vestmoria

this is a continuation to my post 'where do you draw the line if you ponder quitting a job?'

manager is now 'helping' me find a position elsewhere, but I believe she dislikes me so much she wants me gone asap. Her friends have turned to silent treatment mode. Each day, she asks me if I've interviewed already. It's like she wants me to have a new job lined up before Christmas already.

it's starting to sink in that she doesn't want me, but I'm not so sure I want to quit:

I know it doesn't make any sense. As said, I dislike 30% of my coworkers and if I've already told management with my union representative present that as soon as I find something else I quit, I should be consequent and do that. I dislike getting up at 4:30 to get to work at 06:00, yet this is the kind of life I know, the routines I've grown to be used to, this gives me a feeling of security, even though I come here so often to rant and complain about my job and my coworkers.

Can you believe I'm thinking about politely asking this manager if we can work things out? I must really be bipolar.

I don't understand why I'm so incoherent. I'm the drama queen now.

I feel like a child who postured and lost.

Every crisis is an opportunity, people say, but even though I should think like this and boldly leave, I'm scared that my new position will be as bad or worse than the old one, the same drama, the same backstabbing and playing favorites. It would be really tiring to get out of the frying pan to get into the fire.

And, should I change?

I'm 38 years old, single, not interested in starting a family (my mother was a drama queen and I couldn't live that again with a partner or a child), don't own any property, not really a consumerist person, I max my 401k and save 70% of my net income because most of the stuff society tells me to buy is irrelevant to me (I still own clothes I bought 20 years ago and they still fit me), don't need a car and use a bike or public transportation, I prefer to cook at home because it's cheaper and I can choose what I cook. I stopped drinking alcohol 10 years ago. I'm definitively not an extrovert.

I majored in philosophy because I liked it and I still do, but never found a job with my major. I tried being a high school teacher, but teenagers are way too much for me. Nursing, what I do now, is a versatile and safer job, even if I think it's slowly killing me.

I feel cheated in life.

For 15 years I lived paycheck to paycheck paying off my debt, often having to move due to increased rent so this might be my way of coping with trauma. I still feel I'm way behind most people my age. I feel like a loser because I imagine them knowing better than me what they want in life.

It's true that comparison is the thief of joy, but I cannot stop ruminating about this.

If you read my post history you'll realize I don't really care about my job, but stay because I need a paycheck and I like having a big rainy day fund. If I was a millionaire, I'd stop working. I don't like any job.

It might be true that I'm autistic, because close human connections where never that important to me and most people I work with are not close to me, but as I'm nearing 40 I'm starting to think if my destiny is going to be to live and die alone in a nursing home. Sometimes this scares me, but I always go back to my apathetic, indifferent self, like I'm on some kind of drug that makes me not feel anything, neither good or bad, like my emotional brain is underdeveloped.

What I don't want to be is this desperate loner craving for any kind of human attention turning to post his whole life online hoping a good Samaritan comes and saves me. First because it's pathetic and secondly because that's never a good foundation to build a friendship, I'd be inviting a predator, another crazy loner, a newborn Christian to save me with god, somebody trying to scam me with a MLM scheme or an antivaxer into my life. And I'm not a 20 year old discovering the world, I'm almost 40.

Every woman I've been attracted to has ignored me and every woman that showed an interest in me wasn't good enough to me: she could be eager to make a connection, put an interest, even pretty and genuine but I cannot fake being in love or feeling attraction. I always ended up considering them as friends or acquaintances. I'm too old and too introverted (autistic?) to visit a club and try to impress a woman to go out with me.

I don't think this is depression, depression would be me not going to work not even calling in sick.

It seems clear I need a friend, but I don't know how to make friends anymore. I focused so much on surviving that I stopped caring about anyone else.

I'm very confused about quitting my current position as a nurse. This is not a typical one man job, but you need a team. I'm pondering staying for some members of the team:

I get along with 40% of the staff, 30% of staff are absolute slackers who master the social game and get away doing way less than the rest and go smoking with my manager, who enjoys and needs the attention. I'm indifferent to the other 30%, who also work well.

I know I may not sound like a reliable narrator, it's just that I don't want to get anywhere near this 30% of lazy, childish, gossip staff.

I had a meeting with management with my union representative present. Long story short, I told management as soon as I find a new job within the same hospital system, I'd stop working at my current unit with my manager. She forgives the ones she likes and treats me differently, I'm not likable and being forced to give attention to people I'm indifferent to is very tiring. I'm there to work, she seems to expect I give her attention and stop doing my job to ask about her weekend. Not gonna happen.

Day 1 post meeting: manager and all her friends ignore me, go somewhere else when I enter the room.

Day 3 post meeting: friendly call from manager asking if I can come in on a free day, cause somebody called in sick.

Every other interaction with my manager since day 3 has been friendly, which is something new.

I have no problem working with people who understand they're at a workplace to work, because we all need the money and want to go home afterwards, it's the lazy ones that sit, talk and then expect me to do their job the ones I hate with a burning passion.

Since the meeting I've decided to use my current unit to learn as much as I can before I (possibly?) leave. Not because I suddenly feel this is a calling, but because the more I know about my field, the easier is gonna be to find a new job, either within my system or in a new one. I've also discovered I like explaining patients what happens to their bodies after their operation and how medicines work.

But I don't dislike the whole unit, I just want to keep my manager at a distance and don't work with that 30% of slackers.