So you may have questioned why the heck I'm forcing myself to try to run a half marathon when I can't breathe. It's kind of a long story but basically it's because I have a list of things I want to do before I turn the big 3-0.
And for those of you who are bored and care to hear the detailed tale, here goes....
Like a lot of people I graduated from college feeling like I had the world at my feet. I had seen my older brothers before me evolve into young professionals with successful careers and I believed I was next in line for such fortune. Unfortunately , I graduated in 2006 versus their graduating years in the 90's. I packed up my belongings and headed home with my fancy diploma stamped "magna cum laude" . I waitressed for a chain restaurant so I transferred to one near home and figured working there for the summer would allow me one last hurrah. Come fall I figured I'd land a job in Boston and move out from my parents house and life would be good.
The summer was great. I went to concerts, travelled to see friends and spent time with family. I made a lot of great friends while waitressing and it was nice to meet new people near home that weren't my friends since elementary school. Summer came to an end and I was left with a bunch of great memories and an awesome tan. I was ready to hunt for a job.
Not living near or going to college in a big city always left me wanting to move to one. I had my sights set on Boston. I started job hunting when I realized I had no idea what I was doing so I relied on Monster and Career Buider. Soon I got calls for interviews and I was so excited. Next I got called back for a second. Yay!!! Unfortunately my naïveté blinded me from seeing that these jobs were not so much marketing jobs as they were door to door sales jobs. And the icing on the cake? They didn't pay well either.
Discouraged I put job hunting on the back burner and continued living the life of a waitress. Working late. Parties. Bars. Fast forward about a year. Waitressing was getting old. All my coworkers were either still in college or were happy. I was neither. I started looking around my home state of Connecticut. After sending out many terrible cover letters and resumes (hindsight is always twenty-twenty!) I got irritated again. Finally I listened to a coworker who offered for me to talk to her husband about a sales job. I really didn't want to work sales but waitressing wasn't getting me anywhere and at least it was at a large telecommunications company. I saw some potential so I jumped on the opportunity.
After a few months I realized retail was definitely not for me. Trying to convince people to buy things and being ranked on it stunk. To top it off I commuted an hour each way, gas was over $4 a gallon and I only got one weekend off a month. After working in two different locations for a total of a year and a half I took the suggestion to apply for a call center position. I had by this time met my now husband and not having normal working hours was killing my social life.
I finally started in the call center which was a specialty department that dealt with promotions for existing customers. At first it wasn't bad. I worked 11:30-8, I was on the phones but had a lot of down time and made new friends. Unfortunately this new high only lasted a few months. Slowly the dynamics of the department began to change and our down time was filled with making outbound calls. We became more sales driven and the job got more and more stressful. After about 6 months I was at my wits end. I used all my sick time and vacation time and was praying for longterm illness or to get rear ended on my way to work. Realizing these feelings weren't normal, I went to go see my doctor. I had anxiety issues and some mild depression in the past and was already taking an anti anxiety medication. My doctor agreed that a change was needed so my dosage was increased and a secondary medication was added.
Life went on. It had its ups and downs. I swore I was going to get a new job. I would go through times when it wasn't so bad and I would forget about the job search and other times I ranted like a lunatic about how unbearable it was. By this time I was going to therapy weekly and venting how idiotic and terrible my job was. I started to at least realize I wasn't alone. As more and more changes took place more and more people complained. This made me feel better and not so isolated. Although I wasn't alone, my health didn't get better. I started having anxiety attacks on a regular basis and had to leave work early without pay. At the height of my anxiety I took a short term leave for a month. This too ended up being unpaid since the company's insurance didn't feel like the leave was warranted. After all I wasn't on that many meds they said.
After going back to work I just couldn't care anymore. Because I stopped caring, performing like a robot was impossible so my numbers slipped. I was asked more than once if a "voluntary separation" would be best. I even had a meeting with HR where I had a panic attack in the office. The HR rep told me to "not get so excited". These people were insane. They made it seem like they controlled the gates to heaven and we should be so lucky to be there. Of course these were the people that had little to no contact with customers and goofed off most days. Managers shopped during their work day. Supervisors came in late. Only a select few did their job, and they were chastised by the others.
Eventually I had to seek the attention of a psychiatrist. My primary care physician and therapist couldn't keep me sane. Finding a psychiatrist was another issue. I finally did find one who didn't take insurance, charged me $400 for my first session and then $120 for every 20 minute follow up. Before I knew it my medication dose had gone from 75 mg as it was when I first started to 337.5 mg. and I also took a second medication that made most people sleep. I became a zombie just get a paycheck. I had to do it. I was married, bought a house and had bills to pay. Not working wasn't an option. I was caught in the midst of a vicious cycle with no way out.
Finally a tiny beacon of hope came my way. We got an announcement that our department was closing. Many were shocked. I honestly saw it coming miles away. We were doing so much busy work so we looked productive, but weren't actually doing anything at all. It did take a rocket scientist to see that the company had been paying more to keep the department open than we were bringing in. The director tried to inflate the numbers as beat he could, but it finally caught up.
The worst part was that we still had to work for two and a half months. It was a joke. Now they did give us two options:
Take severance and unemployment or go to customer service. Close to 90% either took the severance or a relocation package. The day after the department closed and the director was confronted about the terrible morale. He resigned and ran for the hills.
I was finally free. By the time the dust had settled I realized I had spend nearly six years of my young adult life being miserable in a dead end job with zero advancement. This put a new perspective on everything. Every moment of my life was a gift and I needed to start to live it.
