It’s the week of my wedding, y’all! Today, the future-spouse and I are having a spa day. I just wanted to point something out though. I woke up to shower and start my work day (I’ll be playing hooky at noon, don’t tell anyone) while my partner stayed in bed. I started working, chatted with a few co-workers and went to check on her. I peered inside the bedroom and saw my beautiful fiance and our adorable puppy both slumbering in our fluffy bed. On the tv, Big Momma’s House was playing. I love this woman.
I have a few things to get back on track after this week. My small chat with my coworkers, however, made me realize that one thing needs to jump to the top of this list of things. I need a new fuckin job, man. I’m in a group chat with two other coworkers. Let me paraphrase how it went.
Person A sent a video of someone reading funny OOO statuses.
We all 😂’d together over the video and I mentioned that I was considering stealing one or two and setting up my status to either “404 Error. Luke Not Found.” or “BRB. Getting Married”.
Person B, who is verbose and comes off as neurotic to me sometimes, shared a story of when they had a supervisor who was strict about OOO statuses and how they never found out if the entire company was this strict or just this one supervisor they had. I shared that I would like to use a funny OOO status, but I probably wouldn’t (mostly out of laziness).
Person B said “Yeah, non of these sound really COMPANY X safe”.
I said, “Not COMPANY X safe as in people will roll their eyes or something more serious?”
“Depends,” Person B said. They went on to explain that if the person doesn’t like you, it could cause friction. If you’re well-liked it’s refreshing and fun. If not, it’s “off-key behavior”.
I told Person B that I believe them, but I hope they are wrong. Because they just described a really unpleasant place to work. Their response?
“Every place has really unpleasant people.”
“No excuse for a culture that frowns upon fun.” I told them.
“Everyone has different ideas of fun.” That was the end of it for me.
I’ve worked in a lot of toxic places. I just don’t really care for politics or nastiness usually. At the end of the day, people can point to my work and see that it’s good (great, if I may). I try not to get wrapped into things outside of that. I’m usually going to try to make things fun. If people don’t accept it, I’m not going to change. This isn’t something I’m doing on purpose either. This is just who I am. I’d die of boredom far quicker than dying of embarrassment.
The thing is that I settle at this place. I settle for mediocre work that I don’t care about. I settle for mediocre salary because it’s still very high in comparison to other professions. I settle for being under-utilized and overlooked constantly. I capitalize on the freedom and fill it with other endeavors. I work a lot outside of my main “job”. But there have been many moments at this workplace that remind me that I don’t belong here. This…should really be the last one. I’ve had enough moments of nastiness. I’m worried that the next place won’t have as much freedom. But it’s time to find out.