[Malady156]

I just read one article from the new newsletter here. It was called "Employment and Mental Illness". I thought the author did a good job covering some of the problems we face and how to deal with them, and I realize everything cannot be covered in a single article, but I felt one very crucial, critical issue was missing: the problem of how people interactions on the job affect the assessment of bosses and supervisors about an employee. Specifically, how inability to emotionally or practically navigate social and/or "office politics" demands at the workplace can result in loss of employment and diminishing prospects as it goes "on record" in your personnel file.

I was fired from my job of 3.5 years last April because of these issues. I was not able to do what they required me to do in terms of contributing to the "cover the collective butt" factor. I am conscientious about my work (as the article mentioned some of us MI are) and want to deliver what satisfies the client or department I'm working with/for, and when other people are making things unnecessarily difficult or putting up obstacles I like to cut through the crap and get the job done. Somehow a conversation I had with a "client" (same organization but different department for whom we were building web stuff) about our MUTUAL dissatisfaction with the way everything had been restructured where we work, led to me being accused of having made statements that made someone else (a project manager -- not even the one I reported to directly or had any interactions with!) "look bad". First of all, this person was never -- not once -- brought up in our conversations that I recall. Second the conversations were general, not specific, just about basically how frustrating it was trying to get things finished because too many fingers in the pot were holding up the works. I did mention one PM I did not like working with but it wasn't even the one in question. Nevertheless, because I was "known" there for "not having people skills" (a polite way of saying I can't keep my mouth shut and my head down when other people make MY work look bad or make it look like I'M the one not getting the job done) and it was therefore "conceivable" that I said this or that, I got stuck with it and got terminated.

I can't lie and I can't pretend about things. And I can't navigate these kinds of complexities because I can't make sense of what humans want from me all the time. You're talking to someone who gets mentally "stuck" on questions like "Where are you from?" because my mind interprets that 50 different ways and I can't think of which "answer" is the "right" one. (The stars? The abyss? My mind? The place I came out of someone's womb here on earth? The place I grew up inside this body? Where I live physically NOW? OR WHAT?) I have trouble perceiving correctly when people are kidding around and when they are threatening me subtextually and only PRETENDING to kid around (unless it's blatantly obvious of course, which it is NOT always.) I'm prone to paranoia and oversensitivity and prefer to keep to myself when I'm working because I'm afraid of something "setting me off" and "then they will KNOW" (about me) and it will be "open season" for them to "*****" with me mentally/emotionally. I especially can't abide office gossips and harpies, social predators, sneaky guttersnipe types that chat you up trying to get anything they can then use against you. And I'm not being paranoid about that, I've encountered people like that before.

So anyway, not just to bellyache here but just to say these are very real issues for some of us and I was a bit disappointed the article didn't address them -- but then again I suppose if it had, it would have taken up the whole article! I would like to see an article about employment issues that addresses this someday if one of your writers cares to write it.

Meanwhile I barely subsist working from home and I'm terrified of the whole interview process and the whole workday world thing right now so I'm not employed. I made too much money on a big project from home when I first applied for unemployment so even when I qualified I got dropped immediately because I was honest about how much money I made those 2 weeks. never mind that i never made that much again after!! Oh and get this when the unemployment called my previous employer they REFUSED to discuss what happened that got me terminated. The unemployment guy confirmed to me that yes, they definitely behaved like they had something to hide.

[Rapunzel]

Hey Malady,

You definitely have a point. Interpersonal issues have definitely held me back a lot too. Holding everything in, and then blowing up at the boss really doesn't go over well, I have discovered. Also, one of the reasons I didn't get into graduate school the first time around was something to do with interpersonal interactions. Currently, my T is identifying "not understanding interpersonal feedback" as the number one issue I need to work on.

Definitely, that stuff matters. Maybe someone who has a better grasp on how to manage it than I do could write an article for next time? Or maybe someone can give us some pointers here in this thread.

You know, none of it is entirely our fault. Clearly, your employers were not behaving appropriately, but apparently you didn't play the game, and they didn't like that. In my case, quite often other people are being inappropriate, or maybe even abusive (some of my employers have been real gems too!), but maybe if I had the social skills to be able to deal with it, I could have had better outcomes. In some cases, standing up for myself all along instead of letting it build up might have done the trick.

[SeptemberMorn]

Malady, why don't your write that article and turn it in for approval, eh?