regeneration

This morning I was talking with my wife about how different the work environment is at my new job.

At my old job, the number one thing you were taught from day one is: ‘don’t get out of line or you’re fired’. It was hammered into me from the first week I got there until the last week. I lived in a constant state of fear regarding my job for five years, whether something I would say would be taken out of context, whether I would be able to please my boss or team lead, or if this customer or that would call back and say that they were not happy and it would be ‘off with his head!’

It was an environment of fear. It was also a place of backstabbing, where management routinely promised one thing and delivered another, where customer satisfaction reigned above common workplace decency, where numbers meant more than simple courtesy.

For five long years I lived in this hell. I lived in deep depression much of the time because of the hopelessness I felt and the hopelessness that was around me, evidenced by the high turnover rate. Ideas for change were publicly solicited, but promptly ignored if they did not come from the ‘chosen few’, the golden children who had met the approval of management.

In other words, it was a nightmare.

I carried that same fear into my new job. The same paranoia of ‘make wrong move and you’re dead, mister’ was affecting my new relationships here. I didn’t know if I was going to be stabbed in the back, or whether I could–gasp!–actually make some friends here. Whether I could actually become comfortable in a work environment.

Thankfully, here, it’s totally different.

I’m respected for my abilities here. I’m not treated like a pawn, and I’m encouraged to keep developing my career without being forced to go through ‘development plans’ and re-interviewing for the same job I already do. I asked about certifications. “Sure, if you take the test, we’ll reimburse you for it.” My heart leaped.

I enjoy my coworkers. We get to joke around and enjoy working with each other. If I have a problem with a customer’s network, I can walk over to the network guy without the wall of bureaucracy.

Sure, there’s office politics here and there, but it doesn’t feel suffocating like Information Retrieval:

It feels like…what was that word?…oh yes, a TEAM. An actual team. I feel like I’m contributing to something, rather than a meaningless worker bee who’ll be disposed of as soon as I inconvenience the queen bee.

I’ve had to work with my fear a little bit. When people glance at my screen and see me reviewing my Japanese in my spare time, asking questions, they’re not asking in order to report me to management for my lack of productivity. They’re legitimately interested in what I’m doing.

I can breathe here. When I dared to ask if I could connect my personal laptop to the company’s network so I can study Japanese on my breaks, I didn’t get treated like a criminal, and didn’t have to fill out a mountain of paperwork. I didn’t even need to explain why I wanted to. The network admin just said, ‘Sure! Let me do a few things in the system, then I’ll get you set up!’ I was shocked.

Every day I’m similarly shocked at how things don’t have to be impossibly difficult. I don’t have to fight through layers of corporate bureaucracy to get a simple question answered. I don’t have to tattletale to management to get a co-worker to stop being a baby and take responsibility for his calls.

The customers I talk to aren’t cranky, stressed out IT worker bees. They’re just normal, nice people who need their passwords reset or a helping hand launching an application or making sure their network cable is plugged in. I can actually relax and chat with them without feeling like any word I say could be recorded and used against me later.

If I make a misstep, I’m called into the office, but there’s never any question of my further employment there, never this aura of ’shape up or ship out’. My boss just asks a few questions and explains how to do it better, and we’re cool.

I don’t feel like I’m going to die an early death any more. I feel alive. My wife and kids can sense it too.

I used to have nightmares when I would go to bed, recurring nightmares where I was stuck in an impossible-to-resolve situation, where I was hung out to dry by my coworkers, team leads, escalation team, everyone. I don’t have work-related nightmares any more. In fact, I actually sleep pretty well.

When my wife would remind me to be thankful I had my old job, I would tell her, “yes, I am thankful I have a job, but I am not thankful that I have this job.”

Here, it’s different. I’m glad for my new job. I look forward to my day at work. I haven’t had an enjoyable work environment since the post-9/11 technology crash. It’s been a long time coming, but I am so grateful to God for it.