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Date Posted: 16:44:49 12/03/08 Wed
Author: Sandy
Author Host/IP: 75-138-109-074.dhcp.hckr.nc.charter.com / 75.138.109.74
Subject: Struggling Part I (and it's long)

Well it's no surprise that I'm struggling. That seems to be the story of my life. The past 6 or 7 years have been rough and I pretty much isolate myself from most people. And it's the reason that I'm never around here. I used to always post about my problems on our boards and get feedback and it was great but no matter what things always seem to go bad for me and I think I gave up.

Well I think you all know about the mess that went on with Scott so I won't go into that. And I think I told you about how many people I met on singles sites and by going out and all I got was one rejection after another. I was never skinny enough or flashy enough or perfect enough or rich enough or whatever and it was terrible for my self esteem. I can't even count how many people I met before giving up.

I was working in an office for a big furniture company and I had good friends there, it paid ok and the work wasn't bad at all. But then my younger brother decided to buy a shop building wood furniture frames for the upholstering companies in the area. He called me up out of the blue with this plan and wanted to know if I could come and run the office for him. It took me by surprise and I was worried about whether or not he would really need someone full time in the office since he had an accountant to do most things. I asked about just coming in a few afternoons a week and seeing what all there was to do but he assured me that he needed me full time. I was worried because I'd be leaving my friends and sitting alone in an office but I thought I'd be learning new things and he had these big plans on how the business would grow into other things and I'd be on the ground floor and eventually we'd need other office staff and I'd be over them...blah, blah, blah.. I still hesitated because i was worried that it might be a mistake and if he didn't have enough office work for me to do full time I'd end up out there in that dirty shop where all those machines are doing something I didn't like. I worked in a factory right after high school and I hated it with a passion. I hated the work. I hated getting so nasty every day and having to wear old work clothes because they get ruined..never being able to feel like I looked nice. I hated some of the kinds of people you run into in those places.. in my experience I end up with rednecks who spend the whole day making crude nasty remarks. Still my brother kept on and on. I told him that I had cheap insurance where I worked and I didn't want to have to live without insurance. He said that others would need it and we'd find cheap insurance. (WRONG!!!I have no insurance now because I can't afford it) I told him that besides the week of July 4th and Christmas I also had 5 or 6 other paid holidays to look forward to every year and I liked having those days off to break up the monotony of 5 days a week month after month. He said he planned to have those holidays too. He said he might not be able to have them as paid holidays at the first but we could have them off and as a salary person I'd be paid. (WRONG!!!! We've worked every damn holiday other than the 4th and Christmas) I asked over and over and over again if he was ABSOLUTELY SURE he needed a full time office person. He said yes. He said there might be times when it wasn't quite 40 hours but maybe I could help a little in the shop.I was thinking that maybe a couple times a month I might help out for a few hours but not on a regular basis.(WRONG!!!!!!) I spend a grand total of 2 hours at the most in the office per week. The rest of the time I am sanding, dipping legs in stain, dowelling, marking out for the bandsaw guy or tailing the rip saw and I HATE IT!!!! It's not what I signed up for. I've been there a little over 2 years. Every time I've mentioned it, he's acted like eventually there will be plenty in the office for me to do. I don't see it. There is no way. And now even he admits he jumped the gun and will never need a full time office person. Well that leaves me stuck in a job I didn't want to do because the job he begged me to take doesn't exist.

I can't go back to my other job because they are very slow and laying people off. They loved me there and they tell me if things pick up and they have an opening they'd love for me to come back but who knows when and if that will happen. In the 30 years they've been in operation this is the slowest they've ever been.

I've been having a lot of depression. When Matt leaves for college in the fall I end up feeling sad and lonely and feeling like I have no purpose in life. I feel like I'm just working to pay bills and exist but there's nothing to look forward to. And I think I may be starting into menopause too. Sometimes I'm just emotional and I don't know why. I talked to my brother one morning when I got to work. I was in tears and I told him how I felt and that sometimes I thought I was cracking up, how it was all I could do to get out of the bed in the morning and force myself to go to work. He said he had the same problems and acted understanding at the time. Still, with it being his business he NEVER gets there at 7:00 like the rest of us. He drags in at 9:00 or 9:30. I'm not allowed to do that. Yeah, it's his business but here's something I know that he doesn't know I know... OUR DAD is financing the whole damn thing for him. He talks about how he wants family to work there but we aren't allowed any special favors like he is.

A couple months ago the business got slow. I went to Michael (my brother) and told him that if he needed to lay people off on a weekly basis he could lay me off. I'd come and do the little bit of office work and then sign up. I told him that he pays me more than a lot of the shop workers anyway (due to me being over the "office") so it would save him money and quite honestly I'd welcome the break because my depression is out of control. So he laid me off for parts of a couple weeks but there are shop workers who make less than me who were laid off for a month at a time while I had to come in and do their factory jobs. I resented that but he thought I had to be there to answer the phones. It seems he can't be bothered. The owner before him answered the phone and ran the bandsaw. Michael does nothing but walk around and supervise when he finally drags his butt in and he can't answer the phone??? I have to answer it when I'm in the shop busy working. Well this kept going on for a while. The shop workers were home enjoying the warm weather (which is gone now) and signing up while I'm in that dark nasty and dreary shop everyday doing their jobs, things I wasn't hired to do... stuff I dislike.

Well, recently I've also been having some major headaches and they kept getting more frequent. I told him this. One Weds about a month ago I had a pretty bad one and I took medicine all day. It's all I could do to work. I was miserable. He saw me taking medicine all day and finally at 2:30 (one hour before quitting time) I was caught up on what I was doing and felt horrible and I told him I needed to go home because I couldn't take any more of that headache. The following Friday I woke up with a migraine so bad I could barely see. Nothing I took and nothing I did made any difference. I knew if I called him and told him I wouldn't be in he was going to bitch like he does when anyone misses for anything. I was hurting so bad there was no way I could drive or do anything at all. I called Mom asking her if she knew anything I could try to get some relief. I was crying. I told her there was no way I could work but I knew he was going to be hateful and I didn't feel like dealing with it. So she called him and yeah he did bitch about it. He always says he's worked sick plenty of times. Well maybe he has. So have I but sometimes you just can't and a migraine is one of those times...but then he's never had one. AND what he does couldn't be called working anyway. He isn't constantly lifting huge heavy boards all day as fast as he can go. He walks through, checks on stuff, and goes in the office to talk on the phone or get on the internet. Hell I can do that sick too...unless I have a migraine.

It was getting to the point that I was having headaches more and more frequently and after that migraine I decided to go to the chiropractor. Years ago I had a car accident and apparently sustained a neck injury that I didn't even realize at the time but years later a doctor told me, after looking at my xrays, that my neck was straight instead of the curve it should have and asked if I had ever been in an accident. Yeah, I had been...when I was 18. So anyway after 2 years of constant bending, lifting heavy boards and working at a markout table that is too low for me and causes me to keep my neck down all day long, my neck needed some work along with my back. The chiropractor told me to take it easy until he got my neck back in better shape. I told Michael this but he seemed to think that most of this stuff wouldn't hurt my neck and he'd ask me to do it anyway. The chiropractor finally wrote a note for me to give him saying that I should not be bending, lifting or continually keeping my neck in a downward position for the next 2 weeks. I gave the note to Michael and he said I might as well go home because there was nothing else to do. I said find.

But then I find out that he's cussing and criticizing me to my sister saying that a chiropractor will write anything you want them to write. (Really?? I wouldn't know) He said that none of that stuff was all that hard. (I never said it was but it's straining my neck) And he said he came in and worked when his back was out. (Well, he didn't actually "work" and I did tell him that if it was hurting that bad he should stay home) He said I just don't want to work and I'm making excuses and how he should just lay me off permanently. Well, that flew all over me. I have worked my ass off in that shop for 2 years even though I was not hired to be a shop worker. I've dealt with one bladder infection after another in the summer when it's 100 degrees in that place and the sweat pours out of me faster than I get get fluids in and thus the bladder infections because I lost the fluids through my skin and nothing made it to my bladder. I've froze my butt off in the winter when the air never works. I've worked every freaking holiday, I've almost never missed a day, I've hurt my back, shoulders, elbows, wrists, neck numerous times straining to lift stuff I really wasn't strong enough to lift. And now because the chiropractor wanted me to take 2 weeks to let him work on my neck and get it in shape without undoing it at work, he wants to talk this shit about me???? I was livid. The business is slow anyway so it wasn't like it was putting him in a bind. He had others laid off he could call in...people who make less money than I do per hour. I wrote him a letter telling him how I feel and that I was promised an office job and left a good job with benefits just to end up being a shop worker with no benefits or insurance. I told him he could just lay me off permanently. Where we stand now is that from now to the end of the year I am going to think about it and decide if I'll agree to stay as a "shop worker" instead of office person or if I want him to lay me off permanently. And right now while it's slow, I'm one of the ones being laid off on a weekly basis.. The thing is that if I choose to be permanently laid off, all these weeks I've been off are coming out of my 26 weeks I can sign up. I hate the work there. I hate the heat and the cold. I hate that job with a passion but the thing is that it pays better than anything else I can find. Right now there aren't any jobs out there. I don't want to go back but I'm afraid I won't find anything that pays enough to keep things going.

And this brings me to part 2, the boyfriend ... to be continued

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