I had the perfect job. The one I always
wanted—in an exciting industry, for a big name company, with a title that says
I get to do what I love all day long. Except for that—well, I hate it.
It's painful to admit it. My job went from
being the greatest job ever to being a horrible job. It took a few months so I
didn't completely realize it was happening. And speaking from experience, the
grieving and recovery process is quite long.
I know, at some point in your career –
maybe at multiple points – you’re probably going to have a bad boss but when
that person turns into a real nightmare, it’s explainable. And as it turns
out, a terrible boss doesn't just impact the way you work in the office. It
affects your entire life.
...And if your peers are women! Forget the
sisterhood. Forget smashing a hole through the glass ceiling and throwing a
rope ladder down to her younger female colleagues. The Queen Bee is alive and
well and — watch out — possibly sitting at the desk next to you.
A Queen Bee is someone who has worked her
way up to the top in a male-dominated organisation! Rest I leave it up to you
to decide and in my case I had two of them.
I have been witness to people exploiting their
positions for their personal gains. These ‘higher authority’s feedback were
biased and echoed no work ethic. When the time came for my evaluations, my
bosses gave me a 15 min. lecture about how to ‘act’ like the Queen Bees. I
guess, such is the way to climb up the ladder in A-grade media houses in India.
Shorter your pants, bigger your salary!
"In this economy," we're told,
"you should be thankful you have a job at all." Well, yes... But also;
no.
Being able to support yourself is
important, of course, but anyone who is aware of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
will tell you that once your basic needs are covered, you'll automatically
yearn for more. You may have a job, a home, a husband and children, and still
wonder, 'Is that all there is?'
If you're young and ambitious, it's not
enough to have a job - you have to have the job. There is so much emphasis on a
coveted career: a job that doesn't just sound cool, but which gives other
people a case of the green-eyed monster. When I was a kid, everyone wanted to
be a doctor or a lawyer. These days, we want to be do-it-yourself millionaires,
zippy entrepreneurs or wacky internet personalities.
For the people stuck in this trap, the
appearance of the job matters more than the reality. But why slave away to
impress people you don't even like?
But , imagine you’re “living the dream,” as
you told your proud parents and envious friends upon receiving the offer
letter. When you walk through those fancy doors to your fairy-tale
With time I figured out, I was spending most of my effort each
day trying to take on the persona I needed for the position I wanted—a persona
that just didn’t come naturally to me. It was exhausting, and no matter how hard
I tried to force it to be a fit, it just wasn’t.
My admission came when I got off of work exhausted
and bullied by my bosses, yet again, raced to the nearest pub to meet my
girlfriends, and burst into tears when they asked how my day was. (Of course,
while sobbing, I swore up and down, “I’m really happy though, guys!” until they
held a compact mirror in my face and asked, “Oh, really? Is that what happiness
looks like?” (Touché.)
I struggled to get past the feeling that I
was giving up the perfect opportunity—the opportunity I’d been wanting for so
long, one that “most people would kill for.” And one day, I decided to throw my
resignation letter up on my boss’s face who’s nothing but a faff. And I did
just that.
It took a while for me to recover from such
a trauma. My fiancé who’s my husband now, were very supportive. At times, it’s
very important to have a partner who understands your needs even before you say.
Yes, here comes the best part of this job – I got married. And like a knight in
armour (pun intended) R flew me in his (well...Indigo’s) jet and I went from a
world of meetings and suits where people listened to my opinion to being a
nobody writing a book in a cafe.
