Lesson Learned

I got my first job out of college by responding to an ad in the paper.  The ad didn't even say much about what the job entailed.  I mailed my resume to a P.O. box and waited.  I graduated college in 1993, before the Internet...before the opportunity to research a company in advance and know what you were getting yourself into.  I was also very naive when at college.  I thought the career center was for the business students only.  Since I was a music major I assumed those services weren't available to me so I did not pursue them.  I missed out on valuable information about interviewing, the job search, coping in the workplace.  I regret my ignorance.

My job was for a local construction company and I was hired as the receptionist.  My boss hired me because we both graduated from the same college and she respected one of my references.  Within two weeks I was promoted because someone else was leaving.  I was excited and nervous all at once.  My boss would be going on maternity leave very soon after I took the position and I had a lot to learn before she left.  The morning I pulled into the parking lot and realized she would not becoming in my heart sank.  It was time to prove myself.

And I did.  I flourished.  Sure, there were a few initial moments when terror struck because I couldn't remember how to do something.  I remember the owner found me crying in the back room one day because I was so scared.  She reassured me everything would be fine and that she had faith in me.  I took that to heart and did the best job I could.  Pretty soon I was quite confident and getting everything done.  I was really proud of myself.

And then my boss came back from maternity leave.  Everything changed.  I had not spent much time with her before she left but knew that I liked her and was going to enjoy working with her.  She was a talker though and there were a few conversations that confused me. Conversations about old employees and how there had been a friendship but it had gone wrong and she never understood why.  I came to understand from my co-workers that there had been a few people in my position and they all left because my boss drove them out.  I was warned about this behavior so I could prepare myself.  I didn't see it at first but once we were with each other on a regular basis I realized what I had gotten myself into.

During this time I moved out on my own into my first apartment and bought a new car.  My expenses were modest but I needed the job and I certainly wasn't going to move back home; that equaled failure to me and I wasn't going to accept that.  I had worked hard for my independence and I certainly intended to keep it.  And I truly liked working for a construction company and all I was learning.  It is actually one of the reasons I am now working towards my interior design BFA and am interested in pursuing an MFA in architecture.  From an educational standpoint it was a very good job for me.

Personally, it sucked.  I'll just go ahead and say it:  I was bullied by a female boss.  It happens all the time and it is wrong.  We should stick together and support each other instead of tearing each other apart but unfortunately the latter happens more often.  Years later I had a female boss who was bullied by her female boss and I was able to share my insights.  But I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself.

When my boss came back she did not respond well to the fact that I had succeeded in her absence and this confused me.  People who had counted on her for years were now asking me to do things for them instead.  Do you see where this is headed?  Yeah, I didn't - idiot.  As I started to turn tasks back over to her the owners decided to keep them with me.  I get why that made her upset and possibly nervous.  She had been the hub of the wheel at that company for many years and here I was excelling.  I was a threat, but certainly not intentionally.  While I never took advantage of the resources the career center had to offer, I had held several jobs and I have an excellent work ethic.  You tell me what you want, point me in the right direction and I will get it done.  I did not know this would be a problem in this job.

What she didn't realize (right away, at least) was that the owners had bigger plans for her.  They started giving her more responsibilities and moving her towards more project management types of assignments.  She still wanted to hang on to everything else and found it very difficult to let me do those tasks which she had done for years.  One day she actually ripped an assignment out of my hands in front of our Vice President (who had given it to me to do).  He took it away from her and handed it back to me, indicating his wish for me to do it.  I was flattered but she was incensed.  Another time, an associate she typically worked with called me with information she should typically be delivering to my boss.  I thanked the associate, told her I'd deliver the message and reminded her she should be communicating directly with my boss because it was her job.  And yes, I know it is wrong to say, "that's not my job" but that's not what I was saying.  I was saying, "this is her job" out of self preservation because she was getting more and more irritable about people coming to me.

I went to deliver the information to my boss and she interrupted me, telling me to stay out of her business because that was her job.  If she had let me finish she would have heard me say I told our associate just that.  But she didn't and I left frustrated and upset.  It was Friday and things had been dragging on me and she really sucked the wind out of me.  I'd pretty much had it.  An hour or so later, she called me at home, supposedly to apologize, because she could tell I was upset and wanted to know why.  I started to explain but she instead cut me off again and started yelling at me that I was stepping on her toes and needed to learn my place.  That certainly made my weekend much better.

I won't bore you with petty details but I ended up enduring this for four years.  Our support staff was all female and the male project managers came and went so they were often not involved with things happening in the office.  In hindsight I think they preferred hanging out at the job sites because the office was a bit toxic at times.  The verbal assaults and the jealousy got worse and worse and ultimately I couldn't take it anymore.  I went to the owner for help.  She said she understood and would take care of it.  She took my boss to lunch, explained my position and then brought her back to the office to deal with me.  Bad idea.  It was bad....really bad.  And my co-workers, out of self preservation took her side.  They were used to her driving people out and knew it would be worse for them if they supported me.  Outside work they would tell me they disagreed with her treatment of me and said she was petty and jealous.  At work they would tell her I said those things.  She ended up setting my schedule so I had to cover the phones at lunch every day; it was mainly my job to do this anyway, but some were kind enough to rotate with me so I could go to lunch with co-workers.  She put a stop to this and basically isolated me.  They would all go to lunch without me and I knew they were talking about me.  They did it in the office where I could hear it so I knew it was happening behind my back too.

I kept my head down and tried to just do my job but she made it so difficult.  There were items we both used to do our jobs and she kept them all in her office so I had to go in there several times a day.  She made me so uncomfortable and was visibly hostile with me.  I remember having to leave one day for a medical emergency.  I went to her to explain and her words were, "just go."  No consideration, no "are you   OK?" - nothing..."just go."  I was getting sick more often, had chest pains, was sleeping poorly and had a pit in my stomach every day when I pulled into the parking lot.  I needed to get out but I hadn't the slightest idea how to do it.  If I wanted to stay in the industry she certainly wasn't going to give me a good reference and any competitor I worked for would surely get an earful from her.  I was stuck, at least it seemed I was.  The worst part was the owners knew what was going on but never addressed it.  As long as they were making money they didn't really care what was going on with the employees.  I saw it happen with the field employees too - sad.  We also had an office gossip who was related to the owners and she loved nothing more than stirring the pot.  She could get away with it because she was family and they let it happen.

Here's the chicken shit part of the story:  I left because I got married and moved away.  I told them that's why I was quitting.  Technically, it was; but I would have left anyway.  I was finally getting my confidence up to take the leap and then I met Jim.  I knew I could suck it up until the wedding and then just walk away.  And once she knew I was leaving things got better.  She needed me to train the person taking over my position and she needed me to finish my projects.  It wasn't easy.  There were bumps in the road and I got treated poorly several times by her before I left but I tried to ignore it because I was finally getting out of there.  On my last day one of the owners asked me if I would have quit anyway and I said yes.  I didn't tell him the truth though.  I said I wanted to go to graduate school; again, the truth, but not the reason I would have left.  I just wanted out of a very, very bad situation.

Here's the thing, I'm a tough gal.  I tend not to take any crap and to this day I cannot figure out why I stood for that behavior.  I think I finally just resigned myself to it but I am not proud for sticking around as long as I did.  It was a very unhealthy work environment.  Luckily, I was soon introduced to the best work environment of my entire career and I met someone I still consider a mentor to this day.  I think I went into that company with guns blazing because I was never going to be treated that way again and soon realized not every office is like that.  I was surrounded by men and women, all supportive of their coworkers, all working towards the same successes and goals...as a team.  It was wonderful.  Not only were these people my coworkers but many of them to this day are still my very dear friends.  That experience helped me recover and molded me into a true professional.  I have had several jobs since then and I haven't handled every situation the best way I could but I have grown so, so much.  I look back on that time and I shudder.  I want to go back and tell that young girl that things will get better and she will have some wonderful experiences down the road.  But she knows, she knows.