Every day I talk to people who are my friends, my family, whatever--people in my real, non-work life. Many of these people think I'm smart, or talented, or capable, or creative, or independent, or clear-thinking, or whatever. Some people even think I'm more than one of the above. They know me as the person who, faced with a problem, will come up with a solution; the person who can cook anything, find information on the Web, build furniture, fix broken things, write an awesome letter of complaint. They know me as the person who will generally come up with new ways to accomplish some goal, when the old ways aren't feasible. Most of my friends, at least once in a while, look to me for help or advice or something--they think I have a clue of how to get through life.
But every morning at 10:00, I walk into my office, and immediately I am surrounded by people who remember my every mistake, my every flub, my every flaw; people who think I'm incompetent, a liability, a joke. If you listen to these people, I'm the most remedial person in the department; my mistakes are used as punch-lines, and my personality flaws are fodder for the office wag. Even when I -do- manage to say something insightful or useful, my boss credits the idea to someone else--someone less-stupid than I apparently am--and when I object, or say "Actually, I was the one who said that," he laughs it off and encourages the rest of the gang to play along. Other people are given extra tasks and projects, letting them display their capabilities; I, on the other hand, am left out of even the simplest projects, and when I ask why, I'm either accused of being "angry" or "touchy" or "whiny", or I'm reminded of assorted past mistakes. Apparently I am the only one, of the six people in the department, who has ever made a mistake; or perhaps the other ones' mistakes are forgivable, where mine are evidently not.
Somewhere there's a middle ground, between my away-from-the-office self, with the giant "S" stitched across her chest; and my at-work self, sitting in the corner with a dunce cap on her head while all the other children laugh and point. One side is more-right about me than the other; one side doesn't know me very well.
Tonight, though, I don't know which side is closer to the real truth.
It sure sounds to me like the person your friends know is your real self, and your job is a disaster.
ReplyDeleteUpdate the resume.
I think I remember you once telling me you had been a teacher. Can I ask why you left the profession?
ReplyDeleteKids, mostly. I was an okay teacher (or I would have been, if I could have been myself and not constantly living in fear of various administration-type people and/or over-involved-in-all-the-wrong-ways parents) but I was a truly crappy disciplinarian. And of course, those administration types care about two things: one, bring up the test scores; and two, make sure the kids are quiet and inoffensive. Then, too, I sensed that kids were changing in ways I wasn't prepared to deal with. I truly cannot imagine being a middle-schooler, or the parent of a middle-schooler, anymore; it's a completely different ball game than it was even when I was teaching in the mid-90's.
ReplyDeleteReally, though, by the time I left, my heart wasn't in it anymore. It's kinda the point I'm approaching in this career as well: my feelings of generalized failure have overwhelmed any sense of satisfaction I get from the actual work. I'm a lousy employee, truth to tell; I have major issues with authority, which manifest themselves as pure terror masking a fierce inward rebellion. I'd be best off as my own boss--but that would involve risk and possible failure (my two fears) and a period of complete economic insecurity, which my mom would seize upon and worry me to death about. Easier to slog along in my rutted little path and hope for some epiphany that will allow me finally to be ME, maybe even before I'm too old to care.
What a ray of sunshine I am tonight! :)