Unhappy Days

This spring is so much better than last year's festival of poo.

I've got about a million reasons why this is true, but the main reason is this:

I'm not working at THAT PLACE anymore.

To be discreet, I won't use actual names. Though they likely have forgotten I ever worked there. I was just a short little blip on their radar (although, on their staff list online, I'm still listed as a reporter). 

•••

Recently, I ran into a former editor and our conversation went something like this:

"I heard about you had a less than pleasant experience with a member of my gender down in Oklahoma," he said. 

I winced, then nodded. 

"Honestly, I haven't thought about it for a while, but it was pretty bad," I said.

"It just makes me sick to think about," he continued. "Here you were, just out of college and excited for your first job and then you run into that. I'd love to give that guy a piece of my mind."

And that basically sums up the six months I worked in THAT PLACE.

•••

I had forgotten how truly unhappy I was during our time in Oklahoma. 

I attribute that to self-preservation: If I had dwelled on it, I couldn't have gotten past it. 

But it's been almost a year since I packed up my desk at THAT PLACE, and while it's an undeniably crappy period of my life, I'd like to think I'm moving on.

•••

Yet it still bothers me. Primarily, why didn't I get out sooner? Jim tells me I came home crying most days. I remember one night quite vividly — I couldn't pull myself up from the floor where I had crumpled in a fit of weeping. Honestly, I don't know how I got out of bed in the mornings. Overly dramatic? Maybe ... but there's no denying I was severely depressed. 

But I still kept working there. No matter how bad it got, I felt I owed it to the newspaper to continue to work hard and produce good stories. Which I did — I am, if nothing else, good at my job. 

In the end, though, it wasn't worth it. Employee loyalty is well and good, but only when it's given to a company which will reciprocate it. Instead, when I spoke out against the harassment I'd experienced while employed there, nothing changed.

I would like to think my experience, shared with the paper's publisher, would have inspired change. Instead, I worry about the other young women who still work there. What fresh hell do they go through every day?

••• 

Life's much better now. I'm gainfully employed at a newspaper which, if smaller and less prestigious, at least values its employees. At least I only spent six months working at THAT PLACE. Life's too short to spend it miserable and harassed.