Don't mind us, we've been drinking with The Jeans...a brillliant distraction. The probem with distractions, of course, is at the end you still have to deal with what you are facing.
The only job we've been able to maintain, enjoy, and be accepted at, in over 11 years; since we were 18 years old; is in severe danger of being snatched from our firm grip.
It's hard to explain what is happening without giving away too much about our job, but fuck it.
We happen to work in a nonprofit run by privaleaged, middle class, white people who have no concept of what actually goes on behind the doors off this amazing organization of which they sit on the board of. Trust us, it is an amazing organization.
Our job, in short, is to manage food and social media; two vastly different areas of which we have some basic skill. We initallally were not hired for this, we were hired, as stated in previous posts, for one day a week as a program coordiantor of sorts. They realized quickly, in less than a year, that they could exploit our talents and use us in other facets, all while paying us a barely manageable living wage. Anybody from our Home following this has probably figured out who we are by now, just based on this confession.
This afternoon we were appraoched by our new...let's call him manager, though his job title is not that, exactly. We had a meeting about how the board precieved our work, as we are up for a living wage increase and review on a project list tasked to us a month and a half ago. Our work, which until about a month and a half ago, had been met with stellar review; they had started us off with eight hours a week and increased our hours from that, to full time, in less than a year all while altering our job duties accordingly. Our work has somehow became less than productive, even though 95% of it is at par since the beginning of this year. Work that we are not trained to do, but they are willing to make us do because we work for cheap. There is so much more involved with this situation, more than we can describe, and only the few employees that deal with the inner workings of our organization can even grasp the insanity of what they are trying to do to to us.
Today we were notified that somehow, while they are happy with our work on Twitter (not our personal account, they have no clue about that), the website, and the food department, they are not happy with out "output" on Facebook or the execution of the task list recently given to us. Somehow this perception has made them think they can reduce our hours from 32-40, to 8. Eight hours a week. Our "manger" is battling for 20...There is no way in conceivable hell that any of our work can be completed in 20 hours. We are talking the operation of food service AND social media.
This past three months we have been granted 8 hours of flex time in addition to the 32 hours of on-site time. Now granted, this extra eight hours, executed from home, has been hard for us to manage, as discussed in a previous posts. However, in those 8 hours they have added several "projects' to our list, in addition to what we were already trying to manage, making those 8 extra hours insufficient.
This in funny because they apparently had viewed us as being overworked in the first place. Something we also found out today. Their response had been to decease our hours. Which makes no sense in itself.
The biggest problem is we are the only one in the organization who knows how to do our two jobs. So decreasing the hours means we'd have to fit 32 hours of work into 8. Impossible. Fucking impossible. Like stuffing an elephant in a thimble; an analogy we used with our "manager" today that made him pause, and grin from his mental image of such a thing, while tears streamed down our face and we unleashed our trucker mouth.
We are also an adult with bills, and responsibilities; eight hours a week, even if we could complete our tasks in that time, which is impossible, is not sufficient to live on. We also cannot conceive a second job, given our numerous mental illnesses, and the FACT that we are lucky that we can maintain one.
This all seems so confusing, we are sure it does to you; and a couple of the employees we have discussed this with seem to be just as confused as us. So let's lay this out.
Facts:
Over a month ago they had told the new "manager" that they thought we had too much of a work load and desired to decrease our hours to 8...from what we gather on this, his response was to provide us more hours, the 8 of flex, to see if that would help. Which might have if they hadn't added the extra work.
We discussed with him the week following this increase, that we didn't feel that we were able to work from home. He is the only one who has not been privy to us, or our conditions; so he responded naturally, that it was too soon to go to the board and declare this, having just volleyed for our side and extra hours. We did not know the situation at hand; nor did he.
Fast forward to today, when he tells us that the board of directors wants to take the extra projects they had just given us off of our work load AND decrease our hours...to 8 a week. When prior to this we were running our programs on 32 hours a week, programs that we "inherited" from a previous "manager" and we're disorganized and faulty. Does this make senses to you?
How does it makes sense to take an employee who was doing a good job, give them an extra work load, increase their hours by 8 hours a week; only to turn around and make them keep the same work load they maintained prior to the additional load, but then decrease their hours to 8 a week.
We did not respond in a healthy adult manor to all this information. Why would we. Luckily The Jeans overheard the situation and came to our rescue and suggested "booze".
We may be an adult, but we are far from healthy. Given the "managers" statement:
"You seem to bring your personal problems to work, I can see it on your face"
How can we not bring our personal problems to work when WE ARE OUR PERSONAL PROBLEM. How does one leave mental illness at home?
So, the final employee, our top boss, our "manager", had to be made privy to our conditions. It was hard, we never wanted to tell him, if only because he is very young, younger than us, and we did not know if he would understand at all.
We can only hope, now armed with the information of our conditions, that our "manager" can fight our cause to at least maintain our 32 hours a week. We cannot imagine what will happen if he cannot do it.
None of this may make sense to you, especially if you are not a reader of us and our works. It may not make sense to you even if you are. That's not the point. We merely need to write and document our day. This post is not indicative of the rest of our writing.
The point is, there are so many things we can't even say. We can express how there is a disconnect in boards and non-profits and the work they do; how there is a disconnect in employee and employer relations sometimes due to stigma surrounding mental illness, making people afraid to be open about their limitations; how it's all bullshit, and while these hurtles may seem small to people without "issues", for people with them, it's just another thing that makes them, at the end of the day, as they are walking out the door, say:
"Have a nice evening; we're going home to convince our self it's not a good idea to jump off a fucking bridge"
That was, in fact, a shitty day! Even the threat of losing your job, in this economy, is frightening. My anxiety level would be through the proverbial roof!! I think I'll drink with you. Good luck, lovely.
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