Post Workplace Abuse: Confusion Reigns; Questions Abound

Before blogging came journalling.  Before the computer came pen and paper.  

After I was walked out of that job, I went home to Mama for a brief period of respite.  Healing from what I now know to be the acute phase of the injury.  The chronic phase, although not recognized for quite a while afterward, followed after I returned back to my "new" normal.

When I went to Mom's, I carried with me a variety of "resources":  pens of different colours, notebooks for writing things down, my discman (I don't think they had iPods and iPhones at that time), various CD's, my Bible, some books, etc.  I had a black paged notebook for spiritual insights (please remember that although I don't write much about it in this blog, I am a faith-based woman and have used that many a time in the healing process - and this is one of those times when it is going to come out), also a white-paged notebook for general musings.  I even had one notebook dedicated to prayers, the crying out of a broken heart to a God who she knew was there but appeared silent.)  I had a veritable "tool box" of helps with me as I sorted through different emotions - and the pain.  Always the pain.  Always the confusion.

I have been accused of being analytical - too much so.  Some people think it's a curse.  Others recognize it as a strength - a strength which has allowed me to work through different feelings as I walked through a situation I had been unwillingly thrust into.

One heading:  Identified prayer needs after being laid off from **** - started the same day the end came so brutally.  I want to share this insert with you, dear reader, at this time.  My identified needs initially were:

1. To heal emotionally
2. to let go:  (a) of the job/customers etc.; (b) of any anger or bitterness; (c) of the stigma of being walked out.
3.  to go forward:  need direction
4. thought control -> need to think of the positive; remember the good; not dwell on the negative or play imagined conversations in my mind
5. financial:  to not miss the pay checks  (sounds impossible but I wrote that "I know God can do this!")  Beside it I found the notation, "began new job at ******* April 20th."
6. Social network/activities to replace "friendships" lost when job terminated
7. breaking of any soul ties that exist
8. to forgive those who engineered this (beside that entry I have a list of several names:  the 1-up; the 2-up; the mat leave replacement supervisor, etc.)

One thing that strikes me in hindsight is that I was working too hard, too soon, to be positive.  I wasn't taking the time to grieve my losses.

When I was walked out the door that day, I lost all of the relationships, all of the friendships, I'd forged with other co-workers.  I felt it was as though I'd died but there was no wake, no funeral, no grieving.  I was simply "gone".  I felt that keenly.

I desperately wanted the closure, the good-byes, the acknowledgement that I had been a positive part of my co-workers' working lives for two years.  I wanted that affirmation, that pat on the back to signify that I wasn't the horrible person one or two supervisors were purporting me to be.  That I didn't deserve what had happened to me.

While I was at my mom's, I broached to selected co-workers who I had worked with the most closely and knew the best the idea of my hosting a farewell barbecue for myself on a Saturday at my home.  The responses came back:  thank you but no thank you.  

Ever tried to give a party to which no one would come?  Try it.  You won't like it.

I was devastated.  I felt like I had just been walked out the door all over again.

I didn't understand it.

Somehow, I dimly perceived that management was behind this.  But why?

Even though it felt like and was treated like a firing with cause, it was supposed to be a contract end.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.

What made me different from others who had gone before me?

Why was I treated like this?

It made no sense.

Later, I discovered that management had gone to each one of these people and told them that "it was not in their best interests to come to my party as they still worked for the company and the company would not take it lightly if they badmouthed it."

Even after all these years, management's actions still make no sense.  They seem unusually intrusive.  Why should management be able to dictate what people did on their days off?  On their own time.  Off the company clock and company property?

Why was I such a perceived threat that people's jobs were threatened if they came to say good-bye?

I desperately wanted some positive acknowledgement, but there was none.  No cards.  Again, I was later informed that if anyone had dared to have others sign a card saying good-bye to me, they would have been fired.

Again, it makes no sense to me?  Why was I considered such a threat to this company that they would fire people for acting out of common decency?  What, if anything, were they trying to hide?

One incident immediately after the end became a huge issue in my mind for years afterward.  In the days leading up to what I can only call a dismissal, since I was in limbo not knowing for sure which way things were going to go, I had signed up and paid for daffodils for the annual cancer drive.  They came the day after I was walked out - which was the day my contract was officially to end.  I never saw them.  Apparently, they mysteriously disappeared. 

For some reason, my mind focussed on those missing flowers more than on the rest.  Maybe because it was something concrete I could focus on.  To me, it was stealing.  I had paid for those flowers.  They were mine.  Period.  It hurt that no one cared enough to give me a call and see what I wanted to do with them.  It was like I didn't exist anymore.

Did my contract end?  Or was I fired?  Technically, my contract ended.  Technically.

In reality ....

I'll let you draw your own conclusion.

After the End: Rest

Everyone has a special place where they can go when things are bed.  This was my special place.  My childhood home.  The place where love, memories and my mom lived.  A place where, no matter how old I got, I could still go home to.  This was the place I went to immediately after the end of the first abusive workplace situation to heal.

After I was walked out the door that day, I immediately encountered difficulties I hadn't counted on.

First was "letting go".  Not of all the hurt, the pain and the confusion.  That would take months, years of therapy. It would take support.  Being allowed to tell my story.

All of that was in the future.

No, my immediate challenge was letting go of the job itself.  The duties.  The feeling of responsibility.  Even the caring.

You see, I was driven to get the job done.  I put 100% (if not more) not only into that job, but into every job I've ever had.  It was a matter of pride with me.

If I was going to do anything, it was going to be well.

Early on in this scenario, even with everything seeming to be stacked against me - and especially as it escalated and it became more and more apparent that I would not be staying - I determined to stick with it and do my best - do 100%, not slack off - until the end.

To that end, I even took upon myself the task of writing up and printing out a detailed document on how to do my job.  Customer requirements.  Special handling agreements forged with customers.  How to process orders, returns, etc.  Everything anyone would need to come in untrained and have a fighting chance of successfully doing the job.

In retrospect, I'm not sure giving 100% to the end was a good idea or not.

Because when the end did come - swiftly and brutally - I was still in 100% work mode.  Being walked out the door with no allowance to say goodbye gave me no space to change modes.  To get acclimated to my new normal.

As I was walked out the door that day, I don't think I totally realized just how final it was.  Nor did I realize that this was just the beginning of a whole new scenario.  One filled with pain.  Confusion.  And exhaustion.  Exhaustion that clung to me long after the job ended like diesel fumes in a truck yard.

When I woke up the next morning, my mind started to automatically go to what I needed to do at work that day ... UNTIL I realized that there was no work.  Not that day.  Not any day.  It was over.  Finito.  Done.

I had to manually rework my mind to encompass my new reality.

My husband gave me some tasks to accomplish while he was at work.  Keeping me occupied that first day on simple tasks which needed to be done helped.

In the weeks leading up to the end, I had determined that if the worst happened and I was out the door, I needed a break.  I needed to go away.  Yes, I would have to come back to my new reality.  But for the short term, I needed a safe place to hide out.  To rest.  To do nothing.

And what better place to have that space than to go home to Mama for a couple of weeks.  Back to the place where I grew up. Back to things that were familiar.  To old friends.  To Mom - who had known me all my life and still (amazingly) loved me.  To be taken care of instead of having to take care of others.

So I did.

It was a good decision.

I was exhausted.  No energy.  Usually, when I went home to Mom we would go shopping, do things.  Not this time.  This time was spent with vegging, napping, listening to music, napping, writing in a journal, napping, eating out since I was in no shape to cook and she was getting past cooking.

It was also the last trip I was to make to my childhood home and be cosseted as a child in that house as my mom decided to sell the house shortly after and move to an assisted living place near my older sister in another state.

In the early 70s, my dad, a true Southern gentleman, bought a little (and I do mean little) magnolia tree.  The first year, it had two little blooms - one on each side.  Mom and Dad took pictures of it each year as it grew.  My last visit was in early April, the time when the magnolia bloomed.  It had turned into a glorious tree.  That year it was full of blooms.  Sparrows flitted from branch to branch.  A flurry of activity and song.  One drizzly morning, I watched as the sparrows flitted about in the tree from blossom to blossom calling out to each other.  A memory which soothed my battered soul.

And that, in a nutshell, was the purpose of that trip:  to soothe my battered soul.  To regroup.  To put in place initial steps for ongoing healing.  To be able to return to my new reality and cope.

A place I would never be able to go to again.

The old house was sold.  New owners with young children occupy it now.  Mom moved away to spend her final years close to one of her children.  Never again would I be able to come back to that house and have Mom take care of me.  But the memories live on.  Her love for me lives on.  And my gratitude for having her there to help me out at that time in life lives on.

Immediately after Workplace Abuse - The Wasteland

Have you ever noticed how the same scene viewed from two different positions can look totally different?  On our first canoe camping trip, we got lost on our way back from the campsite to the outfitters.  Why?  Because we were travelling in the opposite direction and nothing looked familiar.  Not to mention, that on an interior lake in Algonquin Provincial Park, there are no sign posts sticking out of the water telling you which way to go.  (There are also no canoe through Tim Hortons.)   The canoeist is totally on their own.  Yes, they have a map, but maps can get turned around.  We found out the hard way that two people in the same canoe with the exact same map in front of them can read it totally differently.

Such is the situation I found myself suddenly thrust into when I was deposited on the back steps of that workplace that long ago day in 2005.  The door shut behind me with finality.  A door I was dimly aware through my confusion and tears that I could never re-enter.

The only path before me was "forward" in the sense of walking in the direction my feet were planted towards the car - and from there home - away from the workplace.

If I only knew then what I know now.

But I didn't.  I was walking, unwillingly to be sure, through totally uncharted territory.  Through something I had never gone through before.

Something I would never wish on my worst enemy, let alone my best friend.

From this side, I see it now as an 18 month long barren wasteland.

A year and a half with no healing.  No pretence of recovery.  Lost and adrift in a sea of emotions.  Emotions which I could not control.  Thoughts which were always in front of me.  From the first moment my eyes opened in the morning until well after I attempted to close them at night.

No matter what I tried, nothing seemed to help.  Those thoughts were always there, always a part of me.

From this side, I now know that what happened at that workplace was trauma - both the abuse and the ending.  That it became PTSD - or probably more accurately complex PTSD

The 2 up and HR could not have engineered a more traumatic or brutal ending to the contract.

To them, it may just have been another day at the office.  An unpleasant task to accomplish.

To me it was my life.

For the 2 up and the maternity leave supervisor, they were able to go back to their desks, back to the normality of their everyday work lives.

For me, that normalcy was abruptly seized from me.

I was given no time to adjust to my "new" normal.

All of the insight I have now, has come from being on the other side.  The side were healing eventually began to occur after 18 months.

This desert, this wasteland of confusion and emotions is what we're entering now in the series.

A place were undiagnosed and unrecognized trauma reigns.

This appears to be a good place to end on a Friday morning.  The work week - and my blogging week - are coming to an end and I'm gearing up for the weekend.

I imagine as the series progresses, there will be a backward and forward motion.  Going backward to certain things about the workplace.  Going forward into the emotional barrenness of that time.  

There will be times when I will need to take a break from the difficult work of recounting this phase.  But it has to be told.  Otherwise, what has taken place since makes no sense.

You, dear reader, need to know how dark things became - and why - before you can begin to understand what recovery looked like when it finally started to come.

I hope that this blog is helping someone, somewhere along their journey of either workplace abuse or post workplace abuse.

My Contract May Have Ended: but it sure felt like I was fired

Continued from yesterday

As the door closed behind me that final time, I don't think I fully realized the extent of what had just happened to me.  The finality.  That while one phase had ended, abruptly and brutally, another phase was just beginning.  I worked out of the workplace - and into the world of trauma and PTSD.  A world I never knew existed.  A world that was to become my reality for years to come.  A world that many people, including myself as I entered it, do not understand.

I had determined that staying in that hellhole of a job was not in my best interests.  I needed a break.

I had had months to take a good hard look at the situation and although part of me was still, even at the last minute, hoping for a miracle, realistically I was aware of the huge toll this job and this situation were taking on me.

I no longer had time - or energy - for outside interests.  My world had shrunk significantly to that office.  To those people who inhabited it.  To those stresses and tensions.  The outside world, my husband, my family held little interest to me.

Looking back, I realize that I was in full survival mode.

However, even then, I realized that there was a greater life beyond the walls of the plant.  I realized that I had other interests that I wanted to pursue.  And I could not pursue them as long as I stayed in that job.  I wanted more from life than life inside those four walls.

Also, my supervisor would return after her maternity leave was over, and I knew that I could not work under her.  So it was best to leave - and to leave then.  Even if another contract had magically been offered, I had realized that it was not in my bests interests to take it.  Still, I wanted validation.  Vindication.  I wanted that contract to be offered.  Better yet, a permanent job.  I wanted to know that it had all been a mistake - on their part.

Wishful dreaming.

So yes, staying for me was not an option.  Even if a miracle happened.

I was also prepared to ask to leave after the meeting, so being told to clear out and get out was not in contention either.

So since we were in agreement on the major points, why did they feel they had to end things as cruelly and abruptly as they did?  Why didn't they simply tell me a month in advance, as had been their standard practice with me up to that time, that they were going in a different direction?  Why didn't they hire someone in that interim to be trained so that they could make a seamless transition.

Why?

The whys are what boggles the mind.  They defy logic.

To me, none of this made logical sense.

And yet, looking back as I've been writing this series, researching, analyzing, I see that maybe in some strange, twisted way it does make sense.

One of the earliest articles I read on the net, some three or four years ago, when I started looking into the possibility (which I thought was remote at that time) that I was being bullied in workplace situation #2 was that a supervisor targets one extremely good individual knowing that that person's leaving will create chaos in the office.  Now, a logical, reasonable person would say that deliberately creating chaos in the office is something that should be avoided at all costs.  However, this kind of supervisor will apparently deliberately create chaos in the office so that everyone - especially his or her superiors - are consumed with the chaos in the office and are not looking into major decisions the supervisor is making and implement.  It's like having everyone focus on a small, brush fire while a few miles away an entire town is up in flames.

At that time, the 2 up supervisor was making major changes.  Ending long-standing contracts with third-party warehouses and centralizing Western operations into one centrally-located warehouse.  On paper, it sounded reasonable - and logical.  On paper, it worked.  In reality?  That apparently was something else entirely.

Aside from the tremendous challenge of minimizing leftover stock in the existing warehouses - while (hopefully) at the same time meeting customer orders - and fully stocking the new warehouse, apparently there were major issues with the management of the new warehouse.  The 2 up made other decisions that apparently didn't work out well.  As a result, she was fired give or take a year or so after I was walked out.  Not because of what happened to me, but because of her own mistakes.

Was I a real life, flesh and blood human being to my 2 up?  Or was I simply a pawn in her chess game of management?   I've always wondered.  I'll never know for sure.

I walked to my car and pulled out my cell phone.  I attempted to dial my daughter's number.  I couldn't remember it.  I was shaking.  Crying.  Distraught.  My body and mind on auto pilot.  I needed to get home.  Was I safe to drive?  I didn't know but knew but I would soon find out.  I don't think I have ever felt so alone and so worthless as I did at that moment, freshly dumped outside the back door of the plant.  Walking out of one life into another.  One I was not prepared for.