Musings on reasons why I left my day job

It’s funny how some memories that you’d simply want to erase from your mind keep coming back at the strangest of times. While I couldn’t really speak out my mind on this blog due various reasons, now that I’m no longer employed, I’ll be now and then writing a few tidbits of things that happened to me while I was full time employed. I’m really hoping that these kinds of little personal articles and experiences will give that needed boost for others like me who want to finally ‘fire their boss’ and work full time to their satisfaction.

I’m just reading a book on organizing your space. It is ‘The Art Of Organizing Anything‘ by Rosalie Maggio. It’s a great book, btw, if you are like me, cluttered beyond help and need some external guidance of doing better with the available space.

This is the paragraph that really triggered my negative memory of long forgotten times.

When you’re given an office, a cubicle or a desk, it doesn’t have to stay in its original state. Think about how you work, and take a little time in the beginning to arrange things to your satisfaction… The more you can think of your office as being composed of zones, the more efficient you’ll be…

This little phrase reminded me of the following story…

I have been working in a small office on my own for almost 3 years now. Just about half a year before finally leaving from there, the boss announced that I would be getting a new colleague in the room. Fine with me since there was already another desk in place and I could use a friend and colleague to work with.

The problem was that the two desks were facing completely away from each other. Mine was facing the entrance wall (made of glass) and the other desk was behind me, facing the window. I was talking to a few colleagues and we discussed that it’s better to move both desks halfways in their position so they are facing each other. Afterall it’s so much easier to work together when you don’t have to turn every time 180 degrees just to see the person you’re talking to, particularly when I was to teach her some of the stuff I was doing. A couple of guys in the office helped me rearrange the desks so they no longer faced away from each other in the room. This was just the day before the new colleague arrived.

Just before ending the day, the boss storms in the room shouting at me as to how dare I move the desks from their original position and how can I go above his head for something so important as this decision. Honestly, I was not showing it, but I was close to crying in humiliation. I asked him why it’s a big problem to change the direction of the desks, and he replied almost word by work ‘because we are here to work, not to chat with each other’.

With my tail behind my back, so to speak, I went over to the guys (who already heard it anyway from the boss shouting across the hallway), and asked them nicely and ashamed to please help me put back the desk the way it was originally, back to back, so they no longer face each other. I felt so humiliated because after 3 years of loyal work there, I didn’t even have the pathetic right to turn my desks around. I guess creating a pleasant working environment for his employees was not on top of the list of priorities for this particular employer…