My predecessor at the job I’m currently at went out to lunch one day, and never came back. The following week, my (now former, by the way!) colleagues told me – the following week she sent an email disparaging every person she ever crossed paths with in her line of duties and checked herself into the central psych ward. The psych ward didn’t dismiss her, which tells me that she had good reason to go there, otherwise she would have become an outpatient in a designated regional hospital, only coming in for routine check-ins with her psychiatrist.
Don’t ask me how I know that bit of information. But that’s how it’s handled around here. If you pose no threat to yourself or the public, you will not be committed to the central psychiatric institution. Even if you ask them to keep you. I’ve only ever been a visitor there myself. The walls are a pale blue, and the late spring afternoon light is amazing. It makes the hall look as if it’s painted on silk. I still smile a little when I think of it.
I am much more resilient than the vast majority of people I know. And yet, another thing that makes me smile a little whenever I think about it is following in the steps of my predecessor and also walking out to lunch one day, never to come back. But what makes me smile even more is the thought of flipping my goddamn desk, kicking the chair from under my junior, and possibly slapping my senior with one of my monitors.
I will do no such thing, of course, nor do I want anybody else to do anything similar. It’s one thing entertaining these ideas in the darkness of your own mind, and it’s completely another thing to act upon these urges. That would be completely unbecoming. Don’t do it. I won’t.
But the thought lingers.
Which tells me that it might be a good time to switch jobs. Surely, yes, I am paid well. Surely, yes, “the devil you know”. But the only way to advance in career, or at least in pay, in corporate is to jump ship every two to three years. Unless you’re an outlier of a corporate worker – and I’m not, I’m a regular civilian who hates their job with a low-burning soul-sucking passion – unless you’re an outlier, every promotion you ever will get if you stay in one place is just reindexing for inflation.
Plus the hatred might just be dampened down a little by the newness of places and faces, and by the eradication of old and construction of a new personality for the new corporation.
Told you I’m getting bored. We must never, ever, ever get bored.
Yet we must not overexert ourselves either, and it looks like my current company is facing a bit of an employee crisis. It’s hard to find someone with the necessary skill set, which I continue to find surprising, because my job, and the jobs of my colleagues, are not difficult. They are not easy, don’t take me wrong, but they’re not complicated. It’s all quite simple. The tasks are straight-forward, and the skillset is pretty basic. Nothing you can’t learn on the job from others, or even quietly google, as far as I’m concerned.
Then again, the job I was at before that, the one where I was supposed to become a regional manager prior to the pandemic – that job was easier still, and I remember how difficult it was to recruit anyone quick-witted enough to perform the tasks there. But maybe we all just want bigger pay. For nothing, too, my inner capitalist critic tells me. For half my life and soul mortgaged to you, you bastard, my inner anarchist replies.
But I suppose if this job offers to pay me more, I may as well stay. Enter “the devil you know”. Although if they pay me more, they would certainly believe I ought to do more, and I’m doing way out of the scope of my paid responsibilities as it is.
I’m talking like I have an offer from someone different for bigger pay in my hand already. Ah, but to get anywhere and to get anything done one always needs to be a bit delulu. Fortunately that is something I excel at, as long as I set my mind to it.
I shall sleep and pray and do a cartomancy spread on it.