I’m going to preface this by saying a) I’m no angel. Not by a long shot. Not even by an extra long shot powered by a turbo blaster powered by plutonium and thrown by Superman and b) I’ve never been forced to do anything, I’ve done it all by my choice, so ultimately I am to blame. Pure and simple.
I can’t remember when or why this started, but it started a LONG time ago. I hesitate to even write about it because I don’t want to offend anyone. I’m one of those people that get irritated with people, but they usually don’t know it because “God forbid they get irritated with me!”. (Stupid, yes?) I want everyone to like me all the time and I hate it when I upset/disappoint/anger other people. Yes, realize I need a therapist, but they are expensive and that’s why I have my blog readers. You guys are all professionals right? (Even professional vacuumer counts in my book.)Image may be NSFW.
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Without going too far back I’ll start at my first job after marrying Super Awesome Husband. It was as a salesperson at Petland at a local mall. I was a terrible sales person because I don’t like to lie to people or make them buy something they obviously can’t afford or “of course the $1.99 shampoo works as good as the $7.99 shampoo, you should totally just get that.” Luckily I excelled in other areas there and when the current manager left after being there for a gazillion years 3 months after I started, the owners asked me to take her place. I was 18. The other employees were either my age or older, several who had been there for YEARS. So yay - new job and everyone hates me. I was working 70 hours a week, not able to fire people that were bad because the owners didn’t want to pay unemployment so I had to make them so angry they would quit – the list goes on and on. Terrible situation, stressful, overworked and underpaid, but I didn’t want to be “disloyal” to the owners. I didn’t want to disappoint them and I stayed in that job for entirely too long.Image may be NSFW.
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The blessing/curse of being a people pleaser is that it has followed me to every job over the last 20 years. Bosses love a people pleaser. My husband and I worked at an “alternative” church for seven years (lots of bikers, AA & NA people, tattoos, that sort of thing). It was our life 24/7. Calls in the middle of the night, no days off, no overtime because we were on salary, yet we would get chided for being in our offices at 8:10 instead of 8 am. Seriously. Because obviously being there from 8:10 am – 10:00 pm wasn’t enough. At one point they decided that we all really needed to be only taking a 30 minute lunch. Another time we had had an entire staff meeting that consisted of us being told that our opinions didn’t matter, that the church was not a democracy. Talk about moral being lower than slug in a mountain of salt. Oh the stories I could tell, but this would then be a War & Peace size book and not a blog post. Anywho- we of course stayed there for 7 years. The only reason we ended up leaving was because of the impending implosion of the senior pastor and his wife’s marriage, which we knew would end in the implosion of the church, so we resigned before that happened.
Which brings me to my current job. Which I love. I really do. But, I have a big ol’ but. (Also a big ol’ butt, but that’s not what this post is about.) So the things I love before saying the mean things – they are super supportive of my family. They rallied together to help when SAH got robbed at gunpoint a few years ago and cleaned our house of anything valuable. They take really good care of me. When I was fretting about how to send Mr.Schmee on his work study trip to New York this year they paid not only for him, but for me to go as a chaperone.
Now on to the “I’m a doormat part” – at the beginning of this year I lost about two weeks of vacation time that didn’t roll over. This year I was bound a determined to not make that same decision again. Work/Life balance was of utmost importance. I’m failing miserably because I don’t want to leave people in a bind. We were short an employee when I was supposed to take two weeks off in June to do a production of Peter Pan with my family. They told me that I could go ahead and take it, but there was no way I was going to leave one person to do the work that the two of us were struggling to keep up with.
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This is Not Really Me. I’d Be Wearing A WAY Cuter Outfit and Awesome Shoes.
I’ve taken one day off this summer. ONE. And I was going to take off today and tomorrow to spend some time with the kids before they go back to school next week. BUT. I’m at work today. Using my lunch break to type this. And despite who said what and when they said it, it was ultimately my decision to be here. To stand in the gap as it were. I don’t want to cause other people stress. I don’t want other people to have to be worried or have panic attacks or be upset.
I answer emails on weekends and in the evenings. I work through lunches sometimes. I try to make sure all their needs are met so they will be calm, happy and productive.
I’m here so that I know they will be okay.
Even though I’m not.
I know this post lacks my usual hilarity and randomness. But I feel blerg today. And if I’m not real with you guys, then I’m not being real with anyone.
I know I need to stop being a doormat, but I honestly have no idea where to start.
(Also. Don’t cry for me Argentina, or blog readers. I just needed to emotionally vent today. I’ll be insanely funny tomorrow. Promise.)