One of the things I like most about Facebook is the ‘Memories’ feature. In fact, when I went Facebookless for Lent a few years back (during my birthday, no less, which is another fun Facebook time) it’s the one thing that I missed most.

Not all of my Facebook memories are shiny and happy, of course, but I find it gratifying in a different way to look back on the bad times. Gratifying is probably the wrong word, but the right one currently eludes me. In fact, many of my early Facebook posts are not happy. I started Facebook in 2009 when I was working as an expense auditor in an accounting department. (I know, so “me” right?) I was miserable there.

The most difficult part was that it seemed inescapable and in many ways, at least on paper, it was a great job. I had unlimited sick time and four weeks paid vacation. (Everyone started out with four weeks paid vacation so that there was never any ‘earning’ more vacation time.) I had good insurance and could go to the doctor pretty much whenever I wanted. I said that I would prefer to work 8 - 4 instead of 9 - 5 and was told that was fine. I also made more money there than I ever have before or since. Great, right?

I obviously don’t have a lot of pictures of myself at that job, so here’s one of me from around that time period.

Unfortunately, the pressure to be present at that job was so high that many people often came to work sick in spite of the ‘unlimited’ sick time. When I did call in sick, I often worried about being able to ‘prove’ it and sometimes I worked from home. And I was sick A LOT. I had chronic bronchitis while I was there and got it at least twice a year. (I have not had it since quitting.) So in a way, it’s a good thing I was able to go to pretty much any doctor I wanted to or the medical bills would have been killer. My theory is that so many people felt pressured to go into work sick that germs were much more easily contracted. Also that I was miserable there and lacked Vitamin D.

I temped there for a year before I was hired. They didn’t want to hire me even though my department was always behind on auditing. I eventually had to get another job offer, very publicly, at another company (where one of the previous employers had worked and was trying to hire me away) and then I still had to interview for and negotiate for the job I had held for a year. They tried to low ball me when I knew what the salary was for a full time employee with my job. I was able to get it, but I had to show them the offer letter from the other job. (I had secretly already turned it down, didn’t like the hours, but they really shouldn’t have needed to see it anyway.) But I had been expected to work like a full time employee with benefits when I was part time and getting no sick, vacation or holiday pay for a year, so I wanted what I had been missing out on. I don’t regret doing it.

I don’t have any pictures of this (I looked) but this table, where the Christmas cookies my mom and I made are, is where I set up my work computer to run payment processes on Christmas Eve and Day.

The company was a consulting firm. I still have no idea what we consulted about. But obviously consultants rack up expenses. As the expense auditor, it was my job to make sure that they followed the expense procedure and deny anything that wasn’t approved. So basically most of the company hated me for doing my job. People were always late with their expenses also and running in to drop them last minute. We sent three reminders for everything. Still people would get things missed. Of the three employees in my department, I was the only one with family across the country and yet there were at least two times that I had to work over Christmas. Once I flew home on Christmas Day and then had to work remotely the following two days. The was because I was the only one who ran the payment process for the entire company which spanned three countries. My immediate supervisor did not know how to do this, nor did she want to learn. (So much for that vacation package, right?)

Twice while I was working there I earned a spot on the U.S. Savate team with the opportunity to fight in the world championships in Paris. The first time, I had a coworker who agreed to run the process while I was gone. By the second time, she had moved to another department and I was ostensibly the only one who knew how to do it. I told the COO himself nine months in advance that I was leaving to fight in Paris and what the dates were. He said, “well, we’ll see, someone has to run the process.” And I said, “you have nine months to figure it out, but I’m going.”

This is when I had entered what I call my “Office Space” phase at the company. I hated it there, but it was flexible enough with acting and provided me with a good living, so I didn’t know how to leave. I also didn’t know what else I was qualified to do. (I had tried bartending and baristaing in the years before I worked there and I am not cut out for that level of front line customer service.) But I had basically decided I didn’t care and wanted to see if I could get laid off. Now, I wasn’t going to do anything blatant, like come to work drunk or intentionally do work badly or incorrectly, but I stopped putting up with all BS and began demanding things that had been heretofore denied me.

Here’s me having a mocha in Paris. This is after fighting.

I decided I was taking two weeks off to fight in the world championships in September and that was that. I tried to train the team in India to run the process, both in person while they were in Chicago for an All Hands meeting and coming in early and monitoring them online. They screwed it up so badly during two trial runs that the girl who had moved departments volunteered to run it while I was gone. Not something that would happen all the time, but a solution nonetheless.

I then demanded a promotion, raise and a cubicle of my own. (I had been in kind of a bullpen set up before that.) I was sure this would get pushback and that I would get let go. Oddly enough, I got a little bit of pushback on the cubicle. I went to my direct supervisor and asked why I couldn’t have one, she had no reason other than she wasn’t the person who assigned them. So I went to the person that assigned them and she switched my phone number connection from the bullpen to the cube and that was that. The raise and promotion I obtained with much less hassle. In fact, the less I cared, the more work I delegated, the more highly praised I became. This is one of the things I hated about being in this environment.

When I made a mistake, as everyone does, especially if you’re doing something for five years, I owned up to it. I learned after a while that this was not supported by the company culture. Passing the buck and avoiding responsibility really got you places. It was amazing to behold. There were countless days where I would wake up trying to think of a viable reason to not go in to work the next day. I distinctly remember talking to a friend once and asking if there was a way someone could hit me with their car just enough so that I could not go in to work for a bit. Obviously the insurance and liability technicalities made this completely dismissible in short order, but the fact that I even entertained the idea shows you how much I really hated it.

This is a picture of one of my friends at that job. At the time, I was trying to write articles for an online publication about martial arts part time, so he posed for this picture about researching martial arts. This gig did not pay well.

To my credit, I was constantly looking for ways out. And I had developed a good group of friends and healthy hobbies outside of work, but I was unhappy with life eight hours a day, five days a week and I was very aware that this couldn’t go on.

I began teaching martial arts somewhere around 2009, which made me happy. I never thought it would, but I realized that no matter how much I didn’t want to go in and teach that day or how tired I was, once I began teaching, I was happy and once I was finished, I was in a completely different mindset. I made the change to fitness in 2012 and was fortunate enough that the company was sold and I ended up laid off with severance and unemployment to cushion the transition. I had other part time jobs in the interim and went full time fitness in 2014.

When I look back at those memories from when I was still at that job, they were all about how much I hated it, or how I was crying at work and couldn’t take it anymore. Sure, there were some fun ones about martial arts and getting free food, but a lot of what I posted was either miserable at work or happy on vacation. The days before I went on a vacation were usually counted down, hourly.

There are some things that I miss about that job. The regular schedule, the paid vacation, the benefits, the secure paycheck. But when I look back at those memories, I’m really happy that I am where I am now. I am happier day to day, moment to moment, hour to hour than I was back then. Everything I work on is something that I care about. I’m not working for a company where I don’t even know what we produce. I am thankful to have had that experience, because I am secure in my knowledge that my choice is the right one for me and it is nice to have that validated every so often by my Facebook memories, because those bad times do fade into the background.

This has been a hell of a time. I hope that five years down the road, I look back on where we are now and am glad to be out of it. I hope everything is better. I sure hope it’s not worse.

Looking back at the future