[Perzephone]

Hi all...

Just some musing from me. Has anyone noticed that just the fact that you HAVE to go to work everyday makes your depression or anxiety worse?

I freakin' hate my job. It was so challenging when I was first trying to get the position. Learning the skills, competing against other people who all wanted the job, trying to prove myself worthy of becoming a ... night auditor. It was such a change from being stuck out at the front desk dealing w/the public.

Now that I've been doing it for 2 years - it's so tedious. It's the same thing, every night. And not only the job itself has gotten tedious, but the workplace. My coworkers are my only social life, and they all complain all the time about the same things every single night... the management is ineffective, the hotel itself smells horrible & has more maintenance problems that haven't gotten fixed since I started working there - it's literally the same problems w/guests & their rooms every single night. We're severely understaffed & over-sold. I never really wanted to work for the hotel I'm working for in the first place, but they were the only major casino that even interviewed me. I figured I'd get some hotel/casino experience & move on to bigger & better things, but apparently our hotel has a bad reputation of ruining attitudes among employees, so no other hotel will look at anyone who's worked here... but the money is the best I've ever made, and the insurance benefits (being a Teamster) are fantastic. So I'm sort of stuck.

In November, due to a major merger, I may be losing my position as night auditor & I may end up having to go back out to the front desk. Aside from the obvious reasons of not wanting to deal w/the public - my knees & back are bad & it just plain hurts to stand for 8 hours. I'm also finding out that after years of being flexible & adaptable to change - I'm terrified of it. There are so many nights that I sit in my cubicle & just want to crawl under my desk & cry hysterically. Before I go to work, I get the same feeling - I just want to run & hide, or run away like a little kid...

When I started working for this hotel, I told myself that I'd just do it long enough to become vested in the union, which means that I'd have guaranteed retirement benefits (even if after 5 years, it's small - but it's something) & if I leave the union, I can go back at the 100% pay level & not lose any of that time I've put in. I thought I would have to work til March of next year before I became vested, but it was actually only 500 hours - which I hit sometime in early July but didn't know til a couple of days ago. So now, I've attained my goal - but I'm still afraid to find a different job.

I keep telling people, "Now that I'm vested, I could quit any day I wanted to!" but I get the feeling that, this time next year, I'll still be doing the same thing I'm doing now - and that really scares me, that I've become so stuck that I'll never be able to take the major risk of freeing myself. Since I enrolled in school again, I am even more scared that in two years, I'll have an Associates of Accounting, and still be a hotel clerk for the same damned place. If I wasn't already battling depression, I think that would be enough to slam me into it.

[JustBen]

Why are you "stuck"? You say that you're afraid of being in the same job in two years, but I wonder what kind of fear is keeping you in this job? You could walk right out the door any time you pleased, right? But you fear the consequences of doing that. What are these consequences?

[Perzephone]

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JustBen said:But you fear the consequences of doing that. What are these consequences?

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Um, mainly because I feel like, at 31, I'm losing my marketability as a 'new hire' in a new workplace... especially here in Vegas.

My job does pay about twice as much as I've ever made, and being a Teamster gives me incredible health benefits. So if I quit, I lose all the bennies and basically have to start all over again. Finding a new job is also hard work - and normally I'm too just too done-in on my days off to do much more than laundry. I have no life in me anymore - I've turned into a drudge in the past four years.