If you don't love what you are doing, than there is no point in doing it...Once you realize your unhappiness leave it behind before it hurts you worse.
This has become very relevant in my life this year, and I had to force myself to live by it even though I felt like I was doing the wrong thing. In 2012 I lost my job at a horrible call center because, let's face it, I am not good at it. I had three months until my wedding and I was desperately looking for any job to keep my family a float and keep my wedding on the horizon. I looked around Craigslist and I started in the Art Jobs section because that i what I went to school for. I saw a job in Screen Printing just catching shirts coming out of the dryer after printing. The ad was old but I emailed them anyway and interviewed the next week. I got the job and thought I had lucked out completely.
This company is run by two relatively young guys (30s) and at the time of my hiring there were only five other employees running the whole shop. I started working 2 days a week catching shirts to look for errors and doing shipping and receiving. It was apiece of cake and I could listen to my ipod and work pleasantly by my self most of the day. Within the first two months of me working there, the assistant to the lead press operator (K) on the Automatic press quit and I got moved up to helping him and working five days a week. with a raise in my first two months and sudden full-time employment how could I complain that my job was getting very difficult very quickly.
I continued to work as an assistant on the Auto Press with K for about a year every day trying my hardest to learn this job which was thrust upon me and I really didn't like at all. K is a very rude 26 year old who absolutely hated me the entire time we worked together. Every day I would work my hardest to try to make him like me or make him feel proud of my work. We would awkwardly make conversation every day for 8 hours in which he would sprinkle in insults here and there like it was his favorite thing to do. The attitude of my bosses when I brought it to their attention was that I needed to chill out because it was "just a little razzing". Our shop kept growing and we needed to handle more volume. It was decided for me that I would move up to operate a press all by myself with only a year of training as an assistant to K. From that moment on the pressure was at full blast and I started to crumble under the tension.
I was the lead-press operator for a solid six months and I was starting to really get into my own stride, when they brought in a new kid who never worked in screen printing before to be my assistant. I had to teach him everything about the job and they wanted me back to full pace speed in a month. As it turned out, even though my new assistant A was a very cool guy and a dope graffiti artist, he was the slowest person in a production setting ever and he needed several lessons to learn anything. I opted to be a good teacher over forcing him up to speed which only made K more annoyed with me. I was sure that I should just keep pushing harder and trying more to make him proud of me, I should have known it wasn't going to work like that.
Up until this point I had only been doing 4 color or less shirts on my press and it was decided that I needed to have the pressure turned up on me again to "make me a better printer". I was given 6 and 7 color shirts from that point on and K started to watch me over my shoulder all day long to wait for every moment where he could berate me. I was lucky enough to hear talk shit about me to all of the other employees (up to 12 others at this point) which wasn't even about my work ethic but rather about me being "trashy" and "worthless". I had a few days where I could't hold the tears back which only made my torment worse. I was told "no one would respect me" and that I needed to stop being "hysterical". I don't think there was a single day when I didn't cry on the bus ride home and my stress and anxiety over work really effected my performance.
After I begged for my bosses to do something to help the problem they decided to try one more thing to make us work it out: take us out to a restaurant (which I know the whole staff at) and "talk out our issues together". This was the worst thing yet for me. Here I was in public being told by all three of my male bosses how I was a crappy employee and a drama queen who need attention. I could take it no longer. The men in my job were determined to make my life a living hell and I couldn't sleep because I was having anxiety attacks about going back to work the next day. I went to my therapist who I see for my PTSD (from childhood trauma, not work) and I told her how I was feeling. she just outright called it "bullying" and it clicked, I was being bullied as an adult and I didn't have to take it.
I quit that job. I may not be able to get another job where I will make $13/hr anytime soon but at least I am not miserable all day and panicking all night.
My life is so much better without it.
and that is my Homework @missy @rambo
without further ado... BOOBs
