Because I know a lot of my friends and family are going to be asking me, I’d like to take the opportunity to answer some of them in one place.

No, I did not get the job I interviewed for two weeks ago. They ended up “going with someone who had more production experience” but “would keep my resume on file.” So once again, I don’t have the experience I need to get experience. This is why I try not to talk about job prospects. They always seem to shrivel up and die as soon as I get attached to the idea.

Yes, this has made me feel depressed. I expected this, as it has happened every time I get turned down for a job opportunity I get even remotely excited about (read: pretty much all of them). I am trying to let the fact that this happens every time not get me down too much, letting the malaise just wash over me. But it’s really hard to not brood when you’re stuck in a job that doesn’t appreciate or fulfill you.

No, I don’t get to go to fighter practice this week. Apparently, my availability isn’t worth the cheap paper it’s printed on, and I have to work both Wednesday and Thursday evenings. Again. And apparently I don’t have enough of a spine to stick up for myself in any reasonable fashion, which is just making me feel even worse

Yes, I hate my job. My needs are not being honored. I’m being forced to do more work for less money. Morale is low. Hours are being cut, and I’m not making as much money. And I don’t know who I can go to about my problems (Management? My problem is with management!).

No, I don’t know what I can do about this.

Did I mention I was depressed?

So that’s where I stand. Depressed, self-loathing, and still stuck in a dead-end job that just wants to suck every modicum of drive and usefulness out of me before it spits me out. I really need to hit something this week, so of course I can’t. And while I know I’m in a bad mood, that doesn’t seem to be helping me end it.

So I woke up on this glorious Monday to an email from my student loan company. “Alright,” I thought, “nothing unusual about that. I usually get one this time of the month, telling me how much money I owe them if a few weeks. Let’s just click this open and WAGAGABA!”

To make a long story short, I had the dubious honor of seeing my monthly minimum payment double.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t been paying much to my loans. Because I’m making so little working retail, I signed up for an income contingent plan that would calculate my monthly payment based on my meager paycheck. But I have at least been dutifully paying that minimum amount. But now it turns out that that minimum payment wasn’t enough.

True, I’ve been making more money than I was while in grad school, but that surplus has been going largely to paying bills, like my backup credit card that I use for things like car insurance and repairs. I figured that that one was more manageable, so I’d try to pay off that debt first, all the while (hopefully) chipping away at the mountain that is my student loan debt. You know, from that expensive architecture degree that’s been oh-so-useful to me since I received it.

As it turns out, my minimum loan payment wasn’t even covering the interest as I had hoped. I now owe more than I did when I started paying. How’s that for discouraging? I’m guessing what happened this month is that the interest I thought I had been covering finally got rolled into the principal balance, which means I’m now paying interest on the interest. Talk about discouraging.

Needless to say, I’m a bit upset. Sure, there’s probably more I could have done, things I could have researched to avoid the situation I’m in, but that just makes me feel even worse. I know I wasn’t paying much, but at least I felt like I was finally getting ahead. And now this happens, and I feel like any progress I’ve made has slipped from my grasp. It’s enough to make me wonder if I’m ever going to get ahead financially.

And what’s worse, is it’s not like I’m irresponsible with my money. My parents taught me well, I don’t spend more than I make, and I pay my bills on time. But somehow, I still ended up shackled by debt and stuck in a job I’m overqualified for. Hey Baby Boomers, are you listening? This is why my generation is so cynical about their future! The cards are stacked against us before we even start.  We can do everything right, and still fail.  IT SUCKS!

This week has been pretty hellish at work. There’s been too much to do and not enough people to do it. My manager has been stressed out, which in turn puts me in a not-so-great mood. Oh, and my availability isn’t being honored. Again. Needless to say, morale is low.

Since the new store manager arrived a year or so ago, we’ve been facing what I can only think of as an austerity approach. My manager has ended up having to stock the department by herself, even though that was supposed to be a temporary thing. She’s also been told not to combo-schedule people from early mornings to the sales floor for most of the week, which makes it hard for me to get the hours I want/need. Whenever there’s a shortfall in another department’s stocking ability, it seems that ours is the one that gets picked from.

This has resulted in the lack of any significant safety margin, meaning that things are stretched so thin that if anything goes wrong, the results could be catastrophic. Need to do a big move and stock a bunch of product? Choose one, because you can’t do both with one set of hands! It’s also making it difficult to keep up with tasks like organizing valuable merchandise for pickup. After all, it’s kind of hard to spend a significant amount of time off the sales floor if your usual help isn’t there.

Couple these with the fact that there seems to be at least one key person on vacation all the time and you can see how exhausting work would get. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being given impossible tasks and not enough time to complete them.

Which brings me to the title of today’s post. Normally, I’ve been happy to stay and work extra hours when asked; my meager paycheck can definitely use the boost. But I’ve been feeling less and less helpful lately (being forced to work during the few times you’re unavailable, having it implied that it’s your fault it’s not being honored, and being generally overtaxed does not exactly instill company loyalty). So inevitably, I was asked to stay a full eight hours today. But whereas my usual response is something along the lines of “I guess I can stay if I need to,” today I actually said “No.”

I don’t know about you, but that’s a pretty big deal for me. Normally I’m all too eager to please others, often to my own detriment. I also could have used the money (not being combo’d did a number on my hours this week). But I decided that my mental health was more important than any benefit that the company might have gained from my presence there. After all, I can’t make their problems (under-staffing, etc.) my problems. That sort of thing is way above my pay grade.

So what have I been learning? I’m coming to realize that working retail is not the two-way flow of loyalty I naively assumed it was. If you let them, the company will take and take and take until you’re nothing more than a desiccated, lifeless husk. They don’t care about you. To them, you are nothing more than a meat popsicle, a cog in the machine that prints them money.

And if they’re not going to be loyal, then I see no reason to be either.

The less I think about work, the happier I am.

Now, this may not seem unusual to you. A lot of people don’t like their jobs, or are at least stressed out and annoyed by them. But for me, at least right now, the act of thinking about work actively makes me unhappy.

I noticed it today. I had the day off, and had passed the time with a mixture of reading and gaming, as I usually do. And believe it or not, I actually felt good! Maybe it was not having to get up at 4 in the morning the past few weekends; maybe I was actually well-rested enough. Maybe it was the fact that I was able to do things I wanted (relatively) guilt free. But for the most part, I’ve been in a relatively good mood today.

One of the consequences of that, however, is I realized how much of a not good mood I’ve been in lately. Working early mornings keeps me fairly exhausted, and the schedule shenanigans I’ve been facing lately have me less than thrilled. And I noticed today that as soon as I started thinking about work, my mood started to darken.

When this happened, I reflexively backed away from that train of thought; I didn’t want to mar a good day off with dread of things to come. But intellectually, I found the effect intriguing. Now, I’ve had my share of mind-numbing and boring jobs, but for the most part those haven’t done much more than evoke feelings of apathy in me. I haven’t really had a job that has actively made me dislike it on a deep, visceral level.

And I’m not sure what to do about that. Sure, “get another job,” you may say. But that means exposing myself to the pain and disappointment of rejection, of going in for an interview and not hearing back for almost a month. It means looking at listings for entry-level positions where I meet less that half of the qualifications. I can’t exactly go out to the Job Orchard and pick a Fresh Job off of the Job Tree to put in my Job Wagon to bring back to my Job Garden.

But I’m sick of working retail. I’m sick of waking up before dawn just to go toil away stocking pallets. I’m sick of not being able to hang out with my friends. I’m sick of my schedule changing from week to week. I’m sick of not having my availability honored. I’m sick of having to ask permission to have access to my weekends. I’m sick of having travel plans torpedoed because I’m so low on the totem pole there’s no way I’m going to have any seniority unless someone retires.

At the same time, I’m too principled to just up and quit. I need the money; I make roughly enough money to support myself, and my girlfriend doesn’t make enough to support both of us (to say nothing about student loans). While the stress of hating your job may be better than not having one, it’s not much comfort. I just don’t know what to do. I feel stuck, and searching for a job just feel so futile.

Happy Friday, I guess.

I’ve been thinking a bit more about how I’ve been getting screwed over by my employer lately. For better or worse I’m still angry, although I think I probably have a right to be. But what is really upsetting me right now is how my own character and moral fiber seems to have been used against me.

Long story short, I’m a nice person. I try to avoid conflict whenever possible, to the point of sacrificing my own well-being just so things go smoothly. I’m eager to help, and my inherent work ethic compels me to do the best job I can, even if it’s something I’d rather not. As a result, I don’t have much practice saying “no,” or a well-honed ability to stick up for myself.

And what has being nice gotten me? A role as a doormat, apparently. Even when I try to present my case (for example, holding to my availability), I usually end up capitulating anyway. I’m so worry about not offending that in the heat of the moment I end up thinking the way the other person wants me to. I don’t realize that yeah, I really am angry, until it’s far too late to actually do something about it.

And you know what’s even worse? I’ve ended up at a point where I feel bad for even attempting to stick up for myself!

I’ve always been something of an idealist, I’ll admit. I believe in the inherent goodness of people, that they’ll approach a situation as calmly and virtuously as I would. This experience with work lately has been a rude wake-up call, to say the least. I’m starting to wonder if it’s worth my time to give as much energy, to sacrifice as much as I have if the other side isn’t willing to reciprocate.

I’m reminded of something I read online recently, where we’ve ended up in a working environment where the employees most likely to move ahead were the ones most willing to put in unpaid labor. Like the fast food worker who is given three hours worth of tasks to do in the one hour between the store closing and the end of their shift. And I’m sick of it. I’m sick of companies sucking their employees dry without any concessions in return. It’s not that these companies are evil. It’s that they just don’t care. The wants and needs (and rights) of their employees are so below their notice that it’s like a human worrying about what an earthworm thinks. Or Cthulhu worrying about the desires of a cute puppy.

I guess I hadn’t been forced to face this lack of concern before, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do about it. I just know I really don’t like people taking advantage of my caring, trusting nature. It makes me feel dirty, like trying to do the right thing is the wrong thing to do.

And I’m still angry.

Oh, how I hate those words. “The needs of the business.” An ever-so-slightly more polite of saying “Screw you peon, your desires don’t matter. Shut up, sit down, and be a good little cog.”

I think of myself as fairly easygoing when it comes to my work schedule. Sure, I ask for the occasional day off, but for the large part I’m there whenever they ask for me. About the only time I’m not available is Wednesday and Thursday evenings because of fighter practices. Those seem like those would be easy enough to get off, right? I mean, sure it’s retail, but those two nights can’t be that common a request, what with people wanting to go out Friday nights or sleep in on the weekends.

So it pisses me right off when I don’t get what little concessions I ask for.

Last week was bad enough. I had to work both Wednesday and Thursday night, thus missing both practices. This week, at least I only have to work Thursday. But I’m starting to get really annoyed with my boss when she’s making me work next Thursday evening as well.

Now having to work Wednesday, I’ll take the blame for that one. When I started working at this job, heavy practice was Thursday night, so I listed only that one as “unavailable.” It’s changed nights since then, and I didn’t bother to update my availability since I’ve been working primarily early mornings. But Thursday? That’s been on record as “unavailable” since the moment I started working there. I’ve had to fight for it in the past, too.

And the salt in the wound, the metaphorical cherry on top of this crap sundae? When I finally take a more hard-line stance with my boss about my availability, I get shot down. Apparently availability becomes nothing more than a guideline when it isn’t done for school. Even better, I’ve apparently sabotaged myself by the few times I’ve taken one for the team and worked even when my availability said I couldn’t.

So I’m more than a little pissed off. My boss at least seemed a bit more apologetic last time, and offered to take it up with the senior manager. Of course, what with me being too nice for my own good, I still have to work next Thursday; she wouldn’t budge. And sure, maybe it’s just a perfect storm of people’s vacation requests and me getting dumped on because I have the least seniority. But that doesn’t make it any less annoying. What little I ask for is apparently still too much.

At least I get to hit things this week.

So I was thinking some more about yesterday’s post and the job posting situation. I’ve come to the decision that I am, unsurprisingly, overthinking things. That even though I don’t think I’m likely to get the position, it wouldn’t hurt anything to just apply anyway. After all, if I don’t apply, I definitely won’t get the promotion. See? I can logic.

But because I can’t leave well enough alone, I continued to think about why I was overthinking applying for a promotion I might not even get. And I think it’s because, on some level, part of me thinks I don’t deserve to be happy.

I’ve touched on this issue before. For some reason, I seem to see my current employment situation as a form of penance, if not punishment. After all, I have so far failed to use either of the expensive degree’s I’ve accrued in a work environment, so shouldn’t there be some sort of consequence for that?

I’m not saying that this thought process is in any way rational; it clearly isn’t. It’s not even conscious reasoning all the time. But I feel that sometimes dragging your dark demons out into the blazing sunlight can help you exorcise them. So that’s what I’m doing. And in this case, the buggy train of thought says that I don’t deserve the opportunity.

I’ve failed to find a job in architecture. I’ve failed to use my French degree. I’ve failed to get out of my temporary retail job into something more interesting. I’ve squandered opportunities and failed to foster any modicum of motivation. So as punishment, I have to accept the bad (or at least less-than-ideal) situation I’ve ended up in. I don’t even deserve to make the best of what I’ve got. After all, if I didn’t deserve to be here, wouldn’t I have figured a way out by now?

When put plainly like that, this toxic mind-virus is revealed for the hideous thing it truly is. But we’re so socialized (it may even be an ingrained predisposition) to conflate achievement with worth. After all, if someone is poor, the dominant narrative says that it’s because they “just haven’t tried hard enough” (read: are lazy), rather than acknowledge the possibility that luck has just as much to do with falling down as it does making it to the top of the societal heap.

And I have trouble remembering that. I’ve bought in to the “bad stuff = your fault” narrative without even realizing it. Maybe now that I’ve noticed it will be a bit easier to deal with. But doing so, especially in one’s own life, is much easier said than done. After all, no one thinks they’ll end up a statistic. But those numbers have to come from somewhere.

I know I’ve probably ranted about this before (I don’t feel like going to find the link), but I hate it when a small glimmer of hope or a slight chance of success paradoxically makes you feel more depressed than usual.

Since I hate vaguebooking, I will elaborate: I got an email today from a job application I put out. It was one of the throwaway ones that I didn’t really expect to hear back from. You know the type: the ones that seem slightly related to your specialty (or at least more so than what you’re currently doing) but aren’t quite as interesting as they could be. Architecture students applying to be CAD monkeys instead of retail workers, to choose a completely random and unrelated-to-my-life example.

There’s not much more to say about it. I got a reply from someone, asking me to contact them tomorrow. No details, no further information, nothing. So I don’t know what to expect. Of course, my imagination has latched on and run with the possibilities, both good and bad. To make things “better,” I got the email while at work, and it shocked me out of the “retail haze” quite effectively, at least for a while. I was excited, obviously, and figured I would spend some time researching the firm this afternoon instead of playing video games and watching Netflix.

Needless to say, that didn’t happen.

For some reason, that small glimmer of hope perversely reminded me how untenable and un-ideal my current career situation is. It made me face the fact that I really don’t like my job. It reminded me that there’s (of course) so much more I could be doing to improve my situation. It reminded me of all the other glimmers of hope that preceded rejection. It reminded me that nothing I have done to try and climb out of Retail Hell as been successful. It made me feel trapped.

How can such a little bit of hope generate so much despair? It just seems so perverse and backwards. I wish I could find out why and punch it in its metaphorical face. I mean come on: how lame is it to have depression caused by hope? How are you supposed to work with that?

*stomps off*