Confession and Forgiveness

When your body goes into fight or flight response your liver releases glycogen to provide energy to run or fight. You also release adrenaline and cortisol. If you experience this again and again and again every day it can lead to depression. My last job was a highly stressful, anxiety producing job. Starting in November of last year the stress mounted and my biomarkers deteriorated significantly. At the beginning of November the co-worker I was working with was fired. So now I had to take n his work also. Never mind there was years of technical debt. I asked if we were going to hire a replacement. I was told that there wasn’t any budget for that. I eventually, figured out there wasn’t any budget to hire a data engineer but there was to hire someone else who could not help me and would end up costing me over a hundred hours in productivity. I heard the “we don’t have the budget” mantra from my boss in other similar situations when they wanted to get rid of a position or a person. I assume the best in people and try to extend that until it becomes painfully clear I was wrong. That does allow people to take advantage, but I feel you should give people a fair shot and assume the best at the outset.

For many many months I fought this stress and anxiety hoping things would improve. Starting in November often in 1 on 1 meetings with my boss I felt there was a threatening undertone. That I could be let go at any time. Alos since everything was remote the one on ones were always with cameras off. You miss any facial expressions; that only raised my anxiety. Frequently, the 1 on 1’s were canceled or skipped or rescheduled at the last minute. The boss’s employees were less important than whatever the boss was doing.

I finally had to seek mental help. For many months, starting before December, I was waking up multiple times during the week contemplating how to end this painful stress and anxiety. I listened to Dr. Peterson many times. I never got to the stage of planning but I often considered checking into the ER. I slogged on. In late May I did send my boss a letter that included that I had broken down 4 times since the beginning of the year in tears and on the edge each time of just quitting. That I had never cried at work before. The boss was more concerned that the letter was me resigning than about my well being. That said a lot. BTW, I had for many months mentioned the stress and over work. Each time I got deflections, “Everyone works hard”, “Don’t work so hard” (then don’t accept more and more work and ask me to work over weekends and holidays) .

Yes, finally in late February I got a contractor to help out. His technical skills were excellent and he had some outstanding ideas. The problem is that the code base was an undocumented mess. 11 years of throw it against the wall, damn the torpedoes development. So I had to help him get up to speed. Unfortunately, the things I wanted him to do we never got to it. I was not in charge of him and he kept getting pulled into other things. I kept asking how long we had him and the best I could get is “The Company only does 3 month contracts.” That is not helpful. I could never get an answer. Usually I got silence when I asked. There is a very different strategy to use a contractor if you only have him for 3 months vs 1 year. It did not really matter since I rarely got to direct him to what I needed to tackle the tech debt. The boss kept pulling him off on other projects and on one project he spun his wheels for over 100 hours due to a person not talking to others to get a second opinion. There were many times I would talk to a co-worker about a tough issue and while I may be the senior person with the most experience it was always beneficial to talk to others.

The boss had a habit of not answering questions. It could be a question in a conversation, a direct email, a chat conversation and just silence. I found out later this behavior was experienced by others. Questions like You created a table for this data I am supposed to load can you tell me the name of the table? Silence. it makes it difficult to do your job.

I was easily working 65 hours a week minimum since November 2021. I figure in the 6 months of 2022 I put in over 750 hours of overtime. Since I was fulltime I did not get paid for that. I was told I should get some comp days. LOL that never happened. I did not get to have the holidays off. My boss’s boss found out because they asked me. That got me in trouble with my boss. I was not going to lie. My boss’s boss was supposed to see if I could get my job reclassified. He said he would get back to me in about 30 days. I was at the top of the pay band (and I had just started at that job) and could not get anymore compensation. No annual raises. Yes, you could get a special bonus at the end of the year but that was limited so the best would be top of pay band plus a static fixed amount maybe. It was discretionary. Unlike if you get a 2% raise a year the pay keeps climbing albeit not at a meteoric rate. But it does go up.

I never heard from the boss’s boss again. I let over 60 days go by. I asked my boss several times and got silence. I sent them a short note asking for status. In the over 3 weeks before I gave notice I never heard anything from them. I did eventually tell them that in my over 30 years of working I had never had a manager not give me some sort of status. Just rude. I figured the boss and their boss talked and my boss did not want to give me one red cent more. They were too much of a coward to say so. Very abusive to take advantage of an employee’s good graces.

I got to a point where the contractor ‘s time was getting eaten up by a particular project that really should not take as long as it did. I know he was working hard on it but he was not in control. He was downstream and had to process files that were thrown at him. The specifications and other aspects of the project were kept close to the vest and no one could see them. When asked they were told it was none of their business. We worked for the same friggen company this silly and frustrating. One evening I looked into it and figured out that it was tricky. It was not simple at all. But after about 8 hours I had it working. me in trouble because I was goal oriented ant NIMBY was in play. Also in talking to the therapist my goal was to work and solve the problem. This other individual had what they called ego fragility. That anything that could be construed as an attack on their ego they would take it as such. In retrospect, I see that now. My goal was to solve the problem and move on. I had more than enough work to do. But I was not the fair haired child of the boss and so I got in trouble and was told I was on the brink of losing my job. I had done my best to follow the boss’s instructions but I guess I did not. See . I tried to talk to the boss about my job and offers I had gotten. They ignored me wanting to talk with them. Instead they yelled at me and when I tried to respond told me to not speak. At the end I was asked what do I have to say. I said you told me not to speak. I felt there was nothing I could say. There were no words or actions I could do to redeem myself in the boss’s eyes. There is a Romanian saying “When you burn your tongue; you are careful even eating yogurt.” At that moment I resolved to take the advice multiple people had given me. Get another job.

I got an offer and while I considered working until the last day and then just sending an email saying “I quit”. Boss was always telling me my emails were too long. I thought no I will give 2 weeks notice and be professional. That is the standard. The boss was going on vacation when I could have given 2 weeks notice. I did not want to interrupt their vacation. So I told them at my next one on one (again their camera off) that my last day was a bit over 2 weeks away. I planned to make sure the transition was smooth and go over things with the people I worked with. I did not want to cause them additional pain or work. I knew they were going to be busy. I had worked on some complex items and while I had documented them it would be to their benefit to have a good briefing. I made sure I communicated this to my boss.

3 hours later the boss fired me. At least this one time they turned their camera on. In that moment it became clear how petty the boss was. They were willing to cause me to lose some $ but in reality hurt the company more. My new employer moved the start date up a week when they heard. So it really did not affect my income. It did send a negative signal to everyone else on the team about the manager.

I will say about 3 days after I left the job my BG dropped significantly closer to normal. I was able to stop taking anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication. I was able to see friends and spend an uncomfortable 2 nights on Mt. St Helens

being of service to ultra runners.

Now I am going to briefly talk about Louie Zamperini. He had an amazing life and during WWII he was captured by the Japanese. He was tortured. At the end of the war he returned home and married. He could not hold a job and he fell into drink. Today we would say he had PTSD. Finally his wife took him to a Billy Graham Revival. It put him on the right path. He returned to Japan and met with all the people who had mistreated him. He forgave them. A friend of mine read the book and she said I could never forgive those guards if it had been me. I understood where she was coming from. I pointed out that he was forgiving them for himself not for them. He needed closure and it had to come from him.

I forgive those who have treated the situation badly. I forgive you without reservations. I am putting down my burden and taking up a different load. I am not prefect by any stretch. I have and will continue to make many mistakes. I deeply regret mistakes or offense I have given. I am truly sorry. I felt then and now there is nothing I can or could have done to be redeemed in my managers eyes. I even asked that question and could not get an answer.

In closing I am going to tell a type of Asops fable:

A senior monk and a junior monk were traveling together. At one point, they came to a river with a strong current. As the monks were preparing to cross the river, they saw a very young and beautiful woman also attempting to cross. The young woman asked if they could help her cross to the other side.

The two monks glanced at one another because they had taken vows not to touch a woman.

Then, without a word, the older monk picked up the woman, carried her across the river, placed her gently on the other side, and carried on his journey.

The younger monk couldn’t believe what had just happened. After rejoining his companion, he was speechless, and an hour passed without a word between them.

Two more hours passed, then three, finally the younger monk could contain himself any longer, and blurted out “As monks, we are not permitted a woman, how could you then carry that woman on your shoulders?”

The older monk looked at him and replied, “Brother, I set her down on the other side of the river, why are you still carrying her?”

Take care all. Look after your friends and family. Life is too important.