[dwr3]

So, it's getting bad lately. I'm in my early twenties, come from a country with very bad economics. After a long time of unemployment (over 6 months) I ended up working in a huge warehouse in a big corporate company. You can say I'm a low position corporate worker. There are not many job offers in my area and it's a miracle I got usual employment contract (which is very rare) and a wage above the minimal one (which is also rare in my country). I work 50 kilometres from my hometown. I do mundane tasks, there's a strong hierarchical system (with which I have a hard time adjusting to) and generally it's a type of work for which I am a bit overqualified.

I suffer from congenital adrenal hyperplasia and congenital hypothyroidism and the job has a rotating shift system which is terrible for me. It's been 7 months at that place already. It also worsens my asthma and allergy.

It was fine at the beginning, I mean I was kinda able to pass by with my social issues (my endocrine disorders were left untreated for several years and it left me with some neuropsychological issues, learning disorders mimicking Aspergers etc) and my illnesses. I had some friends, people I talked to, but most of them got fired at one point because there were too many workers and not enough work for them. Now there is just a small group of people and the levels of stress and rat race kind of behaviour increase day after day.

My first problem is the rotating shift work. My body has a huge problem with adjusting to constantly changing working hours. We work from 3 to 10 days straight, so let's say we have our shift changed 3 to 5 times a month. Night shifts are rare, so I'm not gonna talk about them. With an afternoon shift, I usually sleep from 9 to 11 hours, then go to work. But the morning shift wrecks me. Last time I had six days of morning shift, it was a nightmare. Just that the nightmares happen when you sleep and I barely do. I have this severe issue with falling asleep early (6 or 9 pm) so - apart from one day - I kept sleeping for 3 to 4,5 hours (I have to get up at 3 am for the morning shift). At work, I felt like I'm having a huge hangover and have the symptoms of adrenal insufficiency (and mind that I already have an adrenal and metabolical issues). On the fifth day, I was microsleeping during the tasks, felt extremely drowsy and on the edge. I couldn't judge properly, didn't remember what I was doing a second ago. I thought I'm gonna end up in a manic or psychotic state or anything of that kind, like in the past while I was on Accutane or kept using Xanax or had some encodrine crisis (I'm terribly scared of loosing control because of my experiences). I got twelve hours of sleep today but my body doesn't follow that fast and I'm extremely worried about it and my mind. It doesn't help me with dealing with social stuff, either.

The other thing is what happens at work. There are some people there who moved from workplaces in which the rivarly, rat races and workplace bullying are an everyday thing. Their mindset is now affecting everyone. I'm just gonna explain the latest events and also have to admit that I'm starting to feel there the way I did during my most traumatic year 10 yrs ago when I was the only foreign student at school in a foreing country when I had to deal with extreme levels of bullying. But also mind that I tend to stand off in every place I go to, unfortunately, and was rejected and ostracized a lot (due to my looks, being twice exceptional student, my behaviour, nationality, lots of things). I'd like to know what I should do, so maybe this time I will not let it devour me.

So, our work targets depend on the number of stock we get and it's not equal. You sometimes get more and sometimes get less, I don't want to go into the details. In order to do the target, you really have to get a lot of it, so some people started acting tricky in order to get as much as they can. There are huge fights over it on a regular basis in which the managament has to intervene. People basically act like they would sell their soul or bite your hand off in order to get as much as they can. I never cared much, I was the average one when it came to targets, I'm also not a robot and doing it "just fine" is enough for me. But there are people such as X, who admit they "want to be the best and have to be on top in every situation". That person doesn't play fair and keeps working so hard our targets get raised three times because she goes over the target. She feels so proud being called the best worker, it's like a life mission for her. Other people are either her followers or rivals. The atmosphere is getting really unpleasant.

So, both I and X applied for a higher job position. Actually, I'm the only person that did apart from her. She's mad at me because of this, feels like I'm stopping her. I applied because I was getting bored with my current type of job, she treats it as a way to pump her ego. I'm also 15 yrs younger and don't have any kind of degree, so it also irritates her even more. She keeps asking people who work with me in secret about whether they know how my interview went and if I got any call-back. She sends me these aggressive gazes and treats me like air and - generally - I noticed that people around me started treating me differently. But it's also my fault, because at one point I was getting fed up with what's happening around me and started criticizing this kind of attitude towards work and even laughed openly once when I saw her walking down the place to get the congratulations for the number of targets she does, seeing what she's doing in order to do that. Also, people around me are getting very stressed out and I often hear the stories how they cannot take what's happening anymore and this atmosphere is just affecting me.

But it wasn't that way until I was left without my fav co workers. And for some time I was working in a single workstation, trying to stay out of it. Some time ago I agreed to work next to that woman in her 50s who seemed nice. After two days I noticed she shares everything I say with others, including some irrelevant infos from my personal life (like, I just say, that something happened a day ago to keep the small talk and the next day she says "oooh, I was talking with my husband about it"), but also goes from me to X and she generally behaves like she wants to get me to say stuff about her. She seems stupid and naive. Constantly comments on how much stock this or this person has and tells me 50 times a day she doesn't care about the competition here (yeah, sure). Last time we were working together, I noticed she puts the worst kind of stock on my desk and doesn't want to help me with some work she is obligated to help me with and it is shocking for me, the way she openly behaves in such a stupid way. I'm sure she told other people something about me, as she does to me about them. Next time I go to work I need to either say something to her and leave her for the single workstation or don't talk to her at all. My issues with sleep don't help me at all, because I get less inhibited with what I say, etc. But I'm still surprised at what people are doing there and the way they act. I was even told I don't fit in there completely, that I seem overqualified, but I know from the past that people see me as not only odd, but also condescending. I also don't like my manger very much (the ones who stood up for people were fired when the company was acting in an illegal way when it came to schedules, so the ones who are left are sometimes weird, mine likes to motivate people through the feeling of uncertainty and fear about being fired and he lied to me about it at one point; I had to be fired due to taking the sick leave, but I finally wasn't) and he doesn't like me back. I'm very stiff in a way I communicate with him. The only people I talk to are the ones from the different sections. I also, unfortunately, stand off due to my weird speech prosody, the way I walk, my sharp looks and lack of spontaneity.

Do you have any advices?

I think I will not leave right now, because I still don't know what about my promotion and there are not better places to go to at the moment.

Sometimes I get jealous of my friends who are students, have families that help them maintain their living. They go to this kind of job only for a week or two during summer holidays and always say they wouldn't stand it for any longer. Some of my friends don't have to work at all. And they still get more money from their families than I have from this job and don't understand my issues.

I also don't feel sure about myself. I've been put under such pressure many times in my life and when I feel this kind of defensive, I sometimes have a hard time dealing. I mean, I'm a girl with a long history of social rejection, physical and mental bullying, with high levels of cortisol and testosterone and masculinized brain. My thinking is very black or white, very rigorous. I deal well with high stress lasting a short time, with extremely stressful events, but prolonged pressure is very different, especially when you're socially blind with symptoms of ASD/NLVD.

[dwr3]

I also hate working in an open space. Each work station is connected to another one, there are bright lights and thousands of people around you. Someone is constantly talking to you, walking behind you, approaching you to have a small talk, I feel like a hamster in a pet shop. I got used to cameras hanging everywhere, but this lack of privacy is also very stressful.