Life Update: Work and stress

In my last wrap up, I mentioned about stress because of my job and promised to make a complete post about that. So here it is, finally a life update after a long time.

I am too vocal about feminism and how “few” men are bad (in my review on “When I hit you”). There is a reason for that. I have always ended up as the only woman in any team that I was part of at work. So many women study in Universities, where exactly are these women? Because when you enter the corporate world, it’s men who dominate. I was discriminated a lot since I was a woman at my previous workplace. There were men who hardly knew anything and were dumb, but still I was the target which clearly suggests sexual discrimination. Before I joined that team, I thought your gender does not matter, as long as you put in enough hard work and were smart. I realized I was wrong, thanks to that horrendous team and sexist manager, who flirted with his female coworkers. It was probably the fact that I did not believe in flirting that I was targeted by him. Anyway, I was happy to be out of that team for good.

For my next job, I chose a female manager thinking that there will not be any discrimination. And there was no discrimination but she came with a different set of problems. She acted like a control freak and kept track of every single movement – micromanagement to the extreme level. She also would give snide remarks, rude and hurtful comments. Why? Maybe she was a sadist and felt happy when the other person got hurt. Or she was just a horrible person. She had divorced her husband and her personal life was a mess. Maybe that got reflected in how she interacted with other women. Or did she end up in a messed up personal life because of her horrible attitude? I have no idea. Women managers also have other issues like jealousy, pride, attitude problems etc. I did a mistake by not leaving the team when I had time. Every time I spoke to her, I would end up feeling hurt. I would then start yelling at anyone I met, just because I could not yell back at her. And then I ended up having a kid which made switching jobs impossible.

Life got even more miserable with a cranky baby and a horrible boss. I dreaded going to work and hated working on anything. I got irritated for every small issue and started snapping at people. My parents and hubby took the brunt as they failed to understand why I was being so rude and angry for every small issue. Even I had no idea why I was behaving like that. I was never happy, even if my personal life was great. I tried looking for a job change in the last few years, but since I was already feeling low, I could not crack interviews. I also had no time to prepare for interviews with the current job stress and small baby to take care of. I, then, did what I could do – complain to higher authorities which is what I did. I complained and got a team change within the same group last year. I thought this would be the end of my misery since I had a new “male” manager again who was polite and seemed nice.

I could not be more wrong since my previous manager – the psycho woman wanted her vengeance, since I still had to interact with her team. She would say all kinds of nasty things about me to my new manager and started creating problems between the two of us. If I did something, it was wrong and if I did not do something, it was wrong. Every small thing I did was blown out of proportion and made into a big issue. I started hating my job and career itself. I badly wanted to change my career itself, since I could not deal with the work politics. This year I decided that I will give few interviews and if nothing worked out, I will end up leaving my job. I could have left earlier too but then I would not be able to work again. This is the bane of all immigrants who cannot even take a break of few months from their work, even though they have worked for 10-15 yrs in this country. I have always been an ambitious person who wanted to do well in career and I was never meant to be a housewife, so I could not just throw away my career. Also it does not make sense to throw away all the hard work that you have put for all these years to build your career, right?

Thankfully, I was able to get an offer from a different group within the same company. The work looks really interesting, compared to the not-so-interesting work that I was doing in my current group. Now I am waiting for the transfer to happen. But I am so much more happier and suddenly life does not look so miserable. I also realized that I did not have any issue with my career itself. It was just that I was working for a crappy manager and team. I also heard from other friends that people start treating you differently at work, as soon as you have a kid. People discriminate you just because you are a mother and are responsible for another human being. Books helped me a lot when I was feeling depressed and low. I read more books in last few years than I ever did, because I had no mood for anything else. But I haven’t been able to focus on non-fiction and high fantasy from last few years, thanks to all the stress. Hopefully, things will improve now.