It was a great evening. Good friends. Good food. Many laughs. Larry, whose story you can read here, was having dinner with Sam to get his ideas on getting back into the workforce. Larry had retired from his job at the mutual workplace that he and Sam had worked, but in truth, he was forced to retire by a management intent on wearing him down so he would leave. That was over six months ago, so Sam was happy that Larry wanted to talk.
Over dinner, the conversation naturally drifted towards their prior, shared workplace, with stories being swapped, and gaps filled in from different points of view. Larry was ready to jump back into the workforce, but hadn’t prepared a resume for many years. That was where Sam came in. He had gained a reputation among his former co-workers as a good resume doctor, so Larry sought him out.
“I don’t know why it took me so long to jump back in the job hunt”, Larry admitted. It was over six months ago that he retired, and he was not the type of guy who would just want to sit and take it easy for the rest of his life. Sam smiled. He knew exactly why Larry had taken so long. He needed to heal.
If we are fortunate in our work lives, we have workplaces that we cannot wait to get to each morning. They nurture us, uplift us, and give us the ability to grow as a person and in a community. Those places have low turnover and are the places where you have to ‘know someone’ to get hired into.
If we are less fortunate in our work lives, we go to workplaces that are simply workplaces. You put in your time each day, do your work, and clock out. They are not very uplifting, but they are also not damaging. They are simply places you spend eight hours or more doing your work so you can get to the people and things you enjoy.
If we are unfortunate in our work lives, we work for those places which are designed to damage our hearts and souls. We have managers who believe only by degrading you can they raise themselves up. They believe that the only way they can show that they are truly in power is to make your life miserable. An insult or slight is always on their lips, and the only words they know about your performance is ‘never good enough’.
They seem to enjoy inflicting pain and look for new ways to do it. They are always the victim, and you are always the aggressor, though the truth is just the opposite. Nobody is happy under them, yet in too many cases they stay in power.
When you finally escape that workplace, you think you can just go on with you life. Sadly, you have to, but you can’t just walk away like nothing happened. Those workplaces affect both your heart and soul. They leave scars and injuries. Those scars take time to heal. You may not want to admit it, give into it, or think it is silly to think that way, but that doesn’t change what has happened to you. It also doesn’t change that you need to heal. Hopefully where you have gone to upon fleeing that workplace is one which allows you to heal and see the true worth that you have.
Larry took this all in and had to agree with Sam, though he did have one question. How did Sam know this? Easy, Sam replied, he left the organization later than Larry did. Guess who was still in the process of healing?
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