I miss when I had work friends
I've been feeling a lot of dread going to work lately. My recall might not be the most reliable, but I feel like I've never reached this level of dread regarding work before. It's not new for me to start my day with a pep talk—I needed them even when I wasn't working—but that moment the other day where an incident left me feeling so fed up and 不要干了 there and then at my workplace was a first.
Now I've had colleagues in the past who have also frustrated me considerably, but it's never come to a point where I've felt compelled to leave. There's a part of me that feels a little guilt about wanting to quit, though, because it feels like a cop-out. Maybe I should be powering through, like those people I read about in inspirational articles, who possess the grit and resolve I wish I too could have.
And yet, I can't find it within me to convince myself to stay because I can't see any benefit in persisting in an environment that makes me feel the way I do now. It's a culmination of different factors, many little and not-so-little things that have snowballed and reached the point where I can't see myself staying in this in the long run. It's just not sustainable.
A work partner that consistently underperforms, who treats shared responsibilities like they are solely mine to fulfil, who pushes work back at me when I try to get her to do what she rightfully should, who gets offended and responds as though I am the unreasonable one, who clearly does not care for the children at all. A supervisor that flip-flops on her word, who presents one thing but seems to practice another, whose concerns seem to focus only on what is superficial, who discriminates, who lashes out and complains when things go wrong, and whom I feel I cannot trust because who knows when she might turn on me?
A colleague who has shown not to have the common courtesy of apologising when in the wrong, who operates like a drill sergeant and yells at children for things they cannot help. Another colleague who is unwilling to show empathy and kindness to a child because what is required to help him is just too much to ask for. And a general attitude of selfishness that has been so disappointing to witness.
Perhaps it may seem that I am setting the bar too high, and to that I would agree completely. Because I expected more here than from any other place I worked at, as this wasn't supposed to be just any other organisation but one that professed organisational values that I personally aligned with. And because it didn't use to be this way back when I worked here before my move abroad.
With the change of management and most of the staff, things have declined here, to me, even though everything on the surface looks good and even better than it did before. But I've never been one to really care about what lies on the surface. And sometimes I wonder if I am the problem, because I am the only one who seems bothered, because no one seems to care the way I do, because the values I hold so dearly seem to be so easily dismissed and so rarely observed. It's been lonely.
I recognise that my views do not reflect the entire picture, and they are likely just a small part in the sum of everything. And yet this small part is significant enough to turn me from I'm-giving-this-the-best-shot-I-can to I-think-it's-time-to-go.
And it isn't that I haven't had any difficult colleagues in the past. I could put up with the colleague who didn't do the work but was skilled at 表面功夫 (literally, surface kungfu—translation: the art of putting up a performance to show that you did the work that you did not actually do). And I could put up with the colleague who was so calculative that she would constantly accuse me of things I didn't do because she could not see past the slightest hint of what felt to her like unfair treatment. She never once apologised for her false accusations, unsurprisingly.
But this. This isn't just an isolated case of one colleague that I need to try a little harder to bear with. This is stretching myself thin for the sake of the children. This is wearing myself out trying to reconcile my beliefs with the practices I witness. Staying would only lead to burnout—mentally, physically and emotionally. And I think that is why I feel at peace with this conclusion that I've reached, that I'm done here. Except for the part about having to leave the children behind in such uncertain circumstances, but that really can't be helped.
With all that's been weighing on my mind, I find my thoughts drifting back to memories from six years before. I keep thinking back to my sunflower year, where I worked alongside two friends to the soundtrack of laughter daily, where work felt more like play, and where we were always having fun.
That year was really special. I'd never had one like it before, and I've yet to have one like it after. I don't know what it was about us, but together with the children in our two classes that year, we just fit. When that magical year ended, I meant every I-will-miss-working-with-you that I said, unlike the times when I had politely echoed them in the past.
I miss my work friends, and I miss when I had work friends. I've always known that they were rare, but it turns out that work friends are, in fact, one in a million 🌻