Difficult Decisions

How do I start off?

Well I guess I'll start by saying I am no longer gainfully employed. Yet, I'm relieved because I no longer have to do something I was not enjoying doing. Don't get me wrong, it was a very good job and not too difficult, but had politics and toxicity that was getting me sick.

The decision was kind of actually made for me as I'm also the sole caregiver to an elderly end of life patient on hospice. So while trying to balance work and taking care of her the stress was getting harder to deal with. Guilt of not being able to focus fully on my work and employer and guilt not being able to focus on my patient. I say patient as I am a former nurse before becoming an engineer.

So as of today I had to decide which master to work for fully. Meaning you cannot have two jobs and divide the same time to them. You can have two jobs one working mornings and then evenings that is different. Here I am taking care of my patient while trying to answer phones in a call center setting. While yes I am working from home, call center wants your undivided attention to field new customer calls, which while trying to balance I would end up pissing off the caller as I had to put them on hold while attending to my patient as their status changes from stable to unstable. Sometimes that meant having someone on hold longer than a few minutes.

This and new training I had to attend as the role I had was changing. Now I'm all in for new skills and opportunities, but the role was no longer going to be answer and move call like a PBX we now needed to learn the other side of things as the company I worked for was merging products. Needless to say things will be getting more convoluted and frustrating for my former team. I did not see eye to eye with this either, but could not speak up as I'm dealing with life or death situations at home so I am preoccupied. What I will say is this, the changes implemented were done by those having no clue what the trenches are. If they did previously, the role changed and should evaluate it themselves to see how attainable it is, but of course power fucks everyone's head up. Also, our manager could not find a vulnerable doubt to open and lobby for us to not implement more chaos and convolution.

Anyway that stress and the stress of taking care of someone full-time was too much for me to handle. So finally the other shoe dropped, or something gave. Unfortunately, it was my job. I will miss you, but after 9 years going from frontline agent, to engineer to call center call taker, not being able to transition out after the pandemic, and now taking care of my elderly patient I had to let you go. Our relationship was at an end and we both saw it playing out.

Now I'll have to deal with other stresses, mortgage payment, car payment, child support payments and the utilities, but I have to believe I've done the right thing. Only time will tell.

Thank God I don't own a gun.