Unemployment - What happened

Okay, so I lost my job back in June of 2009. Yes, it sucks. Especially because for once in my life, I didn't do anything to fuck it up.

No one has ever had a problem with my work. I always performed above expectations. My problem was always other people. People who I considered to be too stupid to live, much less to work with. They were never as smart as I was, they got in the way, they never understood anything, and I could never be bothered to explain it to them. My attitude was, "I'm smarter than you, we both know it, so shut the fuck up and do what I tell you to do." I could never be bothered to listen to their concerns. To me, most co-workers stumbled over the small things. They were simply incapable of seeing the big picture. But instead of taking the time to explain it, I intimidated them into silence and ran right over them.

After losing job after job after job with my boss telling me that although I was the best producer they had, I was the source of negativity and conflict. I was too aggressive with my co-workers. For the first few years, I always blamed them. The boss was a moron if he let me go, when I could put out three times as much work as anyone else, and mine was always perfect, not riddled with mistakes like my idiot colleagues. Yet, my idiot colleagues still had a job and I didn't. At some point one has to at least consider ... "Hey, maybe it is me."

Once I realized that my attitude was the problem, it took several more years to adjust it. I had to analyze and reanalyze everything I said and did and thought. Lots of times I would say or do something as a gut reaction to a problem, and then have to deal with the fallout. Over time, I learned to not react; to take time to reflect on the problem and come up with the best solution. I had mixed results. For the most part it was successful, because I didn't say or do something I would later regret. There were some failures, because when confronted with a problem or accusation, I did not respond right away, and some bosses didn't like that. Not even when I explained that I wanted to take some time to respond so I didn't say something I might regret. They thought I was being evasive and needed time to think up a good excuse. But in the end, I realized that those bosses were the assholes, and I didn't want to work for them anyway.

I had two jobs that really crystalized my main issues. The first was a job as an instructor as a business college. I had a classroom full of people who had to put up with any crap I decided to dish out and they were basically powerless to do anything about it. Now, it's not as if I sat around trying to think up ways to humiliate my students. It's just that when I did get upset about something and overreacted to it, I got to see the effects of it immediately on the faces of my students. I hated it. I hated the way I made them feel. I hated the looks on their faces. That's when I learned that it was okay to change my mind. It was okay to stop and reverse my course, and that doing so would make me look like less of an ass than to keep doing the wrong thing just to avoid the humiliation of admitting that I was wrong. By making class policy and guaging the reaction of my students, I gradually learned how to motivate people instead of bully them.

The second job came right after the first. In this case, I was working with someone who was just like I used to be. Although Dianne was intelligent and good at her job, she was hard to work with. Anal to ridiculous degrees, insisting that everything be done her way, refusing to listen to the concerns of other people. Do not think that the irony was lost on me, it wasn't. I saw me in her. I saw the me I wanted so badly to change. Dianne was a living, breathing example of who I used to be and why I never wanted to be that person again. Some days Dianne would be friendly and nice, even semi-apologetic for the things she did. But it never lasted. A few days later she was barking orders and telling people which trash can to put paper in, dismissing them as if she could not be bothered with them.

As a result, the agents would all come to me for help. Not to intervene for them with her, but just every day office tasks: how to find information, how to download or upload, what forms had to be filled out now and and which ones could wait until later. They came to me because I would help them without making them feel as if they were bothering me or that they were complete idiots for not knowing how to do it. One agent gave me one of the greatest complements I ever had .... she wanted to give me a weekly prize that agents give to each other. The one who got it last week passes it on to someone else the next week. She wanted to give the prize to me, but of course they wouldn't allow it, it can only go to agents, but she announced in the meeting that she wanted me to have it, because I was the nicest, sweetest person in the office, and always the same each day. The agents never knew which Dianne the would be getting every day ... helpful Dianne or Nazi Dianne. But I was the same. I was reliable. I was nice. I made them feel good about themselves.

Me. The horrible person who could not keep a job because of her bad attitude was now the person everyone in the office loved.

A combination of things made me leave that job. I have to admit that the biggest reason was Dianne. After 3 years of working with that psycho, I just couldn't take it anymore. I still have a lot of anger and resentment towards her, but I realize that's because I feel like I let her push me out of that job. Another reason I left was because I was moving about 40 miles away. I got a new job that paid $5 per hour more than what I was getting, plus they paid 100% of my health insurance, and they had a 401K program that they matched up to 2%. It seemed like a no-brainer at the time. And I did do very well at that job, and no one had anything bad to say about me. But even so, the fact of the matter was that the type of surgery the doctors performed was elective, and with the economy taking a dive, people were electing not to have it. So, I was laid off along with two other people.

It was like a punch in the gut. After working so long and so hard to change who I am, my reward was to get laid off. At first I was very deligent about sending out my resumes. I even attempted to go to real-estate school, but then it all caught up with me and I crashed and burned. Most people react to something like that right away. They cry, they mope for a while, then they get over it and get out there and do what needs to be done. Not me. My first reaction is to ignore it. Push it down. Way down. Then I go through a manic phase, where I try all kinds of things. That's where the real estate school came from. Meanwhile, I still havent allowed myself to deal with the trauma.

I internalized my feelings. Squashed them. They bubbled to the surface, but I kept pushing them back down until I pushed myself down into a crippling depression. The crash came around September. After that my sister and her family were visiting in October, then the holidays were here. All that time I wallowed. Up all night playing stupid games on Facebook, staying in bed all day, not because I was sleeping, but because I didn't have a reason to get up. Crying a lot. Staying alone in my room. Cutting of all contact with my family except for my Mom, because she was here with me, and of course wonderful Lamar, who was always there for me online. Every night.

By the time I was able to crawl up out of the hole of my depression, it was January, my unemployment benefits ran out (got an extension, thank God!), and I had no prospects. Maybe I wouldn't have found anything anyway from October through December, but the cold hard fact of the matter was that I did not even look. I couldn't bring myself to open the newspaper to view what few jobs might be there. I'm over it now. I'm looking, but there just aren't any jobs available. Am I too late? I don't know. But right now my plan is to keep looking for a job in my field until my extended benefits run out. If I don't have something by then, I'll just get a retail job. Maybe something part time in the evenings, so I can keep looking during the day.

I can't write anymore. I'm done.