So there I am, Thursday morning, having been so thoroughly deflated the day before that I had not even had the appetite or energy to think about, let alone cook and eat, any dinner. (I should point out that at now 6 months pregnant, not having any appetite is something of a rarity for me.) I'd woken up, too early, with that familiar feeling, knowing that it was going to be a Difficult Day. I lay there, eyes open but not focusing on anything, body still half asleep, catatonic, just staring at nothing in particular in towards the corner of the ceiling. I was aware of the sun peeping around the curtains, and of my partner stirring next to me, but I couldn't move. I couldn't focus my eyes, or move my facial muscles to look anywhere else. I certainly couldn't smile or speak. All I could do was lie there and wait while my brain got on with its chatter.
I call these times my 'busy head' times. Sometimes it's best to ignore the noise in my head and distract it with something else - I have found in the last year or so for example that by listening to an audio book when I go to bed, I can usually get to sleep whereas before I used to suffer with terrible bouts of insomnia. Don't get me wrong, I'm not hearing voices, not other people's voices or the different voices of my alter egos or anything, just my own whirling, whirring thoughts, as we all do. Sometimes however, it's a good idea to shut up and listen, to take control of the direction a little. So, lying in bed, I asked myself why I was so upset, what had prompted this negative emotional response? Was it all because of a bloody fishy bagel? Why did that upset me so much? Was the bagel just the icing on the cake? (That's definitely a poor metaphor, mixing fish and icing.) "Yes" I thought, I am upset about that, but not just that. I found it incredulous that someone would deliberately prepare a lunch for a group of people they knew reasonably well, and not offer a choice, and in fact knowingly exclude one person. Was it luck that my 3 colleagues all happened to like cream cheese and salmon bagels? Had this been discussed prior to them being prepared? Had no one thought to say that I would be ok just with the cream cheese on mine then? It wasn't just the fishy bagels per se, it was the manner in which my not being able to participate in this group activity of food sharing was flaunted.
I had already decided without any thought necessary that I had made a mistake going to the meeting yesterday. My boss had tried to discourage me from going and now I understood why: I was no longer considered to be part of the team and my presence was irrelevant. I hadn't realised that and had hoped that the meeting would bring a positive slant back into my current work situation. I realised then that I had already been struggling. During the last 3 and a half weeks, although I was happy to concentrate on just dealing with one main area of work, rent arrears, I had felt increasingly side-lined. I'd had no formal contact with anyone else in the company - no meetings, no 1-2-1s - and other than a handful of tenant visits that I'd arranged as part of my duties, I had spent almost the entire time sat, on my own, in my little home-office, working in silence on my computer. I realised that the reason I'd felt so pleased to be able to get out in the garden or get on with menial tasks after my 'shifts' were over, was not because I was wanting to do them particularly, but because it meant I didn't have to sit there, looking at my computer screen, for a minute longer. I had already been sinking.
I deduced too, that any decent manager in their right mind, on having an employee return from a bout of stress-related anxiety and depression, would try to make sure to keep them as involved and motivated as possible. Yet, at the end of the previous week, I had received an email from my boss telling me that I was to change my focus from rent arrears - which I had actually been making significant progress with - to estate inspections. Just estate inspections. Now for those of you who don't know, estate inspections are something pro-active that yes we would all like to do but tend to end up at the bottom of our already ridiculously long to-do lists. They are usually scheduled in so that we get to carry out a formal inspection of each of our housing blocks, schemes or estates about once every 3 months or so. They can be pleasant; they can be miserable. Much depends on the weather and who you are doing them with. And there's usually an awful lot of paperwork that follows, more often than not a zillion repairs for communal lighting, stair nosings, guttering, paving, or grounds maintenance and tenancy issues like untaxed vehicles and rubbish in gardens. They are generally regarded as a necessary evil, a way of us keeping an eye on the overall state of things in a particular area, and possibly, if time and money permit, suggesting certain community initiatives or environmental improvements.
I like estate inspections in some ways because I like the pro-active, project-type aspects of our work. However, the prospect of doing nothing but estate inspections for the next 3 weeks, apart from the odd day where I would, I presumed, be expected to attend one of the many arrears court hearings I had now lined up or to execute a warrant for eviction, dismayed me. I had immediately queried this instruction from my boss, asking whether she actually meant for me to do this as well as my rent arrears work, in light of the fact that I was due to increase my hours the following week. Maybe she had thought it would be good for me to get out and about? She had called me back and said that she had been instructed to make sure that all my inspections were up to date before I left, and that no, the temp would take over my arrears. In other words, I had once again set them all up for someone else to strike down and take the credit. I had expressed my concern and argued that I had a number of cases that I had put significant effort into to make sure we got the best outcome, and she reluctantly 'let' me keep an eye on those cases, but made it clear that my task for the remainder of my operational time with the company was to be spent wondering around my estates, on my own, checking for repairs. I felt like I'd been put out to grass.
As I lay there then, thinking about all this, I tried to console myself with the fact that I did only have to be in this situation for 3 more weeks. Well, 3 weeks and 2 days actually, but hey. And the weather forecast for the next few days at least was good, so it would be nice, nay, good for me to go out in a few hours time and start my inspections. And it was true that they had been neglected recently. I had already timetabled all my inspections to fit around my court/eviction dates for the next 3 weeks so it was all do-able. So why did I feel so completely and utterly as if I would struggle to get myself out from under the duvet when the alarm eventually hailed it as time to do so? Why was I unable to smile and say good morning to my partner when he eventually woke?
I did rouse myself and got out of bed when my partner did, making an effort to wave him off in the style of a dutiful housewife. I made myself a coffee (decaf) and put my work computer on to check what needed a response before I left to do my first little inspection. I answered emails and checked through my e-post for about an hour, thinking by then that I really needed to actually go and wash and get dressed if I was to stick to my self-devised schedule. What did it matter? No one was expecting me. It wouldn't matter whether I was there at 10 or half past, or 11. I knew I had an appointment to see my counsellor at 1pm so figured I needed to make a decision as to whether I was actually going to go out for a bit, or not, or maybe do it after I'd seen her. I opted for the latter.
After making this decision I washed, dressed and found myself sitting on the sofa again, thinking about all sorts of things, and crying. Oddly enough, my Mum had texted me to see if I was ok, and I'd advised her that I was struggling but would be ok. I realised that I still felt as if I couldn't move my facial muscles enough to actually speak to anyone, and set about typing out my thoughts so I could try and work out what I wanted to discuss with my counsellor, and if all else failed, just present her with my blog. After typing a bit of waffle, I set off to see her and was able to speak freely, but told her upfront that I had been struggling and that I'd had a very bad day last week. I brought her up to speed with events since our last meeting: how I'd seen the perinatal psychiatrist and had a reasonable conversation with him about my medication and my 'condition' and how he'd advised that although he thought the dose of meds I was by then taking would serve no purpose other than as a placebo, I should increase the dose again in order to cope with my return to work, which I had done slightly. I told her that I had then had to see the obstetric consultant, and that I had been upset by that appointment as I had then been told that as I was still on meds, I had basically forfeited the right to choose where to have my baby as I would now have to go to the consultant-led unit for observation on both me and the baby. We discussed this for a while and I expressed the resentment that had built up in me over the fact that I had all but weaned myself off of anti-depressant medication but had had to resume a slightly higher dose in order to function at work. We discussed the fact that for the first time ever, I had received a letter with my 'condition' clearly diagnosed and labelled. It's a label that I have used intermittently and in circumstances of my own choosing for the last few years, but was now beyond my control. I had declared to my employers that I was bi-polar, and the label was now responsible for the direction my maternity care was taking. I explained how I'd struggled with this concept a little, that I could apparently no longer pretend to be just any other normal person.
I've often felt like a fraud. I used to think it was a class thing, that someone from my background shouldn't have gone to university - I was the first on the English side of my family to do so - even though I hadn't gone until I was 25. I certainly shouldn't have got a First. I remember my first day as a Housing Officer, being introduced to staff around the building and seeing the expression on one person's face in particular as she asked me where I'd worked before. As she realised I'd come from a non-housing background (other than having been a council tenant) her face could not hide her dismay. My boss at the time, who had recruited me apparently against the better judgement of his senior, had said something like "She'll be a good one" and I still to this day have the utmost respect for that man, who saw some sort of potential in me when I couldn't even be sure of it myself. As I've gone through life, even when becoming a mother at 18, I have always felt as if I've been going through the motions, pretending to be older or cleverer or more experienced than I was in order to be accepted, to not be the odd-one-out that I actually felt myself to be. Although this feeling has never completely disappeared, in recent years I have actually become older of course, and whilst probably now less clever, I am inevitably more experienced. It still surprises me sometimes when people ask for my advice or how I dealt with such-and-such a situation, but I have come to accept that actually, I can be 'normal' in being, well, just me. We all have our stories to tell and we all have our demons to slay. It's not been a smooth or easy journey and is by no means over yet, but I can talk about the things I've been, done, felt, and generally experienced without too much shame these days. I can be honest.
Yet here I was, without having realised it until discussing it with my counsellor, having to face the fact that despite our conversations and work over the past couple of years, there was something wrong with me. My brain didn't work quite how it should. 'They' wanted to watch me instead of letting me choose where and how to have my baby, and 'they' wanted to put me on mood stabilisers. They were probably right. Knowing that, and accepting that, didn't make it any easier however. I had been a fraud after all and it was nothing to do with social status, it was to do with mental illness.
In the midst of all this I recounted how I had plummeted yesterday, and how for some stupid reason I kept obsessing about these bloody salmon bagels. As I told the fishy tale to my counsellor, she actually had tears pricking at her eyes. We've got to know each other very well over time, and she stopped me from belittling the situation and said, "Now hang on, that was just mean." I said I knew it was petty of me but she said no, actually it wasn't. Ok it might just be a bagel but what my boss had done there was quite deliberately and publicly exclude me from something that she was sharing with everyone else in the room. I suddenly felt hurt again but simultaneously justified in having felt upset about it. We exchanged words about the deteriorating, no, now negative relationship between my boss and me, and consequently the Powers-That-Be within the company. I hoped that I was re-telling recent events as objectively as I could, but unusually, my normally very calm counsellor kept tutting and interjecting that actually, it was ok to feel completely and utterly pissed off and ready to just walk away. She asked me what I had to gain by staying at work for the next 3 weeks, other than satisfying my own desire to do my best and leave things sorted. I hadn't quite expected that one. She asked me if I was able to get through the next 3 weeks without my meds, to which I laughed no, of course not. She asked if I thought there were likely to be any further seemingly trivial incidents, even if just something said in an email from my boss, that were going to leave me feeling undermined, excluded, and under-valued. Again, laughing, I said quite probably. She asked why I needed to put myself through that then, and sabotage any hope of regaining control over my pregnancy choices by having to stay on meds that I'd already proved not just recently but over a number of years, I could function perfectly well without? It became clear to me then that I needed to just walk away from my work situation.
There was still an element of doubt in this decision, and I made a further decision not to do anything work-related for the rest of the day and to sleep on it. However, it was evident not just to me, but thankfully to other people as well, that my work situation had just gone too far, in fact, a fish too far.
Saturday 4 May 2013
Thursday 2 May 2013
A Fish Too Far ~ part one
Today is a difficult day. I have nothing arduous planned. The sun is shining. Still, in spite of, or perhaps because of those things, it is a difficult day.
So, the background:
I made a mistake yesterday. I have been back at work for nearly 4 weeks now following a similarly-lengthed period of sick leave - my longest ever in my entire working history - and have been working on reduced hours since my return. As such, my workload has thankfully been reduced significantly in the sense that I have been - and happily agreed to be - focusing on particular areas rather than try and juggle everything, and my colleagues and now a temp have been tasked with picking up the slack, my slack. It's an odd thing. On the one hand, as is the Law of Sod, the weather has finally bucked up its ideas since my return to work and so I have been grateful of the reduced hours and responsibility so that I could carry on with the outdoor maintenance and prettifying tasks that I was unable to complete whilst off. However, contrary to what is needed when suffering depression, as a lone/home worker I have been even more isolated and felt even more worthless in many ways, especially knowing that many of the things I was involved in or even instigated are now being dealt with - or not - by my already over-stretched colleagues. In fact I genuinely believe that no one would actually notice if I was doing any work or not at the moment, but I guess in a way that's made me more determined to do what I've been doing well and with high impact.
So, yesterday there was a Team Meeting scheduled. This is something that our little team of 4 (plus boss) usually moan about as it makes for a very long day for most of us, with little tangible outcome. A typical meeting really. However, it does bring us all together and we usually have a bit of banter, discuss recent triumphs and more often than not, share our woes with this system or that procedure or whatever. It's good for the soul even if not for the workload management. I personally believe that such meetings are important, though they need to be managed correctly and ideally actually discuss things that the team need and want to discuss rather than random stuff that someone else thinks is important. So, I saw the meeting scheduled last week and confirmed my attendance, much to my boss's surprise who questioned whether it would be good use of my already restricted hours to spend 3 hours travelling to and from the office in addition to the meeting time itself. I countered that as isolation is the worst thing to foster depression (or do I mean the best?), it would be good for me to see the others. "Oh ok" she said.
As it was, I then had a last minute court hearing booked in for the morning of the meeting so had to attend that first. It went well, as expected to be honest as it was a simple case: the tenant I was taking action against thanked me for my help and everyone from the security guards to the judge himself seemed to be in good spirits. A good start to the day then I thought, as I got in my car and sped as fast as the speed limits would allow the 40 odd miles up to our 'local' office, arriving about 2 hours after everyone else. That might seem late, but given how long some of these meetings go on for, I really hadn't missed much.
Our local office is tiny. It has only 4 staff actually based in it, 3 of whom are often out and about, leaving just the admin person really. Most other staff use it for hot-desking only to make use of their time there, which is inevitably only for meetings. On arriving I received a warm welcome from our lovely admin lady, and a hello-how-are-you from one other person who was there. I was blanked completely by the senior manager and noticed a chap I'd never seen before sitting at one of the hot-desks, and presumed him to be our new temp. He was on the phone so I didn't disturb him and assumed we'd be introduced later. So, I went into the meeting room and joined my colleagues, to a variable warmish response, certainly nothing like normal. I was quickly asked how court went and gave a cheery response, which in turn was dismissed quickly as the meeting resumed. I sat myself down, got out my laptop and agenda and brought myself up to speed as the chat continued.
The meeting went on pretty much as normal from there with us briefly going over certain agenda items and having a few anecdotes in between, all of us chipping in as normal. I was a bit put out that queries regarding some of my previous cases - that were suddenly felt worthy of mention by my boss - were addressed directly to the colleague covering them now, even though he hadn't done the groundwork or knew as much about the context as I did, and was quite pleased when he also picked up on this and made sure to defer to me in the responses. Still, the discussion continued to be addressed to him and they were referred to as 'his' cases. Ok I thought, suck it up, he is dealing with them now after all. However, even if they had not previously been my cases, normally I would have been asked for my opinion as I used to be considered something of a knowledge base in these areas. Hmm, move on and keep smiling.
We then got to a discussion about staff welfare, and some recent changes to our appraisal and pay process, which had left many, many staff, including me, feeling even more under-valued than normal. It was actually useful for me to realise that I was not the only one, what with everything else that had been going on, as I was beginning to feel victimised. I wondered whether I should say anything, but decided the better option really was to keep quiet and let my colleagues do the talking. They, after all, had continued to struggle on and cover my workload while I was off. The senior manager joined us at this point in order to - as far as I can ascertain - give a response on behalf of the company to the concerns raised, and possibly feedback to whoever it is that these things need to be fed back to. As the minutes dragged passed, I had that feeling that you have in a dream where you are speaking but no one can hear you. I felt that even though it was for once, not me doing battle, that my colleagues' comments were being "taken on board" and yes "would be fed back", I noted the complete absence of any note-taking or any indication as to what would actually happen with this feedback. I knew, just knew without any doubt, that this was a futile exercise. I'm not normally like that: I will argue on behalf of the little people until the cows come home - is that a mix of metaphors? - but just then, like some kind of enlightenment, I knew I couldn't sit and listen to this any more. I excused myself and left the room. No one asked why, and I didn't give a reason.
After getting a glass of water and making small talk with the two co-workers outside the meeting room - the temp unknown man having disappeared - I finally gave up waiting for that part of the discussion to be over and for the senior to exit. I went back in, again sat quietly except I think for one comment. Eventually the ordeal finished and we 'stopped' for lunch. What this means during these meetings is that we all whip out our respective pack lunches or other goodies that may have been brought in to share, grab a fresh drink and carry on. I have argued before that given that these usually turn into at least 10 hour days, with driving at each end during rush hour traffic, we should actually stop for a proper break. It's never happened and we all know the drill. I alas, having rushed to court and then to the office had not prepared a lunch and had only grabbed some grapes and a box of left-over fruit & nut mix, but thought actually that would probably keep me going for a bit. However, in the blink of an eye our hostess, aka our boss, presented 3 plates full of bagels with cream cheese and salmon on them. She positioned them across the table and as she did so said casually, but pointedly, "you don't eat fish, do you Pauline?" "No" I responded, trying to smile, but more than a little put out that she had remembered I was vegetarian but still put salmon on each and every bagel. If she'd have gone "Oh shit! Sorry Pauline, I forgot you don't eat fish!" I wouldn't have thought anything of it except that she was a bit dipsy sometimes. Still I thought, I wasn't expecting her to make me lunch. Odd though that she had quite blatantly appeared to make everyone else lunch. Nonetheless, she informed me with a wave of her hand (whilst still not making eye contact with me) that there were a couple of bagels left over in the kitchen and I could help myself. I went in search of them. As I cack-handedly tried carving through the now very dry bagels with a butter knife, and enquired to the office area as a whole if it was ok if I used whoever's Flora was in the fridge, I felt myself feeling even more ostracised. The meeting was continuing in the other room whilst I was being the poor relation hacking bits of bagel everywhere and trying to butter the bits that were big enough. "Why am I doing this?" I thought. Ironically, I had gone in search of the bagels in order to not make my boss look bad for excluding me, yet here I was, being excluded anyway and feeling like a fool.
As we moved through the rest of the agenda it became increasingly obvious that anything I had previously raised, including a significant idea that would tick every box of community involvement, had been 'forgotten' about in my absence, and that anything I now had to say was of no consequence. Again, any eye contact from my boss was purely accidental and quickly rectified, even when I deliberately looked at her face when I was speaking. By then, I could only focus on the sinking feeling I was having, and began an internal struggle as to whether I should continue to stick it out and just say nothing, brush it off (outwardly at least) or make my excuses and go. As it was, my emotions made a decision of sorts for me as I found myself with tears pricking at my eyes and once again excused myself from the room to hide myself in the loo for a few minutes. A colleague came out to check I was ok but we both knew I wasn't and there was nothing to say or do, except go back in. I did then sit quietly - very unlike me - and tried to feign the odd smile here and there until the meeting seemed to come to an end. Not sure whether it had actually ended or not, I asked "Is that it then?" in what I hoped what a jovial tone, and on receiving an affirmative, I made a point of reminding my colleagues as to when my last working day was, as it was only 3 and a half weeks away, and I wouldn't be at the next meeting therefore. I thought it was something that would have been mentioned by my boss, perhaps even been a final agenda item by way of prompting goodbye arrangements. One colleague had already left us by this time and I received little response from the others, except to confirm appointments we had booked where we would see each other before I left anyway, and a brief discussion as to how I would go about returning my IT equipment. My boss said nothing at all, no "Ah yes, of course" or "thanks for your help and we wish you all the best" or "are you having a leaving do?" Nothing. I felt as if I might as well have already gone, as my presence was obviously now just an inconvenience and an embarrassment. So, after brief goodbyes to the others - with again no response at all from the senior in the main office area - I grabbed my bags and walked away. I felt at that moment that I would be quite happy to never set foot in that place again or have any dealings with my boss, her boss or the company as a whole.
During my hour-and-15-minute drive back down to the coast, I surprisingly, didn't feel tearful, I didn't even really feel angry. I think I felt quite numb. I realised that I still had my formal grievance to pursue but wondered whether I would bother. Was there any point? It would mean a 2-3 hour drive up to our head office for what would at best be what, an hour long meeting to discuss what I'd already put in writing and to which, I suspected, there was already a forgone conclusion. Then another 2-3 hour drive back home. Whilst thinking, and driving, I enjoyed the fact that the sun was still shining and, according to the temperature display on my dashboard, it was a pleasantly warm day, about 15-16 degrees. I distracted myself with the thought that I'd probably get out in my little back garden when I got in: I'd feel a bit better focusing on whatever gardening or maintenance job I ended up doing for a little while.
When I got in however, I looked out at my cluttered little garden, which was now in the shade, and thought about nipping out to just tidy up a bit. Or maybe I would just suss out what needed doing to my 'project' motorbike that was now sitting on the little patio area. No, I thought, not today. I didn't want to do anything else now. I just wanted to sit down even though I'd been sitting down nearly all day. I wanted to put something familiar on the telly and not really watch it. I felt... what? Tired? No, I felt drained, like something had sucked the very life and energy out of me. I sent a couple of texts to lvoed ones to say I was home safe and put my head down on the cushions on the sofa, and sat, telly on, doing nothing, feeling nothing. Hello depression.
So, the background:
I made a mistake yesterday. I have been back at work for nearly 4 weeks now following a similarly-lengthed period of sick leave - my longest ever in my entire working history - and have been working on reduced hours since my return. As such, my workload has thankfully been reduced significantly in the sense that I have been - and happily agreed to be - focusing on particular areas rather than try and juggle everything, and my colleagues and now a temp have been tasked with picking up the slack, my slack. It's an odd thing. On the one hand, as is the Law of Sod, the weather has finally bucked up its ideas since my return to work and so I have been grateful of the reduced hours and responsibility so that I could carry on with the outdoor maintenance and prettifying tasks that I was unable to complete whilst off. However, contrary to what is needed when suffering depression, as a lone/home worker I have been even more isolated and felt even more worthless in many ways, especially knowing that many of the things I was involved in or even instigated are now being dealt with - or not - by my already over-stretched colleagues. In fact I genuinely believe that no one would actually notice if I was doing any work or not at the moment, but I guess in a way that's made me more determined to do what I've been doing well and with high impact.
So, yesterday there was a Team Meeting scheduled. This is something that our little team of 4 (plus boss) usually moan about as it makes for a very long day for most of us, with little tangible outcome. A typical meeting really. However, it does bring us all together and we usually have a bit of banter, discuss recent triumphs and more often than not, share our woes with this system or that procedure or whatever. It's good for the soul even if not for the workload management. I personally believe that such meetings are important, though they need to be managed correctly and ideally actually discuss things that the team need and want to discuss rather than random stuff that someone else thinks is important. So, I saw the meeting scheduled last week and confirmed my attendance, much to my boss's surprise who questioned whether it would be good use of my already restricted hours to spend 3 hours travelling to and from the office in addition to the meeting time itself. I countered that as isolation is the worst thing to foster depression (or do I mean the best?), it would be good for me to see the others. "Oh ok" she said.
As it was, I then had a last minute court hearing booked in for the morning of the meeting so had to attend that first. It went well, as expected to be honest as it was a simple case: the tenant I was taking action against thanked me for my help and everyone from the security guards to the judge himself seemed to be in good spirits. A good start to the day then I thought, as I got in my car and sped as fast as the speed limits would allow the 40 odd miles up to our 'local' office, arriving about 2 hours after everyone else. That might seem late, but given how long some of these meetings go on for, I really hadn't missed much.
Our local office is tiny. It has only 4 staff actually based in it, 3 of whom are often out and about, leaving just the admin person really. Most other staff use it for hot-desking only to make use of their time there, which is inevitably only for meetings. On arriving I received a warm welcome from our lovely admin lady, and a hello-how-are-you from one other person who was there. I was blanked completely by the senior manager and noticed a chap I'd never seen before sitting at one of the hot-desks, and presumed him to be our new temp. He was on the phone so I didn't disturb him and assumed we'd be introduced later. So, I went into the meeting room and joined my colleagues, to a variable warmish response, certainly nothing like normal. I was quickly asked how court went and gave a cheery response, which in turn was dismissed quickly as the meeting resumed. I sat myself down, got out my laptop and agenda and brought myself up to speed as the chat continued.
The meeting went on pretty much as normal from there with us briefly going over certain agenda items and having a few anecdotes in between, all of us chipping in as normal. I was a bit put out that queries regarding some of my previous cases - that were suddenly felt worthy of mention by my boss - were addressed directly to the colleague covering them now, even though he hadn't done the groundwork or knew as much about the context as I did, and was quite pleased when he also picked up on this and made sure to defer to me in the responses. Still, the discussion continued to be addressed to him and they were referred to as 'his' cases. Ok I thought, suck it up, he is dealing with them now after all. However, even if they had not previously been my cases, normally I would have been asked for my opinion as I used to be considered something of a knowledge base in these areas. Hmm, move on and keep smiling.
We then got to a discussion about staff welfare, and some recent changes to our appraisal and pay process, which had left many, many staff, including me, feeling even more under-valued than normal. It was actually useful for me to realise that I was not the only one, what with everything else that had been going on, as I was beginning to feel victimised. I wondered whether I should say anything, but decided the better option really was to keep quiet and let my colleagues do the talking. They, after all, had continued to struggle on and cover my workload while I was off. The senior manager joined us at this point in order to - as far as I can ascertain - give a response on behalf of the company to the concerns raised, and possibly feedback to whoever it is that these things need to be fed back to. As the minutes dragged passed, I had that feeling that you have in a dream where you are speaking but no one can hear you. I felt that even though it was for once, not me doing battle, that my colleagues' comments were being "taken on board" and yes "would be fed back", I noted the complete absence of any note-taking or any indication as to what would actually happen with this feedback. I knew, just knew without any doubt, that this was a futile exercise. I'm not normally like that: I will argue on behalf of the little people until the cows come home - is that a mix of metaphors? - but just then, like some kind of enlightenment, I knew I couldn't sit and listen to this any more. I excused myself and left the room. No one asked why, and I didn't give a reason.
After getting a glass of water and making small talk with the two co-workers outside the meeting room - the temp unknown man having disappeared - I finally gave up waiting for that part of the discussion to be over and for the senior to exit. I went back in, again sat quietly except I think for one comment. Eventually the ordeal finished and we 'stopped' for lunch. What this means during these meetings is that we all whip out our respective pack lunches or other goodies that may have been brought in to share, grab a fresh drink and carry on. I have argued before that given that these usually turn into at least 10 hour days, with driving at each end during rush hour traffic, we should actually stop for a proper break. It's never happened and we all know the drill. I alas, having rushed to court and then to the office had not prepared a lunch and had only grabbed some grapes and a box of left-over fruit & nut mix, but thought actually that would probably keep me going for a bit. However, in the blink of an eye our hostess, aka our boss, presented 3 plates full of bagels with cream cheese and salmon on them. She positioned them across the table and as she did so said casually, but pointedly, "you don't eat fish, do you Pauline?" "No" I responded, trying to smile, but more than a little put out that she had remembered I was vegetarian but still put salmon on each and every bagel. If she'd have gone "Oh shit! Sorry Pauline, I forgot you don't eat fish!" I wouldn't have thought anything of it except that she was a bit dipsy sometimes. Still I thought, I wasn't expecting her to make me lunch. Odd though that she had quite blatantly appeared to make everyone else lunch. Nonetheless, she informed me with a wave of her hand (whilst still not making eye contact with me) that there were a couple of bagels left over in the kitchen and I could help myself. I went in search of them. As I cack-handedly tried carving through the now very dry bagels with a butter knife, and enquired to the office area as a whole if it was ok if I used whoever's Flora was in the fridge, I felt myself feeling even more ostracised. The meeting was continuing in the other room whilst I was being the poor relation hacking bits of bagel everywhere and trying to butter the bits that were big enough. "Why am I doing this?" I thought. Ironically, I had gone in search of the bagels in order to not make my boss look bad for excluding me, yet here I was, being excluded anyway and feeling like a fool.
As we moved through the rest of the agenda it became increasingly obvious that anything I had previously raised, including a significant idea that would tick every box of community involvement, had been 'forgotten' about in my absence, and that anything I now had to say was of no consequence. Again, any eye contact from my boss was purely accidental and quickly rectified, even when I deliberately looked at her face when I was speaking. By then, I could only focus on the sinking feeling I was having, and began an internal struggle as to whether I should continue to stick it out and just say nothing, brush it off (outwardly at least) or make my excuses and go. As it was, my emotions made a decision of sorts for me as I found myself with tears pricking at my eyes and once again excused myself from the room to hide myself in the loo for a few minutes. A colleague came out to check I was ok but we both knew I wasn't and there was nothing to say or do, except go back in. I did then sit quietly - very unlike me - and tried to feign the odd smile here and there until the meeting seemed to come to an end. Not sure whether it had actually ended or not, I asked "Is that it then?" in what I hoped what a jovial tone, and on receiving an affirmative, I made a point of reminding my colleagues as to when my last working day was, as it was only 3 and a half weeks away, and I wouldn't be at the next meeting therefore. I thought it was something that would have been mentioned by my boss, perhaps even been a final agenda item by way of prompting goodbye arrangements. One colleague had already left us by this time and I received little response from the others, except to confirm appointments we had booked where we would see each other before I left anyway, and a brief discussion as to how I would go about returning my IT equipment. My boss said nothing at all, no "Ah yes, of course" or "thanks for your help and we wish you all the best" or "are you having a leaving do?" Nothing. I felt as if I might as well have already gone, as my presence was obviously now just an inconvenience and an embarrassment. So, after brief goodbyes to the others - with again no response at all from the senior in the main office area - I grabbed my bags and walked away. I felt at that moment that I would be quite happy to never set foot in that place again or have any dealings with my boss, her boss or the company as a whole.
During my hour-and-15-minute drive back down to the coast, I surprisingly, didn't feel tearful, I didn't even really feel angry. I think I felt quite numb. I realised that I still had my formal grievance to pursue but wondered whether I would bother. Was there any point? It would mean a 2-3 hour drive up to our head office for what would at best be what, an hour long meeting to discuss what I'd already put in writing and to which, I suspected, there was already a forgone conclusion. Then another 2-3 hour drive back home. Whilst thinking, and driving, I enjoyed the fact that the sun was still shining and, according to the temperature display on my dashboard, it was a pleasantly warm day, about 15-16 degrees. I distracted myself with the thought that I'd probably get out in my little back garden when I got in: I'd feel a bit better focusing on whatever gardening or maintenance job I ended up doing for a little while.
When I got in however, I looked out at my cluttered little garden, which was now in the shade, and thought about nipping out to just tidy up a bit. Or maybe I would just suss out what needed doing to my 'project' motorbike that was now sitting on the little patio area. No, I thought, not today. I didn't want to do anything else now. I just wanted to sit down even though I'd been sitting down nearly all day. I wanted to put something familiar on the telly and not really watch it. I felt... what? Tired? No, I felt drained, like something had sucked the very life and energy out of me. I sent a couple of texts to lvoed ones to say I was home safe and put my head down on the cushions on the sofa, and sat, telly on, doing nothing, feeling nothing. Hello depression.
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