It's the perfect (well...my kind of perfect) kind of weather here in the so-called happy valley.  The morning came cool, not cold, a bit drizzly, overcast.  It's a saturday, I am...for once...NOT working.  Instead, I'm sitting in the waiting room while GF gets her oral surgery on.

The past weeks have been so hellish that after our 16/18 hour days, we've come home, sat with Dog for a moment and longed for today, laughing about how we could be so looking forward to all that comes with recovering from surgery--simply because it would be the only time we've had in months to just relax.  Because we'd have no choice.  To have no choice but what crappy TV or movies to watch, which easy food to make.  When to sleep.  Easy.

I'm not going to lie.  I'm kind of pumped.

But for now, I'm actually really ok to be sitting in the uncomfy chairs in the waiting room, listening to weird medical sounds from behind the somewhat perfunctorily closed door.

There's been so much going on, I'm grateful for the opportunity to get some of it out of my head.

I suppose the biggest thing is that I'm coming into some stillness, the midst of all this chaos.  Which is, to say the least, fucking weird.  I'd been, probably, depressed for a year or two, and suddenly, there's something else happening.  I'm still absolutely hating my jobs, but there's this sense of purpose starting to bubble up around the edges of that dissatisfaction.  I keep thinking about what, exactly, I'm hating, and it's becoming clearer and clearer.  I can't keep doing the routine. I can't keep being a drone, acquiescing because I have no other choice, because I need this job.  Yes, I need to pay my bills, but I also need stimulation, I need to be challenged, I need to feel like at the end of the day, I had to use my brain to come up with solutions to problems,  and that to do it, I worked with people with whom I share a mutual respect.  

That's the basics.  The bottom of my Maslow-ian pyramid.

The next level is a little more difficult to explain.  I don't want to facilitate or enable behaviors that are contrary to my moral and ethical beliefs.  Too many times I've found myself working in jobs where there is a general atmosphere of...oh, taking employees for granted, for treating them as less than human.  Sometimes there's a profound lack of pride in the product, a "who gives a fuck" attitude.  Sometimes there's been flat-out abuse, pitting employees against each other, demeaning, belittling, rampant sexism.

(FYI, that door is absolutely perfunctory.  I can hear everything going on.  Drills and sucky things and oh my GOD, I am far less appreciative now.  ::shudder::)

Where was I?  Oh yes.  So I find myself swallowing a lot of commentary about this because employers don't want to be told, "Hey, you're kind of being a fuckhead here.  I know that's probably not your intention, but that's how it feels to those of us that depend on being here for 40 hours a week to pay our bills."  And, I realized lately, my staying is a way of enabling that kind of behavior.

Which is a pretty shitty realization, honestly.  But it came out of GF leaving a job where we've both worked, where most of our friends work.  It's bad. And there's a lot of guilt that comes out of leaving, as has been the case for every single one of us who has left.  The guilt, we couch as abandoning our coworkers because they need our help, but in reality, I think it's because we can't take them with us, because we know that it's just going to get worse...and worse...and worse.  We've had lots of talks in the past few weeks about how leaving is, sometimes, the only option.  When I was working at this particular establishment...let's call it Hell...when I was working in Hell, I worked in the front.  I was a pretty killer barista.  And when shit started to get really bad, one of my regulars and I began having little therapy sessions.  I one day told her that I simply didn't know what to do because I saw, so clearly, what the problems were and how to fix them, but I couldn't get through to the owner (a tiny prick with a napoleon complex, exacting out revenge on his employees because he was, apparently, a bit of a loser in high school. "Look at me now! I own a successful restaurant that I have no idea how to run!"  ::sigh::)  Anyway.  This woman knew that I'd recently started studying Buddhist philosophy, an attempt to find some coping mechanisms in this shithole.  She asked me what I thought the Buddha would do in such a situation.  I faltered. I've never been good at trying to figure out what amazing people would do in shitty situations.  I tried to think....well....he'd show people what they were doing wrong, right?  Show them how they were hurting people, how they were hurting themselves, by their actions, help them to see the negative karma they were accruing?  My knowledgeable customer nodded, and then asked the clinching question:  What would he do if he tried that, but the person refused to acknowledge the effects their behavior was having?  Stumped, I shook my head.  I have no idea.  She put her hand out to take her latte and said, simply....He would leave.

Well.  All this time I thought that I had to stay to protect, stay to help, stay to kill myself trying to show someone a different, better way that would make people feel good, and that would ultimately make their business more sustainable, their employees more committed.....blah blah blah.

What I was actually doing was saying, Yep. It's totally ok that you're doing this.  I'll even help you!  See, I'll continue to work my ass off for you, making you money, accepting the abuse you dish out to me and my coworkers.  Totally cool with that.

 No, only by leaving could I register my discontent, my anger, and my refusal to participate in those kinds of behaviors. And you know? Hell is still there, still doing its thing, but after GF leaves (and she was the one person who would even slightly stand up to Ownerman), a lot of people have one foot out the door.  It's about to hit critical mass, this dissenting action, this last stand against a pretty constant onslaught of insults.  And it's a shame that it had to get this bad for it to register, and honestly, doubt that there's going to be any kind of real reflection on why so many of us have left, and left for less money, less convenience, just....less.  But if the message doesn't get through in normal human interaction, sometimes walking away is just the only thing left to do, as shitty as it can feel to leave it all behind.  I won't do it anymore.  I might not be able to just walk away from a job, ever, but I can certainly be more discerning in the positions I take, and I can certainly keep looking for better options when I am somewhere that even approximates Hell.

(Sounds from behind impossibly ineffective pine door are getting SO uncool right now.  Kind of want to run away screaming in terror.  Having increasingly difficult time concentrating on writing anything but DEAR JESUS GOD DID SOMEONE JUST SCREAM??)

Anyway.  Upon realizing that remaining in situations is pretty much agreeing with or enabling them to continue, I stumbled upon what appears to be the next level in my revamped Maslow structure, which is that I choose to surround myself with people who are nurturing, challenging (in the good kinda way), and who share the fundamental principles in which I believe.

I know that last sentence can sound a little bit like I only want people who agree with me around, so let me clarify with an example.  I don't believe in hurting animals.  I ran outside in a downpour because a fricken terrifying wasp was drowning on top of the AC unit.  I can't deal with preventable suffering.  So I'm pretty much a vegetarian.  I used to eat fish, but pictures of what happens in those nets fucked me up for a few weeks, and I realized that I was a big ol' hypocrite if I pretended that fish were 'not suffering'.  Right.  Now.  Most of my friends love meat.  LOVE.  Like...hunting, butchering, shoving ground up dead animals and spices into casing kind of love.  And I'm totally cool with that, because most of them choose to a)kill the animal, in the wild, while dressed in ridiculous shaggy suits or b) buy from local, humanely raised kinda farms.   Fundamentally, we don't believe that animals should suffer.  We just draw the line in different places.   And have lively conversations about it while they eat delicious, drippy cheeseburgers, and I sadly masticate my dry assed veggie burger, wishing that I could just turn off that part of my brain that envisions a spike driving into a cow's forebrain.

I'm hearing scary shit go down in that other room, so the rest of this will have to wait until GF is sleeping.  Which, from the sounds of it, will be never, ever, again.   Jesus.