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How can this be?
You work for a company where people tell you how incompetent you are, bring up your poor performance management issues constantly, tell you you’re being defensive and your lack of technical knowledge is noticeable and your skillset isn’t what they need, and to please go away and don’t come back.
A few years later you work for a different company and people are asking you to help them with assignments, complimenting the quality of your work, laughing at your jokes, and actually seem to be glad you’re on their team.
You’re the same person and have the same skills yet one company told you you were inept and intellectually limited, and made you feel unworthy of being employed by them, and the other likes the work you produce and gives you important assignments and the feeling couldn’t be more different.
Your boss at the miserable company would not stop barking at you that your list of meeting agenda items wasn’t in the correct order (petty nonsense) and that your ideas needed to be more fleshed out. Your new boss never complains about your work or what you say, appreciates what you contribute, and likes you as a person.
This is the up-and-down life arc I went through the past seven years.
Maybe you’ve had a similar experience in the working world.
I sure hope it’s been positive because the negative situation ruins the entirety of your life. After all, at work, you’re worried and self-conscious and lacking in confidence and you go home and think about the problem at night and on your way to work and all through your weekends. Your mind goes dark.
I told one of my brothers about my miserable work situation and how a boss was making me feel stupid and incompetent. “Sound like he doesn’t like you,” he said.
This was hard to hear. I think we all tend to like ourselves and think others will like us. But some people just don’t. It’s hard to believe others truly may not care for who we are, what we stand for, and how we think. But it happens. For whatever reason I won’t ever really know this one boss went after me psychologically and made it clear I wasn’t who he wanted to be on his team. I guess he didn’t like me.
Not sure why. I can be annoying and self-involved and am saddled with plenty of other unattractive traits.
Or maybe he was jealous. Could have been he was a narcissistic sociopath who couldn’t have cared less about me and had his own selfish agenda.
The man struck me as unhinged and delusional about his own abilities. The anger he felt about his own life found an outlet: me.
Why am I telling you this?
Mostly to let you know you’re not the only one who may have endured a miserable work situation in which a boss was making you feel inferior. I also want you to know sometimes you’re just vulnerable in a way and the timing is such that they destroy your self-worth.
I don’t ever want this to happen to me again – I will not let it — and I hope it never happens to you. If anyone tries to belittle me at work, I will tell them to stop and if they don’t I’ll make sure to get away from them in whatever way is necessary. People like this can’t be reasoned with.
I also share this with you because I am an example of a person who found out, despite plenty of skepticism, that your work situation can improve dramatically. You can regain your confidence. Going to work can again be invigorating after being humiliated.
Life can get better.
Usually, the key is doing whatever you have to do to get away from the person or people ruining your waking moments. Get away. And never speak with those life-destroyers again. Rid them from your thoughts.
And be thankful that bad situations don’t last forever if you don’t allow them to.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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