I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!

So there I stood at the crossroads; challenged to make the biggest decision I think I have ever had to make. My options? Continue working for a tyranical jewish lesbian from Washington, D.C. (Absolutly NO offense meant to my jewish, lesbian, or DC friends - of which there are plenty) or quit my job with no backup plan and very little money in the bank.

In July, I accepted a position for a company that was looking for an Office Manager and Executive Assistant to the CEO. From the first interview, I had concerns that perhaps this wasn't the right position for me and, more specifically, that this wasn't the right environment for me. Something just seemed "off" and I couldn't put my finger on it.

Through three interviews I pushed my concerns down into my belly and remained optimistic. Afterall, the position was exactly in the salary range I was looking for and positions within my range are harder and harder to come by (not to mention, this market is an absolute wreck.) I hadn't been looking for a job for long at all - but given that only maybe 60 jobs are listed per week in my field and of that, only about 10 are looking for someone with my experience and of THAT only 1 or 2 are willing to pay my salary range - finding a job is nothing short of scary and stressful.

Before I knew it, the company was offering me the job - lowballing me, of course, but we were able to negotiate to a salary I was comfortable with - at least it would cover the commuting costs as the position was an hour away from home. The hours were 9 to 6pm which meant I had to leave at 730 to ensure I wasn't going to be late in the morning and I would not be getting home till about 730pm or later depending on whether I was kept late at work or if there was traffic on the highway.

But from the very first day, I suspected that I had made a terrible mistake.

Fast forward a few weeks and it was growing increasinly obvious that this was not a good fit for me. I was being micromanaged in a way that I have NEVER been micromanaged before. I was expected to document every minute of every day and to record a synopsis of move I made to complete a task - and while it made sense as we were in a billable-hour-type of industry, even those activities which were not client-applicable were to be recorded in the same way.

Then, of course, there was the fact that I was hired to do the job of three people: managing all AP/AR for a $1M+ company, all vendor payables, disputes (at least 6 a month) and any other finance related issues as well as all of the Human Resources, training protocols, etc and all things related to office supply management plus acting as the Executive Assistant.

Now, I am a high volume producer and I count myself among the few that can handle multiple roles fairly easily, but being slowed down by the incredible amount of documentation that was required made me doubt my abilities more than just a little bit.

My training was meant to last "three weeks" - at the conclusion of which (I found out at the end of my fifth week) there was a test that you must complete and pass on the history of the company, its sales strategy, its products, etc. In the first three weeks of working there, I had left "on time" exactly twice. I was kept each night until 6:30 or 7:00pm

At the risk of making this a very long story - I will cut to the chase and say: It wasn't for me, it started leaning into verbal abuse, and I was becoming more convinced that I needed to get out. The problem? How do you search for another job when you are working 10 hours per day and have no time off to interview?

So there I was on a Tuesday morning, drowning in expectations, exhausted from being required to stay at work till 10 o'clock the night before, and getting more and more frustrated at my bosses' insistance on sending me IM messages laced with curt judgement and apparent perception that I was incompetant - a feeling I have never ever had in any job.

The IM was blinging repeatedly - she was demanding a response "now" and my lunch had just arrived (did I mention I rarely left my desk to eat lunch).

It was now or never. What are you going to do, Jenn? Are you going to continue to find away to slough off the abuse and make it work because the money is pretty darn good? Are you going to miss Olivia and miss the opportunity to see her growing and changing? Are you going to continue not to have a hot dinner because you are getting home an hour and half after the rest of your family?

I cleared my desk of other items, slowly ate my newly arrived yellow chicken curry from the Thai place down the street (the company had bought lunch for us today), and proceeded to eat... slowly... IM blinging in the background.

When I finished, I slowly cleaned up my food, returned to my office, methodically placed the few personal effects I had brought to the office into a plastic garbage bag .... and walked out.

I have never ever done it in my life and I will never do it again - I felt terrible - but I knew that I was not in a place to be able to have a rational conversation with this woman in which I would not ultimately wind up in tears (aka, I could not have left with my dignity in tact) and anything I put in writing could somehow be used against me (She was in the middle of 5 seperate lawsuits). No thank you.

****

About 2 hours later (at about the same time they realized that I wasn't coming back, I found out from a co-worker later), it finally hit me that I was jobless with no plan and very little money. This was the most brilliant AND the most stupid thing I have ever done.

The next morning, I woke up and proceeded to spend 14 hours looking for work. I registered with almost every staffing agency in Tampa. I applied for every job that "looked good". I got on LinkedIn, signed up for as many job sites as I could find - all of this was orchestrated by an excel document I had created just for this occasion.

I figured out what my absolute drop-dead salary requirements were (it wasn't pretty).

By Friday, I was getting discouraged. I had 1 call about my resume and 1 meeting with a staffing agency - and rather than acknowledging that even having those two things was a lot more than some people are getting right now, I was letting the negativity seep into my head.

So I quit looking for the day. Let's start fresh again on Monday.

And, so, when Monday came, I had a renewed determination. "This will be the week that I get a REAL interview".

I began aggressively calling each of the staffing agencies I had registered with. You WILL talk to me... because once I have you on the phone, you are going to hear something that is "different" than every other candidate and you are going to like me... a lot. That will make you wonder what my resume looks like, and when you pull that out, you are going to be impressed and want to market me - because if I can get hired, you are probably looking at a pretty decent commission. Just sayin'".

And sure enough, that's exactly what happened. In fact, the position I wound up with was actually pitched to me two seperate staffing agencies - each of whom had a different contact within the organization... that should give you an idea of 1) how small the market it and 2) how well suited I must be for this position.

In the end, all of it "had to happen" for me to learn anything. I had to leave my job at the guide dog school and take the not-so-great job to realize how much I liked my former boss. I had to leave to learn what tyranny really was. I had to leave so that I would quit my job and make msyelf available to look for work full time - to call every staffing agency and to be available to interview at a moment's notice. It would have been (nearly) impossible for me to have gotten the job I just got if I was working full time because securing my network required a great deal of time and attention.

Push/shove... life is too short to HATE what you do - and while what I did may seem reckless to some, in the end I felt that I had to be bold to move forward - I had to bet big to win big. We spend more of our life with our co-workers than we do with husbands/wives or children. We aren't suppose to live work, but work to live. If we hate our job, if we hate the people we work with, if we aren't challenge by what we are doing and don't believe in what we do for a living... it will infect your life and the dynamic you have with your loved ones. Why live that way? When we can do something we love or something that we find interesting or be VERY good at something!!??

I won't say that I am "lucky" - though there was some luck involved in small parts - but I worked VERY hard at finding another job. I believed that I left a full time job as Office Manager and accepted a new position - as full time Jennifer Boyle Marketer... My new job responsibilities included aggressively marketing myself to anyone who would listen... even if that meant finding out where people ate lunch in downtown Tampa and walking up to complete strangers in a full business suit, handing out copies of my resume.

And I would have done it, too... because you do whatever it takes to get the job done.