Past Work Experiences Are Never Completely Past

Monday, Jennx left a comment about a fear that is lingering from her first job about being called into her boss’ office because only negative things happened the few times she was. I’ve been thinking about that and looking back over my 10+ years of job experience since college. I have a similar fear/paranoia issue about being called into my boss’ office. In fact, I’m really uncomfortable with any private conversations with my boss.

This wasn’t always the case. I loved my first two bosses in my first two non-customer service jobs. They were good men who were honest and supportive and strong. Yes, if I did something wrong or made a mistake, they pointed it out but they were always quick to praise and I never feared going into either’s office. My third boss after college was something else. It became quiet evident to me that he was a sexist pig who didn’t feel that women belonged in the work force, particularly in a thinking capacit. He put up with the really brilliant ones who’d been in those jobs a long time before him because he had to, but he weeded out the ones that arrived after him who he’d not been consulted in hiring. His office was in another building half a mile away from the one we worked in and I was only called over to it on very few occassions and none of them are pleasant memories. He even told me once that he would write a recommendation for me to get another job somewhere else. He told me that my job was being eliminated but then hired two more people — men. It was miserable.

After I left, I had two jobs with very small companies that are both out of business now. The first had very questionable legal issues going on that I didn’t know about until later. There were less people working for the company than I can count on one hand. I was only dissiplined once there and it wasn’t for anything I’d actually done but something someone else accused me of to get herself out of trouble. I left less than three weeks later and she was fired two weeks after I left, having stolen my last paycheck and gotten her hand caught in the cookie jar. It was the only time I’d had to meet with my supervisor in an office with the door closed the whole time I was there.

The next job I worked at I was never once called into anyone’s office and I left because it was a little boy’s club — I was the only female programmer there and it was just insane. Plus, I was underpaid and had no benefits.

Then there was the job I was at longest. The insane place. The most stressful, illogical work place in the world. By that time I’d come to be paranoid about meeting with bosses in private and that turned out to be true to that place as well. Though admittedly I would be stressed about my annual review and until the last one, I never received a bad one while I was there. It was really only in the last year in that job that going into a room with my bosses with the door closed was all negative, but the only other time I was ever alone with the bosses with the door closed was for annual review (which only happened in June) or to be reprimanded (again only in the last year).

So, my experiences have been that meeting with bosses alone behind closed doors is generally a bad bad thing. I don’t know how I’ll overcome the fear and paranoia, but even now I am generally fearful even if the boss’ door is shut and I’m on the outside — this is a result of the fact that my last boss never shut his door, despite my asking him too often, even when disiplining others and I could hear everything from my desk, but then toward the end, there was some mysterious door-shutting and nothing good came from it.

***

I do have some odd news about my last employer. Someone sent me an email about a possible legal action against them and did I want to participate and would I want my old job back. I won’t go into details because I am slightly suspicious that my old manager was occassionally reading Strategically Bent and may have found his way here and may occassionally read and I don’t want to be the one to pull out the rug from someone. Plus, I dont’ know all the details myself.

I have in fact thought about it and I doubt I will participate. I know that it’s not the company itself I’m angry with. They were just a tool used by the Manager and the Director to get rid of a boat-rocker as they now have a team of people who don’t ask questions and don’t disagree with them even when they are outrageously wrong. The people I am angry with and hurt by are my old bosses, the ones who set me up and conspired to get me out. I have all sort of thoughts and beliefs on the subject as to the whys and such, including my chronic illness, which is covered by the FMLA. I will admit that perhaps I could have been a better employee. I admit I made mistakes, but the reasons they gave for firing me were far-reaching and trivial compared to things they’ve over-looked in people that are still there. However, they covered their asses pretty well and quite frankly I don’t want to drege up all the lies and all the stupidity.

I am still dealing with the depression and anxiety resulting from the traumatic, involuntary, humiliating job loss and I am still trying to get my life sorted out. I am trying to start a new life at a new job in a whole new state and while I miss my friends and my old haunts and the familiarity from living in one place most of my life, I never have to worry about running into anyone I used to work with and when I leave my apartment, I don’t see the place I used to work as a daily reminder of my failure and pain. No, I don’t have a social life. No, things aren’t perfect. But things are peaceful. My new boss isn’t a micro-manager obsessed with the time you are at your desk and whether or not you were 30 seconds late to work. I am treated like an adult, expected to get my work done but respected enough to be left alone to do it without supervision. I am learning something new. My job is creative and challenging and I am encouraged to grow. My boss realizes that he doesn’t understand exactly what we do but acknowledges that we do know and will tell him if there are issues and if there are successes.

So, I guess what it comes down to is that I won’t testify against the company because I don’t really know what they did wrong in my case and my case doesn’t have to do with the legal question at hand, and I don’t want my old job back. There’s not enough money or therapy to make me want to go back to that insanity. I was so miserable. Even if they got rid of management and half the current staff, I wouldn’t want to go back to a place that breeds and festers the kind of unnecessary politics and department self-sabatoge that went on and continues to go on there.

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