Last week ended on a pretty high note. I closed on the house I’ve been trying to buy despite my “snarky” letter to the needy underwriter. And Flea Market Guy is going on 18 days sober and has been pretty perfect so far. Well, as perfect as someone trying to get their shit together can be. I’ve been trying to be supportive but also at a distance. I don’t want him to feel like I’m suffocating him. And also, I’m still cautious and unsure. But all in all, both of those things are a success.
Work, on the other hand, has really been causing me all kinds of stress.
Here’s the thing about businesses and business owners. From my own personal experience there are a few kinds of business owners.
There are the micro managers. They want to know every single thing that you are doing every minute of the day and it’s so stressful you can barely get your work done because you think that maybe you’ve forgotten to do something and you will get yelled at for it. I won’t typically work for those kinds of people. I can usually tell in an interview and will politely decline a position.
There are the “perfect bosses.” They are around just enough to know what’s going on and they are always there when you need them to be, but they don’t hover like a helicopter mom making sure you are doing your job. They expect you to be an adult and do the job and if they find out that you are, in fact, not doing the job, they just let you go and replace you with a responsible adult. The last guy I worked for was this kind of boss. And he was great and I miss that work environment.
There are the “laissez-faire” bosses who act like they don’t want anything to do with their own business until there is a problem and then they want to blame it on you because they hired you to fix said problem and you are getting paid good money to do it. And if this particular boss is not a good business man or unable to see how they are hurting their own business, it makes it even worse. I’ve worked for a couple people who don’t even really like the business they are in. They just do it for the money and then they poorly manage the money.
As a rule, it doesn’t matter how awesome you are at your job or how efficient you are or how good with numbers you are, if you work for a person who doesn’t see the error of their ways, they will never take responsibility for their actions and how it affects the business, they will always blame you for anything that goes wrong and there is literally nothing you can do about it. That situation is a tough one to be in, because normally, you are getting paid really well to do a job that in reality, you will never be able to do because your boss will always prevent you, in some way, from being successful.
Those are the worst positions to be in. It almost doesn’t matter how much you make because the stress of having to deal with all the blame is enough to make you want to jump off a bridge anyway and then it doesn’t matter how much money you had.
I used to think that there was a number that would allow me to put up with a lot. A lot of stupidity, a lot of abuse, a lot of long hours. And maybe when I thought that, it was true.
I’m not sure if I’ve changed or if it is just that I’ve aged, but I can deal with poor business ventures and poor business decisions less and less these days. Especially when I’m expected to be the voice of reason and everybody agrees with me, but then they walk out of the meeting and nothing changes.
And I feel like the insane one, because for one minute I’m dumb or naive enough to believe that I was heard.
Needless to say, I’ve been playing the lottery a lot more lately, because I know that before long, if something doesn’t give, it won’t matter how much money I’m making, I will take that long walk to the unemployed side.
Not that it is that difficult to find a job. I think you really only have to have a pulse and be willing to leave your house to get a job at most places these days. So at least there’s that.
So I’m continuously weighing the pros and cons of the work I am doing now, which is barely consultation work and now there is some manual labor involved for the next month or so, but I keep telling myself that it’s worth it. Or at least that the money is worth it. I keep trying to talk myself into not losing my shit over stupid stuff. But also, I keep telling myself that money isn’t everything.
Mostly I keep hearing Super Therapist’s voice in my head, saying, “you can’t want it more than them.” And it’s true. With relationships. With jobs. With success. I can’t want FMG to be sober more than he wants it (and I don’t). And I can’t want the business to be successful more than the owner wants it to be successful. And that is my problem. Because I feel like I do want it more than him because I feel like if the business fails then I will have failed, when in reality, I know that it is his spending habits that will ultimately destroy the business.
There is just so much drama in my life now and I just want to go back to the days when I could go to work and then not think about it once I’ve clocked out and gotten home. The good old days.
But really I’m just wishing for a winning lottery ticket so I can make my house an oasis, buy a second oasis by a beach somewhere and spend my days pecking away at this keyboard putting words together that someone may want to read one day.
RouletteWeekend 