PTSD and the workplace
A friend recently shared with me a story about how his coworker betrayed him at a previous job. After telling the story, everyone we were chatting with started sharing their toxic workplace stories (everyone had one). Someone then said: "The experience honestly gave me PTSD. And they wonder why people would rather work from home."
I thought that particular comment was interesting. For years I struggled with working in the corporate world. I was a "job hopper" and never stayed at a job longer than two years. It was like I had this fear of being too enmeshed in the office world and always had one hand on the emergency exit, ready to flee the burning building at a moment's notice. I always thought the problem was me being commitment-phobic, but when my friend made that comment, I realized that maybe my behavior wasn't a personality flaw, maybe it was a PTSD response (as dramatic as that sounds).
At one of my first jobs, I had to watch a close coworker be endlessly berated by our boss. It was uncomfortable to watch, almost like being a child watching a sibling get abused by a parent. I felt helpless. There were many times she was reduced to tears, and out of respect for her, I would pretend I couldn't hear her crying even though we shared an office (or maybe I was just too cowardly to say anything). It went on for an entire year before my boss finally fired her.
I quit that job shortly afterwards, and my boss seemed genuinely shocked when I put in my two-weeks notice as we had a good relationship. The problem though was that, although she was nice to me, I saw a glimpse of her other side. What if she started treating me that way? How can you trust an employer when you see things like that? How am I supposed to see my office as "family" when I'm encountering shit like that on a daily basis?
I had another job that was even more toxic than that since it skewed a bit younger. They had weekly meetings where all the editors would just shit-talk about the other staffers and plot which ones they wanted to fire 1. I had to beg them not to fire talented people from my department, and had to constantly fight to keep people there. Someone then started a rumor that our department was getting laid off. We were all stressed and feuding with other departments to prove our worth, and then one day, the entire sales department (the last department we expected to get laid off) was fired. We watched in shocked silence as they sadly packed up their stuff (this was an open office). And all that drama happened in my first year!
And it wasn't like this was a hospital or something where we were saving lives. We weren't even doing important work. We were working for a start-up company and producing slop content. All that stress was for what? All that drama for why? Every single day, every argument, every time-wasting meeting was all a complete waste of everyone's time. I think I lasted a year and a half before I gratefully found another job and escaped from there.
But even the job after that, although it was a lot more professional, had its share of drama. One day, we were all mysteriously moved to another part of the office for the day. No one would tell us why until suddenly we started hearing all this sobbing coming from the hallway. We discovered they laid off the entire development department and they didn't want us talking to them. I remember befriending a girl in that department just a few days prior who told me she had just recently put a down payment on a condo. I had to watch her stand in the hallway, holding her things, looking completely shattered.
So, honestly, maybe I'm not a commitment-phobe, maybe I'm traumatized. Cause honestly, every job I've ever had, I've felt anxious that I would be fired, so I would always have an exit strategy in my head in case I needed to flee before things got really bad. But after having that conversation with my friend, I now realize this is not a healthy way to deal with your career. You should be able to just go to work, do important/purposeful things with people you don't hate, earn a check that is worth whatever you did, and go home. How can anyone work when they're dealing with the trauma of being in this abusive relationship with their employers? Watching their coworkers be bullied, talked about, then fired, and then wonder if you'll suffer the same fate?
When I went freelance, I thought I preferred it to corporate life cause I was lazy and hated waking up early. But maybe...I'm trying to avoid something. Maybe I know I can't handle office politics and so I choose to freelance, even though there's way less stability, cause it's preferable to the bullshit I had to deal with before.
If employers want to keep their employees, want an office where everyone is "family," then they need to lead by example. Employees see you. They see when you lay off an entire department. It doesn't matter if it wasn't their department, they're now anxious. They see when you berate and bully and single-out coworkers. It doesn't matter if it didn't happen to them, if they see it, they now know it's a thing that could happen.
And no one wants to spend eight hours of their day in an abusive family.
The company hired staffers on a temp basis with the potential of going full time. We let most of them go, usually for personal reasons that almost never had anything to do with their job.↩