Working in the corporate world can be really challenging. Especially when you work with someone who repeatedly chooses not to do their work, but rather focuses on sabotaging the work of others. It becomes even more challenging when her manager supports her irrespective of this behavior and chooses to turn a blind eye to the impact his inability to act has on the mental health of those working with her.
Recently, I reached my breaking point, whereby I announced that I could no longer work with her because it was impacting my mental health. This conversation became known to leadership, and what changed after that conversation? Nothing. Absolutely Nothing. That’s not true, now we have managers on all of our strategy calls. You know, so my colleague’s manager can prove that his employee is a standup up employee. As though her short-term success of 3 weeks, wipes out her inability to perform her duties for the last 3 years.
The toxic work environment has made life very challenging for me. Every morning, before logging onto my computer I have a minor panic attack. Today the stress became so overwhelming, that I genuinely felt as though I was going to have a heart attack. I don’t know how much more of this stress I can take. I recently had a few calls with my colleague and her manager whereby her manager would cut me off or where he was aggressive. At first I thought it was in my head, but when I spoke to another peer, he advised me to stop escalating on my colleague because he felt that I was ‘receiving retaliation’, his words not mine. Could you imagine that? I receive retaliation for speaking up and saying that working with a toxic person is affecting my mental health.
It has been so difficult, and this whole experience has changed me as a person. Unfortunately, I am being taught a lesson that I didn’t know that I needed to learn. People just love money so much, that they don’t care which human they sacrifice to get it. Now I’m reminded of why money repulses me so much!
The sad part is that my kids can see me breaking. Today before my son went to school, he gave me a pep talk. He said ‘Make her do her own work mumma’. And I said I would try. I thought that was the end of it. But later in the day, I heard my son tell his friend ‘my mom is really sad because she works with someone who doesn’t do their work’. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that its not because she doesn’t work, its because leadership just doesn’t care to do anything about it. They have put up this façade of support, but they don’t really care to fix the issue. They are more focused on ‘protecting their own’.
It becomes increasingly hard when my body is starting to shut down because of the stress. I have an autoimmune condition and the steroids that I normally take to control it aren’t working. So I am having to start a new medication tomorrow. Injections that will be administered at the hospital. Each injection costs $4000.00 and all I keep thinking is about the irony of this situation. Work is causing my body to shut down on me, but I have to keep my job so that insurance will cover my medication. And so now I will be stuck in this loop that I compare to the likeness of an abusive partner. Where I’ll have to stay because, what is the alternative?
This whole experience is becoming so unbearable. But I’ll keep trying to put one foot in front of the other, and trust that god has a plan for me that is better than anything I could have planned for myself.
—-xoxo Sandy
The Inner Workings of My Thoughts 