I have recently seen a few people speak about issues they have been experiencing at work, so I thought I would share my story. I was going to share this at the end of mental health week, but I had to do a lot of research. I will mainly focus on the emotional journey rather than anything else. The journey may not be comfortable reading. If it helps at least one person, it will succeed.
“You will get a salary increase of 70%. This will never happen again. This position will come with increased responsibility. Congratulations!”
You get an overwhelming feeling: have I been underpaid by 70%, or why is there such a big increase? Thinking about it now, I realise that this was the moment where I should have stood up and said, “Excellent, what training courses am I being sent on?” It didn’t filter, and I returned to my desk, happy but bewildered.
Fast-forward a few months, and you discover what that increased responsibility means. An error report comes in from a customer about a test site, saying they can enter any weight without limits on the website’s form. The immediate response is to be told that this is a “schoolboy error” with no proper investigation made into the context. Feeling rather foolish, you fix the problem but say this check was not requested, only to be told you should anticipate what the customer will do.
Just before finishing up for Christmas, you get sent a link to a training course that you think looks pretty good and immediately get told this is just for information – you won’t actually go on the course. Feeling quite disappointed, you carry on.
A few months later, it was finally decided to put the site live. Despite your best efforts, quite a few problems have been reported. You get called into a meeting to discuss the site; each problem is your fault. I tried to suggest it was a team effort or that I didn’t work on that particular code. I was told that you are not being a team player. You have to accept responsibility for some things in life.
Each new problem rolls in, and communication breaks down a little in the team. People set impossible-to-meet deadlines without making clear what they are asking for, with the assumption that if you throw enough time at something, it will surely work. After a while, I became numb to the number of issues we had experienced during go-live. It became more and more difficult to care. Everything was because I had been sloppy and had not checked this or that.
Eventually, they demanded that I email progress reports of what I have done each hour. I felt like I was constantly being watched by someone waiting for me to fail so that they could stand above me and say, “I knew it!”
In team meetings, I describe the issues that I have been facing. I was told that the customer is thinking of cancelling our contract. Everyone else at the table was going to be okay. I will not be. I felt numb. After a few meetings like this, it changed to be that they will start having to let people go. It would have been my fault if the more junior members couldn’t stay.
The immense pressure fluctuated in my life. I became disinterested in what was happening. My girlfriend, who had her own demons, started going out without me. When I was out, I wouldn’t say much. I withdrew. I saw her in photos with friends and became distrustful. What was once a good relationship was taken over by our individual issues. We both stopped communicating.
Eventually, we split.
It was the right decision.
Read on for Part 2