Almost 50 +

Advice. The grass isn't always greener. We all heard that phrase. I learned that the hard way. Left a job of 15 years for another in the same field for another company. Red flags shot up right from the beginning. One was, " I would never step foot in a Walmart." This was said by my new boss. She actually said that. Yes, I left the company, but it is not this depraved, deviant company they make it out to  be. To say you would never step foot in a Walmart says a lot to me. It tells me you feel "better" than the workers there. That was the first red flag. Second, was how a couple more of my superiors watched my every move. I am serious, I was constantly watched, scrutinized to a point where I felt their eyes burrowing in my back. And to say that had to be an exaggeration, is not the case. It was unnerving to see eyes trained on me whenever I looked at these people. Third, not being able to talk, I don't mean complete silence, like in a library or church...I mean idle talk. If a topic came up out of the work topic, you may of been able to squeeze a sentence or two about it...but not any longer than that. You had to hush up, heads down. or up...to work...nose to the grind stone. Well, that is okay to an extent, but boy can that drain your mind. You feel robotic after a time, not human. Personal conversations were snatched here and there. Moral was a issue because of that. Just do your job, work work work, no life outside brought in unless someone asked, then you had to be brief. That took its toll on me. Hey, I am all about work, do it right, but where is the human aspect of that? What about laughter? What about the human being's life outside this box? No, it drained me.  I could not work where I felt like I was only theirs for 8 hours and nothing to define me outside of that box. So, I started to feel the stress, along the way, to my dispair, my mom got very sick, cancer. I had to be there for her- I wanted to be there. Usually I received compassion on that aspect, but all and all I was expected to never falter, to be able to set all of the emotions aside, and work. That is fine, but it was emotionally draining to be expected not to feel that pain all day. People are not robots. We cannot go through something like a dying parent and not feel stress. I started to make mistakes. I felt isolated, my anxiety went through the roof. I felt "out of sorts" and to top it all off, constantly told how I did everything wrong.  Then, to make matters worse, I was betrayed by another employee who helped me do a computer task in the area, by which she saw over my shoulder  what I made per hour. Wow, shit hit the fan. Apparently I made more than this veteran employee and her co-worker. I get a phone call on my day off- telling me how "unprofessional" it was to do that task at work, on the computers in that area. There were 2 other supervisor on duty as we were doing this, and they even showed us how to get to that area of the website on these computers. These supervisors knew we were doing it, and never once- said it was inappropriate. But it was my fault. I was told I left the window open, which is also a lie because I could pull up the history and I shut that window 1 minute after I opened it. She saw it over my shoulder and blamed me for leaving a window open. THAT Hurt. The 2 employees raised a stink, got their raises, and withing 2 weeks I left. I cannot tell you the anxiety that place caused me. I would never want to work in an environment where people don't have life outside "the box" of the work place. Never again.  I am working back at the "degrading" Walmart. Not to me,  it is not degrading. I feel like part a family. A family that is not perfect by know means, but we laugh, we can talk...They care about me, they ask about my life outside, we share. Its a big relief to me actually to have a job where we can be human and not robots. Lesson learned. I am human, after all.