March 2
The beginning of a month is usually a time of planning and paying out strategies and goals for the rest of the months. Since the start of the pandemic, the work approach has shifted in many aspects including a shift to online meetings and events planning. While it has resulted to be difficult for some, be it the barrier to technological knowledge or in some extreme cases the refusal to bow down and adapt to this new era, in general, over the course of a few months, most of the people I work with have come on board with the idea and have continued their participation/contribution.
Unfortunately, to some degree this has meant a shift in the way that work is carried out, with the workload of certain individuals increasing disproportionally while the compensation is non-existent. I have had this conversation with many people and it always seems to circle back to the idea that you should never work for the money. But when the money and the mental health start to become a barrier, a job is no longer viable, nor exciting, nor fun. Struggling to pay bills is no feast, nonetheless during a pandemic when the household income is cut in half, so yes, money is important (as sad as that might be).
Interestingly enough, March started with some strange requests of things to do that until yesterday I had no “privileges” of working on, but all of a sudden they needed to be completed yesterday. It can all mean one thing: someone did something wrong and need it fixed right away. Springing stuff to an employee on an already overwhelming workload is becoming such a normal occurrence and is normalized as the right thing to do. Pushback, as I saw in many cases, was meat with anger and eventually the person was let go.
In the book club conversation this week, we derailed greatly from the book itself and this topic of workplace toxicity took a life of its own. It is one of those situations where it is a little comforting to know that you are not the only person going through it but nonetheless it still makes you sad for yourself and for everyone in the room. No matter how much we analyzed the sources of all this grief that people are having to put up, it all came back to greed and the need to be the center of attention and the center of conversation for those in managerial positions (at least in our respective workplaces) with complete disregard of the work or acknowledgement of the people or the work that goes on behind the scenes to make it look all pretty and a piece of cake.
We left with no answers to comfort each other and the ride home got me into thinking about this a lot. As a person who prefers to get the work done and stay in the background where I can enjoy the privacy and the quiet that I so much love, it takes a lot of work to sit in the opposite corner and try to imagine where all that stems from.
But I guess, just as any other day, you stay grateful for the people around you that help you understand perspectives, no matter how useless they really are at changing the reality that tomorrow I will wake up to the same demanding emails, phone calls and meetings that require that the entire list of tasks be finished “yesterday” (a sentence that I have come to really dislike).
Then again, tomorrow might also bring change, so one has to remain hopeful.
