Finding Direction From Dissatisfaction

There has been a major shift in corporate culture, business practices and infrastructure at my work. It’s been happening for the past 2-3 years and the truth of the matter is that the execution and outcome are far from productive or successful. The workload has ballooned and things, important regulated things are falling through the cracks. To the point that there have been legal repercussions and pretty strong and sometimes permanent disciplinary action. Turnover is becoming a problem in a department where it used to take years for a position to become available. Seriously, I was at my company for 5 years before I was able to hire into my current department. Now our department has 2 vacant positions to fill. A dear friend in my unit is retiring at the end of this month and as far as we know, my supervisor has not been given permission to start interviewing to replace her. Then today, another person put in his notice to leave the company. Oh, and last week the Assistant VP of our department announced a major realignment of employees in our department. So we are losing 2 more people in my unit to other supervisors and gaining 2 new co-workers. They are people I know, one of them pretty well because she’s worked on the other side of my cubicle in the unit next to mine. But this means I am losing my cubicle mate, someone I’ve grown pretty close to in the nearly 4 years that I’ve been in our unit. Grown close in the way that women do when they work in close proximity and have things like motherhood and our jobs in common. Nearly 4 years of birthday lunches, regular lunches, sharing triumphs, irritations, confidences, laughs and tears. I will miss her even though she’s not going far. But you know how that goes. She’ll start to bond with her new unit and lunch with them more and more. She’ll share their birthdays, confidences, laughs and tears. Our other co-worker who’s leaving is a guy friend I talk and text sports with all the time, during work and after work. We referred to him playfully as “The Boy” in our unit because he was the only guy.

Needless to say, morale is at an all-time low where I work and in most of the other departments. It’s really not such a great place to be anymore. The bitch of it is that it used to be a great company to work for that really valued their employees. It’s painfully evident that this is no longer the case. It’s sad, draining and disheartening. Yet, we maintain our sense of humor and sense of ridiculousness. We have to in the face of all the changes. We try to stick together and not allow ourselves or each other to get too down.

I’ve felt a little guilty of late because many of my co-worker friends have actually told me I am lucky because at least I have an exit plan from what’s going on. I mean I do have an exit plan and I am doing things daily, weekly and monthly to make it come true. Some have been by design and some have been on purpose. This journey of mine was actually sparked by what’s been happening at my work. I realized I couldn’t stay there until I retired as originally planned 9 years ago when I was hired on there. Then came an, even more, reality altering realization that I didn’t have to stay at my company and more importantly, I could finally figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up! So far it’s been a hell of a journey and I have faith that it will lead me, not just away from my current job but to someplace great. My current direction developed from an unhappiness and dissatisfaction so deep that it could only come from the divine. Today I am grateful for direction found as a result of Divine Dissatisfaction.