This has been bugging me in the past few days and I figured, why not write about it? I’m under a pseudonym anyway and people won’t know. (Right?) There is such a thing as social media identity and it can either be good or bad.
Staying on my topic, there has been this constant desire for me to just about give up on something that I started working on in a snap. (This post has been placed on and off in the last two days. Oops...)
I started re-working my blog last week and was hooked but after a while, my passion started to shift again and I started to make excuses not to post anything. (I guess I got my mojo back after a short while.)
It has been a habit that I am trying—and failing to remove myself from and is the reason why I move from one job to the other without having any backup plan. My family says that I need to keep my life on track and find a better-paying job (and stay in it.) but once I do get there, I get claustrophobic and sometimes, even get anxiety attacks that further my stress.
In my last job as a contractual worker in a government school, everything felt like I was in a chokehold.
I was constantly transferred from one department to another (the last transfer before I resigned was my decision to ask for one, I’ll elaborate later.) I was an assistant to a director in my first department and everything was actually okay. My boss was cool and he cared about my welfare because whenever there was a typhoon or other calamities, he would always advise me to go home early, and I got to do what I love and that is writing, although it’s mostly writing letters and checking typographical errors in my boss’s report, it’s still very satisfying to do.
I stayed in his office for about nine months and by January 2020, I was reluctantly transferred to another department that soured me to everything about government-related work.
I was tasked to be in the Property Management office and everything about my job description was foreign to me as I am a Mass Communication graduate. I had to receive deliveries and inspect them while also making monthly COA reports and going as far as signing documents that I should not have because it is a job for bosses and directors but my supervisor told me to do so. Bless her heart.
She would constantly blame me if delivery fails to come or if I made mistakes in computing and reconciling millions that needed to be paid (She can kiss my ass because that is an accountant’s job that she’s making me do.)
When the pandemic hit, I was in a work-from-home setup, and little did I know that she told my co-worker to receive delivered items on my behalf and those items cost hundreds and thousands of pesos. That’s when I lost it.
I filed the complaint in the Human Resources Department and told them that if I would be obligated to stay in that department, I will file a complaint against my boss at the Civil Service Commission because any contract of services worker should not be entrusted to sign documents about money and deliveries as well as Commission on Audit reports.
So I was transferred to the University Registrar’s office. This is when I finally snapped and resigned. My co-workers were just so frustrating. They always cajoled me into buying Starbucks even if I did not have the luxury to do so.
They always had weekly Samgyeopsal Parties after work and if you told them that you need to get home early because of other commitments, they will guilt-trip you and call you Kill-Joy. How can I be a killjoy when I just wanted to go home at the right time?
But they took that as an offense and always made fun of me for not wanting to hang out with them. In my head, I just wanted to say this: You guys are way too extroverted. Also, we’re coworkers, not friends and I don’t want to be friends with all of you. I just want to do my job and go home afterward.
They always had backhanded compliments about me and it made me just go further into a deep depression. I always questioned myself as to why I needed to go through this. It hurt that they giggled whenever I made a mistake or whenever I could not locate an old student’s file as if it were my fault when they failed to tell the employee that I replaced to fix her shit and not leave documents lying around everywhere.
They would also blame me if there are lost files that have not been located since 2007. For fuck’s sake, I was only thirteen years old then, you mean to tell me that the employee handling this forgot to place the document in the proper filing cabinet?
That’s when I up and decided to quit.
I only had like, three weeks left in my contract and contract workers are paid only when they are present so I took the risk.
I resigned and never looked back.
So, here’s my advice, never engage yourself with people who would constantly make you feel awful daily.
