Dashed Dreams

Marika was so excited about this new job. It was a dream come true. She had been changing jobs over the years and targeted jobs that allowed her to have the skills for this current one. After ten years of gaining the required certificates and jobs, she was offered this job.

It was always something that she wanted to do. Her supervisor was strict with her work ethic. However, she had never been denied any leaves that she wanted to apply for. That was after she had checked on the work calendar to ensure that it didn’t clash with any important work-related events.

There were some work mistakes that she often rectified and never committed again. She would go through each new scope with her supervisor before submitting for the final stages. She was careful in wording the emails that were to be sent to prevent misunderstandings.

She was precise in the steps on how to troubleshoot basic technical problems and attached screenshots for each process that was to be done by the users. If the users were not IT savvy, she included each step with edited screenshots so that they would understand. Often, the ones who asked her to help were the ones who had more advantages in using the technology more than the ones who simply used the computers for emails and completing basic tasks for work.

She rarely took off days as the company depended on her almost on a daily basis. Each year, there was this nomination period to earn that Excellent Service Award. She had provided the best service to her colleagues. Her supervisor even shared screenshots that he had nominated her for the award. That was in the first year. She didn’t win any. Although she was a little disappointed, she didn’t expect any recognition since it was her first year.

She continued and received pay increments. There was no promotion in sight. She was not hard up for a promotion. Just wanted to be appreciated. Everyone often thanked her with words. That was all. The provided lunches were due to staff meetings. The gifts on her desk were due to company-related events.

Her supervisor kept giving her excellent grades but the promotion and conversion to a permanent position was elusive. Marika was getting tired. All the big talks about caring for staff were just that. Talk only. The award recipients were obvious. They were the ones who curried favours with the top management.

The staff meetings would state that the awards would not be given to the same person in consecutive years yet there was this particular guy who would receive the awards in one team or another as there was the team award given out besides the individual awards. It was not stated that an employee could not be in more than one team. Hence, he was always receiving the monetary award every year with different teams.

The writeups on the winning teams and individuals were copied from various nominations and the worst was the recent team award. The ones who had been working hard had been nominated by Marika but another team was included in the same team and the division of the money was further reduced with the increased number of people in the same team. That particular write-up was so ridiculous that she had enough of their mouth power.

That same guy who was excellent at polishing apples was in the same team, she knew that the team would be awarded but she didn’t realise that the team members could be changed just because the evaluators wanted to do it. The awards were now a fiasco.

She was getting tired. Her supervisor was transferring to another department in a few months. She decided to change her job. This job no longer gave her the satisfaction of working anymore. She liked the job scope but the people were just full of talk about giving appreciation. The salary was no longer enough to sustain her fulfilment.

The workload was piling and she was just stressed out even during her leaves with all the password reset requests. She was losing sleep on a nightly basis. She woke up at 3 am every day and could not fall back to sleep. She was no longer performing at her peak.

Her leaves were more than enough. She decided to look for another job to transfer her skills to. It took her about three months before she decided to change her role to something that she was doing. She didn’t want to work in the supporting role. She decided to change to being an analyst. No more supporting people who just took her job for granted.

She applied for all the entitled leaves and gave the resignation letter to the management who stared in shock. Spending almost an hour with the management, she said that she had accepted the other job and was starting the following week. Even though she was starting about three weeks later. She needed some form of sabbatical break.

No matter what the management said, she was insistent on leaving. That day, she left the company with the blessings of her supervisor. She had been clearing her workspace for the past few months, so, it was easy to just leave the place without any worries.

It was about five months into her new job that she received a call from the management at the old place. They wanted to know if she could return. She asked for a pay that matched her current pay. They couldn’t promise that. She asked if the same management would be in charge, it was. She didn’t want it. The same management was all about talk. Talked about how they appreciated her but always finding fault with her on a daily basis.

The same management was always criticising on the procedures without understanding the proper procedures that she had undertaken and refused to admit their mistakes and wanted to push the blame away. She was always the scapegoat, she no longer wanted to be back and refused to return for a chat with them. She had enough.