched other people having this advantage and me working til 9/10pm every night and not being able to sign up for seminars and stuff.
My boss signed the form allowing me to take classes at MIT in January. I will be taking a week off work to attend a business seminar/continuing education class there.

Another item that has gnawed at my brain is a particular manager who I have to work with. He is an arrogant prat and I've done my best to work on his accounts despite him but he is one of my biggest issues. My boss has agreed to wean me off most of his accounts and transfer me to new accounts so I can work with more professional (and reasonable) managers.

All in all it was a very positive meeting and we agreed to come back together in 3 months time to talk again and see where we are positioned. I explained if I am no happier then perhaps it might be a good idea for me to move on. She was very upset at first when I talked about leaving but promised some immediate changes and I'm willing to see how it goes for a short period. I truly don't want to chuck it all without making an attempt to meet her half-way, so I will put my best foot forward for the next few months and then see how I feel.

Much thanks to my pals for letting me rant a bit. It's amazing how, when you let all that sh... out, that you feel a bit o' relief.

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I'm glad to see things working out for you, Heeven. You've always been one of my favorite emus.

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Yep, on Friday I was saying "Stick a fork in me, I'm done!"

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I picked up on your stress, and, to tell you the truth, it bothered me considerably. I shuffled around the swamp, idly kicking up dust with my boot and muttering, "I hope everything works out for Heeven". A few of the animals cast me cursory glances because they aren't used to me talking to myself, but then they went back to their respective business.

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I need someone to talk me down ...

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