Are people in your life extremely unsupportive during your hard times?

I’m reiterating that it’s worse to have your mom die than to have someone who cared about you walk out on you. To break it down further, her mom was “her right hand.” My GM, though not legally related to me, was also my right hand, in a way. By the time I went to work for him, I was so damaged by my Arby’s experience that I was visibly dying inside. And I was self destructive. If it hadn’t been for our multiple talks, I woulda drank myself to death by now.

Arby’s coworker lost her mom to death. I lost this person to him suddenly deciding to change and reject me. Yes her situation is a lot worse. But other than that, there are similarities,

I have empathy for others, probably too much. I just lost the ability to express my empathy after getting hurt too many times. I was among those extremely supportive of my Arby’s coworker when her mom died. That was among the last time I emphasized with anyone.

It’s hard to emphasize when you’re constantly taking a hit and in survival mode.

Quote:

Originally Posted by unaluna Empathy seems very expensive.

Unaluna, could you explain this? I'm guessing you mean an emotional cost, but I don't understand how empathy can cost anyone. To me empathy is "just" part of who I am. I'm struggling to see a cost.

I don't want to derail Ruby's thread. Maybe we need to start a new thread.

Ruby, it seems like you manufacture these relationships in your head. Your GM has been putting space between you and him the entire time you've worked there because you're infatuated with him. You were hurt when he went on vacation and you said inappropriately to him that you'd miss him, and he responded he wouldn't miss anyone on his vacation. He has been clearly putting boundaries between you and him. There is no relationship between the two of you. That's why people aren't supportive. Because you have imagined a relationship where there is none, and it's not the same, losing your crush to another store, as losing one's mother.

It really seems like you become infatuated with anyone in a supervisory position to you. You then refer to it as "looking up to them" as a way to pass it off as appropriate, when really it's infatuation that escalates into stalking.

I know that you can't get into see a therapist for a bit but can you find some local peer support groups to go to in the meantime and talk with them? First, these groups are actually intended to give you support not like your coworkers who are there to work. Second, Hopefully they can help you with reality checks from time to time.

NAMI does regular peer support groups in most cities.

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Definitely will try to get into NAMI

Meanwhile here’s a photo that keeps me intact whenever I fall apart. It’s a buttercup. It’s all over my bedroom wall and it’s my FB profile picture. I’m growing a garden full of them. Cuz you know, it’s what he used to call me.

And if I could have it be daylight 24/7, I would. Cuz I need all the sunshine I could get. He used to also call me that ya kno

These managers mean something to you, they represent something for you, that is not a feeling commonly had by other workers. You have a fixation with these managers and this idea of ‘looking up to them’. This point will likely be a focus of therapy once you start talking about it with a professional. People who work almost never feel so deeply for their managers. It’s a work relationship. Maybe they have a fondness, maybe even a friendship, but to be broken over losing their attention is not at all common.

While you felt severely hurt in ‘losing’ your GM, your fellow coworkers could not relate to your feelings because it is so extremely uncommon to be that fixated and it is really unacceptable, inappropriate behavior in the workplace. Your obsessive feelings are what likely caused him to withdraw from you. It was not appropriate for you to be so attached to your manager.

I finally know why I look up to authority figures at work. I never had success in school and my folks used to constantly compare me with the overachieving kids of family friends. Well duh of course Morgan is so advanced. Her IQ is 144.

But I didn’t have a frame of reference as a kid. My first job in high school was the first time I was ever accepted by authority figures (AKA managers). Cuz the teachers at school always sent me to the principal’s office.

It also helped that everywhere I worked, I never had the misfortune of working for horrible bosses who play favorites, yells all the time, micromanaged, etc. I woulda never even lasted long working for a fair but strict supervisor. So who in this situation wouldn’t look up to a manager?

My coworker Katie from Arby’s had a horrible home life. Since she was a preteen, her dad and stepmom forced her to look after several younger siblings and constantly berated her. However she had a favorite teacher to look up to at school. And she had a supervisor to look to at Arby’s.

She looked up to the same supervisor I looked up to. Both her teacher and supervisor appreciated it. They stopped working together but are on each other’s Facebook. And I guarantee if they were to see each other in public, it would be warm greeting and catching up,

With my GM at McDonald’s, he can’t even acknowledge me much when he stops by my store to borrow stuff. How the hell would he acknowledge me AT ALL on the streets?

Update: the district manager had a word with me yesterday with my current GM (a 25 year old girl) present. DM asked me what was going on? I summarized everything concisely but with still enough details to tell the whole issue.

DM told me my breakdowns are distracting and I need to get it together. I agreed to and hence, stopped being rude since, well yesterday.

DM offered to talk to the transferred GM on my behalf. I asked her if that’ll have any bearing on my position. She said it wouldn’t cuz he’s no longer here. I said to go for it then.

I know better than to get my hopes up that he’ll come back around as a result. But it wouldn’t hurt to have someone talk to him. Nevertheless, I miss him and everyone else I lost through them pushing me away

They were not pushing you away they were reacting to your unacceptable behavior. The fact that you changed your behavior after “being talked to” shows that you can control your behavior. You need DBT training to manage these thoughts you have, that black and white thinking.

It’s good you can make this connection. It sounds like you felt like your parents weren’t praising you, instead they were unfavorably comparing you to other kids. So when these managers treat you with praise for doing a good job (which they do, that’s their job, they want good morale and work out of their employees, and at first you are doing a good job wanting their praise) you get overly attached to them like the unconditional love you want from your parents. Am I on to something here or just reaching?

I hope you’re getting on the right track in wanting to stop the unhealthy fixations on the managers. It’ll take a lot of work for you. But this is what you need to do to function your best and stop getting unnecessarily heartbroken. You are setting yourself up for these heartbroken feelings and sabotaging yourself at your jobs.

But katie from Arby’s? She looked up to the SAME supervisor I looked up to. With infinitely better results than me.

These managers did a lot more than simply telling me where I did good. A lot more.

With the incident from Arby’s continuing to break me when I first started at McDonald’s AND my legal and insurance issues following car wreck. I didn’t make the first move talking it through with him. He approached me.

Also before my first job, I hated all authority figures, especially teachers.

Btw, we’re no exception to nation wide labor shortage, so we started hiring 15 year olds for the first time since 2004 (the year I was 15). Will these kids take help me out when I’m old?

Its "expensive" because you have to give attention to the other person. Its my bucket theory. If you are given attention (or empathy or love or are shown patience or whatever), it fills your bucket, then you can give some to someone else. But some people were never even given a bucket to begin with. All i have is this paper bag an its torn.

Anyway, Ruby kinda says her parents didnt fill her bucket much. So where would be a good place to go get refills? Seesaw suggested NAMI. I fill my bucket by reading.

I think you are conflating normal friendliness to staff and trying to motivate and train staff with actual friendship. You need to lose the phrase "looked up to" because that's confusing you. It's not about looking up to them. It's about your behaviors around them. You stalked the supervisor from Arby's. You have a fixation about the old GM and McDonald's.

I imagine this must be very hard, because you perceive an authority figure being nice to you, and then you seem to become fixated on that, and perhaps imagine a relationship/friendship that really isn't there. It may be very difficult to challenge that thinking, but what you CAN do is really focus on respecting people's boundaries.

Maybe we can help Ruby here by making a list of typical boundaries in work relationships so that she can make sure to follow those as guidelines at work.

Here are a few:
1. Talking publicly to co-workers about your emotional problems to get their support. It's fine to talk to co-workers who are specifically your friends in a non-work setting. But approaching co-workers to give you emotional support is crossing a boundary.

2. ..I need to eat dinner, then I'll think of some more common boundaries to be aware of.

A department manager (one step under GM) who I consider among my many work friends told me to buy myself tons of CBD, vape, and alcohol. Then I should be constantly spending all day smoking all these crap. Maybe during our next “therapy” session, I’ll completely forget that GM.

I told him I could be blacked out drunk and stoned out of my mind and I could never forget him.

He’s prolly joking but did anyone who ever followed his advice ever healed from their issues?

Quote:

Originally Posted by unaluna Its "expensive" because you have to give attention to the other person. Its my bucket theory. If you are given attention (or empathy or love or are shown patience or whatever), it fills your bucket, then you can give some to someone else. But some people were never even given a bucket to begin with. All i have is this paper bag an its torn. Anyway, Ruby kinda says her parents didnt fill her bucket much. So where would be a good place to go get refills? Seesaw suggested NAMI. I fill my bucket by reading.

Hmm, for me being empathetic helps fill my bucket. It feels good. I never realize the opposite is true for some.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ruby2011 I told him I could be blacked out drunk and stoned out of my mind and I could never forget him.

This is exactly why people distance from you. You don't get it that this Lois totally inappropriate behavior in the work place. Since you REFUSE to listen to them tell you, stop the behavior you are doing, then they tell you crap like this cause you don't listen anyway. You just have NO CLUE what appropriate work place boundaries are & what is worse is that you really don't seem to care to learn. That is what makes people you work with treat you bad because they want you to stay away from them when you start acting like that. Avoiding you keeps you from attaching to them like like you do the others you have serious problems with.

People can share & talk about personal things in the work place without being like a leach stuck on that person. You on the other hand, when someone is nice to you, you leach onto them & get your feelings hurt when people don't want someone to do that to them. You wonder why when other people see that behavior in you, they avoid you or make fun of you? They do it to keep you at a distance so they won't be bothered by your behavior on a personal level.

You don't get social behavior differences either because you are incapable because of your disability or you just don't want to. Guessing it is your disability because you keep doing the same thing over & over expecting different results from the people & never learn that it is your own behavior causing your problems

Department management is being extremely unprofessional. Even joking in that manner is inappropriate

It’s McDonald’s lol.

If it was a corporate office job or even a Walmart store, that would be totally unprofessional.

It doesn't matter what company it is. It's still a bad joke.

So it’s ok to tell employees of fast food place to go get high and drunk? Especially if an employee is having difficulties and challenges? How is *****art more professional than McD? Job is job

I know you can’t control what other people do but you can observe how others behave and learn how o make a proper judgement. We can learn by observing. Joking is fine but this kind of joke isn’t. You were in trouble for the kind of jokes before. He maybe gets away because he is a manager. Ridiculous

I think another part of the problem, Ruby, is that you likely have some people working there, for example this manager, who are not the epitome of professionalism, meaning they may be have unprofessionally themselves. And due to your disorders, you cannot tell the difference. You just see that the manager tells bad jokes, so you think it's okay, when it's not. You wonder how come you get in trouble when they don't. Well, they probably know they are being inappropriate so they do it when they know they won't get in trouble. You don't know how to discern, so you make inappropriate jokes in front of the wrong people or when it can't be brushed off, and you get in trouble.

This is why you need to simply abide by a set of boundaries and not mimic the behavior of others, because your brain doesn't allow you to discern those social cues.

I’m just saying from personal experience: ever since I transitioned from working retail to working fast food, I never once got in trouble for making inappropriate comments such as the one that manager made. Hell I said worse and people continued to associate with me. And accept me. So that’s where I got my conclusion from another fast food and other jobs. Different cultures entirely.

Some of you may recall I worked at Ross during the holiday season and my position was seasonal. They didn’t hire me on for permanent position under the pretense that my position ended. However, it’s really because I was allegedly on Snapchat with a coworker during down times late at night.

That was absent ANY inappropriate comments.

Also, I’m surprised I lasts at Sam’s club for 5.5 years. True I did my best to not make any inappropriate comments (in order to match my environment) but the anxiety of always trying not to fvck up was too much. I never ultimately got in trouble for that though. I got in trouble there for the exact same thing I got in trouble everywhere I worked:

“Being a leach” on the manager who was real nice to me.

Well, then you could infer that the way to not get fired is to maintain common boundaries with everyone at work regardless of who they are, since the reason you are consistently getting in trouble is because you are breaking people's personal boundaries in a way that becomes harassment.

Ruby, let's back up. What are your goals with being employed? What do you want for yourself?

I want to be financially self sufficient so I could lead a normal adult life like everyone else.

I noticed you used the word harassment. Assuming what I did is indeed harassment, what kind of trouble could it get you into? Not just at work, but in life.

Ruby, harassment is typically defined as any unwanted contact done after the person has told you to stop. Legally it's usually considered actionable (meaning the police will do something) if you've done it twice after you've been told to stop. It includes the stalking kind of behavior you have exhibited.

What trouble can you get into? Well you know that you lost more than one job for this kind of behavior. So you can lose your job. You could be taken to court, have a restraining order put against you. I don't think you want to enter into the court system. You need to get a handle on this behavior before it escalates. At Arby's you were an inch away from a restraining order, if I recall.

To be financially self sufficient you need to be able to hold onto a job and rise above being an entry level worker. That's only going to happen if you learn to control your behaviors at work. As others have mentioned, you seem to have the ability to do so when you want to, because you've done so before. So:

1. Remember you are at work to work, not be friends with coworkers.

2. Don't gossip or talk about what one GM says or does or how one person treats another. It's none of your business what other people's relationships are.

3. No swearing or cursing or telling offensive jokes. Just don't joke around at all. You're there to work. Be doing your job instead of messing around.

4. Be polite and courteous to your coworkers at all times. Do not equate polite and courteous behavior toward yourself with instantaneous friendship.

5. Show up on time to all shifts. Take breaks only when allowed. When your shift is over, leave.

6. If having an emotional problem while at work, ask only from your supervisor to have a break or be excused. Do not discuss with other coworkers. Call someone from your support team to discuss with them.

7. If you have nothing to do, do not mess with your phone, instead be of use. Ask your supervisor if there is anything, any task you can do during slow times so you can be productive.

Oftentimes many of us consider the above standards of professionalism and work ethic to be common sense, but I know it can be hard to navigate when you're dealing with the challenges you have. Hopefully the above list will be helpful to you. You can start implementing this with your very next shift. If done consistently, your coworkers' and supervisor's views of you may change from being creepy to being a hard worker.