Work drove my friend crazy.
Barbara is a 49-year-old single marketing executive, who owned her own consulting business for a time. After she and her partner decided to part company, Barbara worked for another consulting firm for about two years, and was let go when the firm fell on tough times. A few months later, she landed a job as director of marketing communications at a giant insurance company.
“I should have sensed things were strange from the start,” she recalls. “The day I reported to work, the woman who hired me began three weeks of medical leave. I started off without any guidance, and when my boss came back, she quit.”
The job Barbara was hired to perform kept morphing into something else – usually ill defined – under three subsequent bosses. Every one of her new bosses was given conflicting goals, and each had a different vision of what she was supposed to do. As soon as she adjusted to her new goals and priorities, her boss was fired or reassigned.
Her current boss came from a company the insurance giant had acquired. His priority was to build his own team and cut costs, so he tried as many ways as he could to get rid of Barbara. He’d ridicule her in front of others at meetings and criticize any work she gave him. She started gaining weight, having panic attacks, and generally dreading the thought of going to work each morning. She felt as if her whole life was unraveling: She always acted professionally and was proud of her diligence, dedication and the quality of her work. Being made to feel as if everything she did was worthless and unacceptable caused her to sink into a depression.
Under the care of a physician, Barbara began taking anti- depressants, yet she felt that her increasingly miserable situation was hopeless. The matter came to a head recently when her boss gave her an assignment that normally would require the work of several people over many weeks. He gave her an ultimatum: Finish the project by the end of the week or get fired for incompetence. Barbara felt as if she were going to collapse.
She called the company’s confidential crisis hotline and asked for help. The counselor suggested that since she was already getting medical help, she could ask her doctor to fill out a form saying that she qualified for temporary disability. That would give her three months off work at about two-thirds of her normal pay.
Barbara got the paperwork done and told her boss. At first he was enraged, then puzzled, and finally somewhat pleased because Barbara’s disability status meant she would be out of the picture (and his budget), but he wouldn’t have to fire her and look bad.
Now, nearing the end to her disability period, Barbara is feeling somewhat better. She is trying to figure out what to do with the rest of her life.
“It’s not easy being a 49-year-old woman and looking for a job that pays decently during a recession,” she says. “Half the women in the professional marketer’s group I belong to are looking for jobs. I don’t want to feel sorry for myself, but I really think the way I was treated was pretty shabby.”
The moral of Barbara’s story? For the most part, ignore your employer’s evaluations of you. Their opinions are subjective, and only have power because 1) they can lead to your dismissal and loss of income and 2) you believe them. Save up a nest egg to carry you through tough times, do the best job you can and remember there’s always another job.
(C) Copyright 2002 Evan Cooper. Syndicated by Paradigm News, Inc.
