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Tis' the season! That's right, it's tax season! I was patiently waiting for my W2's to come in this January and after receiving two I decided it was time to make my appointment at H&R Block. Except that I still needed TWO MORE. Yes, FOUR jobs last year. How crazy it that?! Why did I have so many in just 12 months? I'll tell you why. Dreadful Jobs and Horrible Bosses.
My year started out with an amazing (temp) opportunity that I was really excited for. I actually liked the job itself and my boss. And then the office shut down. They closed their doors and everyone was out a job. Isn't that just fantastic? I had 2 months to find a new job. Two months seems like a long time, but not when you're job hunting. I grabbed at the first thing I could find and after two days on the job, I knew it wasn't for me. First of all, the job itself was mindless. I was calling insurance company after insurance company asking if patient's policies were active during a certain date of service. One after another asking one single yes or no question, over and over again, all day long. Talk about putting me to sleep!
So, on top of this job being absolute shit, my boss was the WORST! I have never in all my years working worked for someone so terrible before. She was an older woman in her sixties, was with the company for many years and had not one single friend in the entire office. Let's call her Susan. Susan was a know-it-all when it came to this mindless job. She would have me call the same insurance company 10 different times a day because "I wasn't smart enough" to make 1 phone call and just ask about 10 different patients. Her words, no joke. She was a control freak and swore up and down I would make a mistake and get the wrong answer noted for the patient. I mean it's YES or NO ... How hard could it be???
Well, little things like this kept happening ... her telling me I wasn't smart enough or qualified enough. Sometimes when I brought little "time-saving tricks" to the table she would shoot them down and tell me that her boss doesn't want things done like that. So what did I do? The next big meeting we have I bring these things up ... and guess what!?
The director (Susan's direct boss) approves them all and rolls out the new protocol immediately. My boss was less than thrilled. From that day on she made my life a living hell! She was always putting me down and talking to me like she was reprimanding her children. It got so bad that they just took me off her team. From that day on I was a standalone employee working on 3 different projects by myself. I got more work done (without her breathing down my neck) than her team of 3 did. My name was brought up to the CEO, he had me on a special project he was rolling out himself, it felt pretty damn good.
Susan did not appreciate any of this, I mean she was with the company all those years and she was a "team lead," she should have gotten all the new projects. Well, she started going to the director every single day about me. "Breanne is on her cell phone." "Breanne was in the bathroom five times today." "Breanne walks around too much." "Breanne was talking to coworkers for 10 minutes, I timed her" ... Now, this all sounds very childish, doesn't it? Well, I ended up getting my seat moved, because again, this was high school, and I was placed right next to the bathroom. Like, two feet away, I could reach out and touch the door I was so close. They kept that seat open because no one wanted it, well now it was my home. Lovely.
Now, Susan wasn't my only problem in that office, it was really everyone. They were all very caddy and immature. God forbid someone had to take a shit during the day. The same girl, we'll call her Roxanne, would scream and yell and make a big fuss if the bathroom smelt like someone took a dump. She would run around spraying air freshener into everyone's cubicles yelling things like "How in the hell does someone's ass smell that bad?" Or "That is so offensive, I can't believe someone would dare do this to us!" Not for nothing, but as you now know I was sitting right there and never smelt anything. Maybe my nose doesn't work or maybe they just needed something to bitch about. The toilets also didn't flush well so sometimes, even if you just peed, you would have to flush twice to get the paper to go down. All hell broke loose if you didn't! If she walked in there and someone left toilet paper the entire office (and the rest of the building) needed to know.
Maybe it's just me, but there was no way I could last in that office. It was a joke and the pay was shit.
I should have run away after my first week. I got a taste for the office very soon in and it never sat well with me. These people were just mean. They would talk very loudly making fun of coworkers and talk down to each other constantly. Everyone thought they were better than the rest. There was no "teamwork" or helping each other out.
Maybe my experience at that company doesn't sound so bad to you, or maybe it does. But to me, it was depressing. I spent more times with these lunatics Monday through Friday than I did with the people I love and I just couldn't stand them! I hated going to work every day, I hated seeing their faces, I just needed out.
I ended up leaving there on a Friday and never going back. I did have an interview lined up the following week so I just hoped and crossed my fingers that it worked out. Luckily for me, it did. After a month they transferred me to a different office (which I'm still not very happy about) but the job itself is pretty awesome.
The moral of this story is... life is way too short to be stuck at a job that makes you unhappy. Find a place that will treat you like family, like an actual human, and a place that will respect you. There is nothing worse than having to wake up everyday and go to a job that makes you THAT angry! And to the shitty bosses out there; SHAME ON YOU!
***All of the pictures come courtesy of Breanne herself!