I used to have a great job. In a great town. With great people. I loved my work. Loved the women in my department; loved the teenagers and their parents; loved the teachers and administrators; loved the business owners and busybodies; loved the barber and the sales clerks and the Posties; loved the people I talked to every day on the street.
We did great projects. I enlisted a young man to redesign our health and safety guide; we threw quirky events for youth week; we painted murals on abandoned walls; we established an Australian Navy Cadets Unit and a community garden. We built great partnerships with all sorts of “stakeholders.” Our community development team collaborated with strategic planning and did meaningful community consultation. I felt appreciated and connected; I was learning constantly and got to be creative every day. I was in my element.
Except the bullies.
As a teenager, I didn’t experience a lot of bullying. Maybe I was in la-la land, or just hung with a good crowd, or maybe my soccer coach dad protected me, but I don’t remember too many people trying to make me feel like crap about myself. I never expected to encounter bullies at work.
You see, this role worked collaboratively with community services staff across the region. Most of them were based in the next “big” town, about 50 minutes from my office. The youth health and development people in that town hated me from the moment I was hired. Couldn’t tell you why. They undermined my projects, tried to steal my funding, told colleagues I was unwilling to collaborate, and even called me names.
Every time our group of young people did something great, these women – women that were every day working with “at risk” young people with the directive of teaching them to be resilient – would work harder to destroy me.
This went on for five years.
Meanwhile, back at the office, Community Services was slipped under the jurisdiction of Environmental Services. I watched our new director bully an incredibly gifted Strategic Planner out of her job and out of our community. He undermined her projects, belittled her work, and made her life miserable. Then he set his sights on my manager. She hung in as long as she could, but also left in the end. Left her home of many decades, the community she loved, because there is only so much you can take.
At this same organization, a Senior Manager said “shut up! Your opinion doesn’t matter!” to me in a meeting. Later the GM he told me to grow thicker skin.
Toxic. If only I’d realized.
My manager left. They downgraded her position and then hired me to do it. My new manager was nice enough but didn’t understand the work. A year passed, I went on maternity leave. When I came back the Community Development job was more like assistant to Strategic Planning. I did not feel welcome.
Then there was a merger. Another new manager. This one based 50 minutes away in that other town. Another nice person who had literally no idea what a Community Development Officer did.
So he didn’t give me anything to do. Nothing. No projects. No direction. I spent my days pulling together grant money to finish pre-existing initiatives. Sometimes I helped other departments with their admin. And even though our Recreation Planner kept telling him to put me on the Learning Centre project, he flatly refused to do so. Right up until I was six months pregnant with my second child. Then suddenly, on the cusp of my exit, I had value. Clearly only a little.
During this disillusionment, I was also verbally assaulted by a consultant for holding her to account for a mistake. She started screaming at me in the lobby of our offices. I retreated to an empty office, was cornered, and yelled back. So naturally HR – pardon me, People and Culture – issued me a formal reprimand. A smear on my permanent record. Because I got scared and yelled back at someone who was threatening me.
Yes, I am still bitter; but mostly I’m sad.
You see, I’m a frog: an environmental indicator. I absorb everything. When I walk down the aisle in the supermarket with all the scented detergents I become physically ill. When I’m around toxicity, it seeps in. By the time I left that job – the job I loved in the community that I loved at the foot of the mountain range that I loved that was the only place on earth that ever made me feel whole. By the time I left that job, I was broken. Depressed. Cynical. Spiteful. Mean. A poltergeist version of my best self.
Three years later, I’m still not okay. I still struggle every single day. It affects my relationships, my kids, my projects: everything.
I miss me. I was a happy, chipper, outgoing, slightly wacky woman. Full of ideas and passion and compassion. I liked her. She wasn’t perfect, she had a mean case of imposter syndrome, was a little neurotic, and had a rather problematic Messianic complex, but she was full of vigor! She was busy and arty and can-do! She is the me that is supposed to raise these amazing children, not the sad shell that’s currently doing the job.
I make no claim to perfection. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Many in the last five or so years. There are no excuses. There are, however, reasons. I am tired of sitting on them.
For so many years I’ve kept this story quiet – because I am embarrassed; because I don’t want to complain; because it will hurt my job prospects; because I don’t want to burn bridges.
But I can’t find a job, anyway. I can’t even get a call back. Because in the US Community Development is basically sales and Community Engagement is basically sales and, apparently, none of my skills have value. It is incredibly demoralizing, reinforcing that I am a failure; that I can never be and never was good enough. That those mean women in the next town were right all along.
I am exhausted.
I am writing this blog – this confession – in the hopes that sending it out to the universe will set me free.
Humans, when in doubt, be kind. Your actions have repercussions. It’s easier than you think to destroy a life; and it’s very hard to repair one.
American Havik 