A Liberating Moment: Resigned
I recently resigned from my previous job as a Content Writer/Editor. The moment I passed the resignation letter last February 14, it’s like a break-up letter to my previous company, that I’ve done with all their shenanigans, the mistreatment that I’ve experienced, causing my relapse (mental health) and worries and stressing situations within that workplace. It’s even funnier because others would prep their resignation letter even a year ago but me? I wrote my resignation letter a month before I rendered. All the tears, blood, sweat, effort, and time, I poured on this job, and I’ve ran out of patience. I realized that I couldn’t put up with it anymore. It only took a trigger for me to pass the resignation letter, the unfairness at work and underappreciation of my efforts because of a minor mistake of sleeping during work from home. We were micromanaged there, every move was observed, and we should finish our output even if it’s too complex, for a short period of time. The amount of stress and worries weren’t worth it for the pay. It felt like I’ve exhausted my energy and effort for a little amount. I explored various tasks beyond my job responsibilities. Although, I learnt from it but it’s really unfair wherein the company didn’t respect the boundaries. Even my rendered days, I was bombarded with complex tasks, as if the company want to squeeze out everything from me. Whenever I was awarded as the top performer, I always thought that I exerted too much, my resources and time for this job that didn’t satisfy me anymore.
It was fun at first since it’s writing. Who would’ve thought that I turn my passion into a career? The challenge was I need to adapt to the business writing style, nowhere near my creative writing style. My previous job was more on advertising and marketing tone that aims to generate leads and market the company and services of the client. In the long run, it’s tiring since we were handling different businesses with different services, so we need to research about it before creating content. It should take time to do that, the research, the ideas, the writing, the editing, and the final output. But in my previous company, everything should be delivered fast and within the day or during the deadline. I learnt a lot while experiencing occupational burnout also. I couldn’t also conclude that I’ve recovered from my burned out.
There were red flags even after months of working. We couldn’t file a leave when we don’t have enough hours. I was even forced to leak my patient card to testify that I was absent because I have a mental health appointment. The unfair treatment was horrible, especially within our team, where we considered ourselves as the end of the food chain in our company. We were strip off writing tasks and resulted to editing works from other team that was horrible also because they’re not even writers in the first place. The management was not employee-friendly and focused on profit-making. We were literal profit-making machines and even though we were loaded, the company still accepted orders despite the lack of manpower, so we were forced to have overtime. I even asked my team lead that I couldn’t reach the mandatory OT hours. I need to rest, and the overtime pay was not even worth it. We did some troubleshooting for other teams (helping them with their lapses and even had the audacity to say that we were slow in proofreading), and we didn’t have a supervisor to protect us because they just removed our former supervisor with no warning. It’s clearly a heartless company that didn’t care about their employees. Stingy ones and only focusing on profits. We didn’t have enough time to have a break or take a pause because of the load and pressure of deadlines. It’s even laughable to say that we could only experience salary increase once we were promoted.
I experienced complex and overwhelming emotions while working in my previous job. I was stressed. I was frustrated. I was angry. I was indifferent. I was everything. I felt my efforts were put to waste when they delivered that notice on first day of my resignation. I was enraged of course. They noticed that slip off. They were well-versed in that area, to call out the employees with their shortcomings, instead of rewarding their efforts.
The days were longer during my rendering days. I badly need to get away from that nightmare workplace. I want to regain my peace of mind. I didn’t care if I have no backup plan. How can I landed a job while working in that company when I couldn’t file a leave without the possibility of getting a notice? So I didn’t expect that I would have a new job to jump in.
Now, I’m glad that I took that leap of faith – to resigned. Resigned from all those stresses and worries that caused my relapse from my previous work.