Another job question from me...

May 5, 2015 11:07 AM

I'm very unhappy at my job and in the process of looking for a new job/career change but I'm struggling to deal with my current job in the mean time

My boss is just appalling to work for. My company is made up of only 4 people (including me) and it has become unbearable. I'm unable to do anything to better my situation because I don't have anyone above him to go to. He constantly passes his work on to me because he's incredibly lazy. He gives me tasks I just don't have the know how/information to do and then when I ask questions crucial to completing tasks he tells me to "figure it out" which is impossible. Every single thing he gives me is urgent and I'm chastised when things aren't done. He will regularly give me things to do that he should have done days/weeks ago and gives me barely any time to do them.
I have no idea how to keep going here but I HAVE to. I need the health insurance and I don't have the savings to quit while I look for something else. It doesn't help that I'm not hearing back from anyone in my job search. I'm transitioning to a different industry (same job title) and rather than just switching to something else in the mean time I would rather keep my work history tidy. Finding a job in NYC is difficult anyhow.
It's just soul destroying. Every single thing he does triggers my mental health issues and I just don't really know what to do. My medication (mood stabilizers for anger) is barely cutting it anymore and my psychiatrist already upped my dose.
The thing that's upsetting me the most is that it used to just bother me at work, but now it is all I can think about at home. My whole week is just waiting desperately for the weekend and all weekend I just dread going back and it's so miserable.
Have any of you experienced such a thing in the past and how did you deal with it? Any tips on shutting off when work is done and enjoying my personal life? How did you deal with tough job searches?

Thanks in advance for listening/your help.

posted by shesbenevolent to Work & Money (10 answers total)

You are on the way out of this job, so treat it as a story that happened in the past. Your terrible boss story is just gaining more and more detail right now, so think of it as something you can talk about as if it's a horrible thing you go through, but you did get through it, because you will get through it.

Make sure to shut off the work at night. Don't open your company email, don't mull over problems, and in fact, don't even spend time discussing or complaining about work until you're out of there. When you get home or wherever you go after you leave your desk, leave all that at home.

Do your work to the best of your abilities, but don't try to be a superstar. If he's a miserable boss, he'll realize that getting someone new to put up with his crap will be difficult, so while I wouldn't advise slacking off, I would also not advise trying to please him by working a ton of extra hours or stressing about things.

If he yells at you, he's an asshole who you used to work for (in your mind) so just chalk that up to another story you can tell.

Work hard on your contacts and getting those resumes and inquiries out there. It'll happen!
posted by xingcat at 11:19 AM on May 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

Is your boss also the owner? If not, you do have another level you can go to, even if they are largely absent.

If the boss is the owner, things get tougher. Is it possible to pick up a couple PT jobs to get by while you look for other work? It seems like staying where you are will only make it harder to find a new job - every day you stay there is going to continue to sap your confidence and stability.

You don't specifically state what he is doing to trigger your mental health issues - is it just the constant pressure and stress or are there other issues that may make it a potentially hostile work environment? If he is going out of his way to make your life miserable, I'd imagine that NYC has some pretty employee-friendly laws that may help you out.

Get out of there however you can - PT jobs, different career field, anything. It's clear that you are very unhappy and I don't really see a way to "fix" this job.
posted by _DB_ at 11:19 AM on May 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

Strategize going unemployment on the basis you will be fired for not having the skill set necessary to complete your tasks. How about returning your work to the boss in a manner that shows a high level of incompetence, over and over? Don't be late or miss days, but be utterly and thoroughly incompetent. In your next job interview you can explain that the position just didn't fit with your skill set and you decided to find another position that would. Of course, you won't use this boss has a reference but it's not unheard of to get references from previous positions as long as they're not to far in the past. Lots of smart people get fired all the time, it's nothing to be ashamed of.

Really, don't sweat it. Get fired, collect unemployment to tide you over while you look for your next position in a state of good mental health.
posted by waving at 11:31 AM on May 5, 2015

I think at some point, you have to reconsider waiting for the perfect job before you jump ship. You should not sacrifice your personal wellness for a "tidy work history". Who has one of those, anyway?
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 11:40 AM on May 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

I agree that this sounds like a situation where you are cornered. It doesn't sound like talking to your boss will help too much and quitting is not a great option. You could try talking to your boss and letting him know it's hard to keep up with some of the deadlines, so you would appreciate if he could try to send you assignments sooner. Not sure how much good it will do, but we know for sure that doing nothing will not change anything. He may be lazy and selfish, but he may not realize how hard you have to work to meet his deadlines, or he may not realize that you notice how late he chooses to forward assignments along.

The good news is that, if you did get fired, you may be entitled to COBRA or subsidized health insurance. I was laid off and collected unemployment, and got subsidized health insurance for $200 (or was it $300?) a month because I had no income. That was like a week or so of unemployment. This was before the Affordable Healthcare Act, so it's possible there are better options now. I think the fear of being fired is what is stressing you out and putting so much pressure on you in your job, but it doesn't need to be this way. Being fired could be hard, but it could work out just fine. I think you will be fine either way.

So, knowing that being fired isn't the end of the world, I would just stop stressing. Can't meet a deadline? Oh well. Send it the next day. Boss gives you an impossible workload? "This is not possible. I can send Priority Assignment X tomorrow, but Y and Z will need to be later in the week." Start setting realistic expectations. Boss yells at you? "Understood." Let it roll of your back. Being yelled at isn't fun, but I had a horrible boss and I eventually realized that he is just an ass who doesn't know how to deal with anyone and it isn't about me. I suspect if your boss is as lazy as you say, he won't fire you because that would force him to do all the work himself, so you would probably need to push things pretty far to be fired anyway. I bet you have more power here than you think.

You're going to be fine. Just start missing deadlines, and spend more time searching for new jobs. Outside of work, don't check your work email at all. Stop caring as much as you can.
posted by AppleTurnover at 11:48 AM on May 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

Would it be possible to talk to him about the schedule more honestly? E.g., "X and Y or Y and Z can be done, but not X and Y and Z, given the timeframe we have and A and B. So which two are most important?" Or ask him for a meeting early in the week to get a sense of what might be coming up?

If you're going to be fired, it'll happen anyway, might as well assert yourself
You're his employee, not his slave.
posted by cotton dress sock at 12:49 PM on May 5, 2015

I've been in this situation more than once, so I am going to put a few things that I did to temporarily survive the job.

So here were my solutions to survive:

• Do you have any sick days/personal days, etcs.? I typically never use any of these days, but if a job is horrible, I start to use them up. My rationale for the occasional sick day is "everyone needs a mental health day." If you start to occasionally do this, save up personal days or whatever have for interviews. In retrospect for the jobs that suck, even using up vacation days might be feasible if you aren't likely to last/stay at that job.

• You might disagree with this, OP, but if you really aren't happy and it starts to eat into your mental well being, anything is better than that. So in the past, I have quit and found a throw-a-way job (any part time job, retail, whatever it takes). Do that part time and look for a job as fast as you can.

You also ask about finding a job in a tough environment. To me, it sounds like your job search could be tough in 2 days: 1) this job sucks the life out of you and perhaps you might worry if the next one could be like this (I used to have those concerns) and 2) if you are changing fields, you might need to learn the landscape, so to speak.

So when I was in a job that I hated and wanted to change careers, the main thing that I did that helped me address both those issues was info interviews. Not info interviews the way you here some people talk about it (ie, networking, yada yada yada, magic job lands at your feet), but more to ask questions about job environments so that I did not end up in a similar situation. I also used it to find how to search for the job (ie, search terms, job titles, more types of companies to look for) and advice from people who had the job now as to how to get there.

So I made a list of questions, including deal breakers and makers that I wanted in the new job. I would set up meetings with people who currently had those jobs (see here for scripts if this helps you, not typing it all over again). Believe it or not, these were often fun. I would meet over lunch, and usually meet someone who had a very similar background and wanted to help out. But I asked them my questions (you don't have to be specific and intrusive, so for salaries, you can ask, "what is a typical ball park range of someone starting out in this industry"). But what paid off for these info interviews for me was that I also found out things such as alternative job titles to search, other employments settings that I did not think about, what was hot in the industry (and what to emphasize for your CV/resume for the HR people/recruiters/whatever who might search for those terms). IF may people suggest a class, or volunteering, or whatever it is, consider that, too. But at least you have data and information to work with, directly from people who have the job.

Believe it or not, scheduling an info interview every other week (whether it be a phone call or sit down with someone) was able to help me feel like I was escaping from the horrible job situation. At least for a moment, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. It also did pay off when I eventually learned that there was not just one or two jobs out there, but 10, 20, 50, depending on how far you expand the title and the settings that you want to work in. I even eventually found a list with tons of companies in my industry, specific to my city and environs.

Good luck.
posted by Wolfster at 1:22 PM on May 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

Regarding the health insurance part of your question, at least, you should have reasonably affordable options (Thanks, Obama!) if you leave your employment-based insurance, due to the ACA. You will be eligible regardless of whether you resign/quit or are laid off, fired, whatever -- eligibility for insurance tax subsidies are based on the bare fact of losing your coverage, unlike say unemployment benefits.

Depending on your income you will either be able to sign up for private insurance with a sliding-scale premium cost tied to your income, or for Medicaid if your income is below a certain threshold. (If your location in profile is still correct, your state has indeed expanded Medicaid.)

I do this work, though not in your state. But I can give you some more guidance if you like, just MeMail me.
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:33 PM on May 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

I definitely feel you on the work stress spilling into home stress--that's happened to me, too. Can you spend a couple nights a week somewhere fun instead of going straight home after work? (Perhaps a movie, or window-shopping, or reading in a corner of a nice quiet bar or cafe.) That's helped me in the past, and it was even more helpful when I went out with friends and forced myself to talk about something other than how crappy my work situation was. It won't help in the office, but it will at least buy you a couple evenings of sanity each week.

I also found it really helpful to channel my frustration entirely into my job search, as an alternative to venting verbally. You may not have this problem, but I caught myself spending hours over the course of a week complaining about my job to various people, when I could have spent that time hitting job boards, working on cover letters, etc. On the days I came home with Hulk-rage, I started shutting myself in my room and focusing entirely on searching for jobs and signing up for meetups in the industries relevant to me. Once I took that approach, I ended up scoring a phone or in-person interview every other week, on average, until I found my next job. I got rejected a lot, which sucked, but having a steady stream of responses assured me that at the very least, companies were interested in me and I was making progress in my search.

Worst-case scenario, other commenters are right--you can collect unemployment if they fire you (as long as you've been employed in NYC for three consecutive quarters), and you can definitely get free or very low-cost insurance in NYC as an unemployed person through the heath insurance exchange.

I'm really sorry you're going through this. Working for a bad boss at a tiny company is a special kind of hell, but it's a hell you will escape. I hope you find a way out of there soon!
posted by Owlcat at 7:58 PM on May 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've been where you are. You don't need strategies to help you cope with staying--you need strategies to help you get out. Take a pay cut if you need to and try to find any job with benefits that will pay your rent while you look for something more permanent. A tidy resume isn't as important as being emotionally healthy. I had to do this exact thing and I never regretted leaving the toxic work environment I was in. Good luck to you--feel free to memail me if you want to vent to someone who has been there.
posted by bookmammal at 8:00 PM on May 5, 2015 [2 favorites]