I'm sorry to just dump all of this in here, and I probably shouldn't even be posting this, but I have to vent somewhere and convince myself this shit has actually found it's way out of my head.
I work retail. I've never loved my job, but I used to like it. Not any more. I hate it. I feel as if me being stuck here means I have wasted my entire life, and the longer I'm here the more it feels that way.
I feel like I'm never going to HAVE a life of my own, because I can't get any other job, and on this salary I'm never going to get out of this place. I have a degree. A good pharm.chem degree... but it's worthless. It is utterly worthless. I can't get a job in the field, I can't get a job in any field, and at this stage if a load of jobs in the field did magically appear they would give them to people who graduated recently instead of people who've been doing fuck all for years because they had the misfortune to graduate at the exact moment everyone started letting people go because the bottom fell out of the market. I have no contacts. I've never had any contacts. I was the first person in my family to even GO to university, and I was so proud of that, but what a fucking waste of time that was. I'm still working the exact same piece of shit part time job I've been working since I left high school, just with more hours... but not enough hours to actually build a life with.
It feels like some sort of prison that I will never, ever escape, and it is destroying me.
People say I should be happy to have a job at all in this job climate, and I know they're right, and most of the time I am glad to have a job at all... but dear god I hate it more than I can possibly, possibly express. I have legitimately thought of walking straight out of the front door of that place and throwing myself infront of the first bus or delivery truck to come along, and how bloody glad I would be to have that be the end of it. It's not like it would make a blind bit of difference to anyone, because I'm never going to actually make something of my life. I'm never going to make a difference.
I haven't done it, and I never will because deep down I know that really isn't in me to do that (and in addition to that I have no desire to injure anyone else), but it bothers me how much I really wish I could.
I don't TELL my work mates about any of this, obviously. I don't tell anyone about this. I keep myself to myself, I don't tell them about my life... I barely have one to tell them about anyway. I don't want anyone to know anything is wrong. It's none of their damned business. I have a pretty good 'everything is okay' face, to be honest. But it's cracking.
As managers and supervisors come and go it gets better or worse, and we've recently had a new wave of managers and supervisors, again. We get new managers often. All the time, even. I know that eventually I'll outlast them all whether I want to or not. I know that at the end of the day nothing that happens now will have any particular impact other than that it's making my work life even more shit than it was before. My work life wasn't that great before, so it shouldn't really be a big change. I know if I just try not to let it bother me so much it will all just roll along and they'll walk all over me and they'll be gone and I can get on with my life... but what I know doesn't change how I feel. I know that as supervisors go these aren't even the worse ones I've had. Not by a long way. But right now they are the ones making me feel like shit.
Just under a year ago they replaced all the lights where I work, and the new lights they replaced them with give me splitting headaches, and make me feel dizzy and nauseous. I now have to wear tinted glasses at work and I keep travel sickness tablets in my bag to deal with the vertigo they sometimes induce.
Most of the time this is enough to get me through my shifts but sometimes, particularly when I'm stressed (which I am, increasingly), it just isn't enough... and if I feel ill for any other reason before I start work this just makes it worse.
In those cases I have to call someone else to the tills and bolt for the toilets, and it happens often enough that staff know if I dash off with a 'I have to go, I'll be right back' they know what that actually means.
This weekend, while I was doing that, my supervisor insisted on calling me back to the tills. He maintains he didn't know. If he didn't, I don't know how... but even if he didn't I think it should have been pretty obvious something was wrong. I was meant to be on the tills. There was no other job I could have been doing, no other thing I could have been wandering around looking for, and I'm not like some of the other staff who dart out for sneaky smoking breaks -- I don't even smoke. He knew I wasn't on my break at the time. Therefore if I was not in the one place I was meant to be, the tills, it should have been pretty damned obvious that I wasn't there for a good reason.
But no. While I am desperately trying to regain my composure, stop throwing up, and make myself look somewhat presentable, he calls me out, and because he does it by name everyone knows that they're now stuck waiting because I, personally, am not there.
So I go out, and I know I shouldn't have, but I demanded to know if the next time I was being sick he'd prefer it if I just kept serving. In front of the customers.
He stares at me, says something like "How should I know?" ... And that's it.
I go away, make myself presentable, and come back out. Another member of staff asks me if I'm okay and say, quite bluntly, no... but he doesn't ask. He doesn't ask how I am, he doesn't ask what happened, he doesn't speak to me at all. I'm back on the till and he goes and buys some food for his break and goes away without ever saying anything else.
Within ten minutes another member of staff goes home early. Someone else says he went home because he was ill.
Several hours later when the next supervisor comes in to let him go home he sends someone else down to the tills and calls for me to come to the office over the tannoy. We are a small store. Calling me to the office over the tannoy saves him a walk of MAYBE 20-25 metres and one doorway. And also alerts the entire store to the fact I'm being dragged to the office, because that rarely happens in our store.
The member of staff who comes to relieve me actually says 'what's that about?' because it's so unusual.
When I get to the office they're both waiting for me, with formal incident paperwork, and immediately I am launched into a formal overseen report of my inappropriate actions.
I've been working in this place for twelve years and NEVER before have I snapped like I did, never before have I done anything like that, and never before have I been dragged into a formal interview like that. I've overseen them before, but never been the one in the hot seat.
I had no choice but to keep going with it -- he had his second witness to take the written notes, I couldn't refuse. Furthermore I accept that I shouldn't have reacted the way I did... but would it have killed him to have TALKED to me about it first?
Instead of dragging me into the office to have a humiliating formal interview and notes made in my record that I have behaved in this inappropriate manner, all the while other staff were coming in to start their shifts and signing in to the machine that was less than a metre from where I was standing.
I don't even know why I'm quite so mortified as I am. But I am. I'm mortified, and embarrassed, and pissed off beyond all belief that he put me through that, and made a formal note in my fucking file, the first note I have ever had in it, because I was sick.
The interview wouldn't end until I offered an apology, I knew that, we BOTH knew that, so I did accept that I shouldn't have acted that way, and while I tried to qualify it with the fact I wouldn't have been so desperate had they actually answered my previous calls for help, I did apologise for having reacted the way I did.
He just goes "And that's what I wanted to hear"
He never apologised to ME for HIS part in the incident. Because I'm not worthy of an apology and obviously he sees nothing wrong with his part of it.
Not once did he talk to me about it before he dragged me into the office. Not once did he ask if I was okay, or what was wrong. Not once did he offer me one fucking iota of sympathy or understanding, and I'm sorry, but a little bit of sympathy isn't ASKING much.
... I'm so, so pissed off that he treated me like that. And I know I shouldn't be, because I know at the end of the day it's just a bit of paperwork...
But my record was "clean" before this, and now there's this note on my file, this horrible little thing they can dangle there to use against me.
... And I've been stewing about it ever since, feeling more and more aggrieved and upset. I could have burst into tears there, and that's not something I do either. The last time I cried at work was at least eight years ago when we really DID have a real bastard for a boss and he was actively bullying me... but I nearly did over this.
And I don't know what to do. Because there's nothing I CAN do.
I'm just so ANGRY. I'm not someone who skips work, or causes trouble. I come to work even if I'm ill most of the time because we're so short staffed I know calling in ill would mean there'd be no way for them to cover for me. And this is the thanks I get?
I have one, completely uncharacteristic outburst, the only one I've had in TWELVE YEARS because I normally keep that shit under control, and boom, no mercy. I mean I've been a little short with people before but my "Everything is okay, I'm fine" mask is normally perfect at work, and then I have this one moment where it cracks and I'm instantly written up by soemoen so unsympathetic and unfeeling that they couldn't even be bothered to TALK TO ME ABOUT IT first. Didn't even give me a chance to explain before fucking up my record.
... Which just makes me dread my increasingly stressful and dreadful shifts in my increasingly soul destroying hateful job even more, and I know the stress will just make it even more likely that I'm going to feel ill once I'm there, which will just make everything worse.
And when I think about having to go back there tomorrow... I just want to cry. Or scream. But I can't. Because if I do someone might hear me. And if I let the mask break any more than it already has it will be even harder to get it back into one piece again, and without it I don't stand a chance.
