What I Learned from My Job Experience

I’m still looking into pursuing legal action against my former employer but I’m being cautious about what I say about it in light of that. I thought this would be the safest job I could take because they said it would take a year to fully learn the job. I never expected them to try to get rid of me within 90 days.

I told them from the interview process that I was legally disabled. I made absolutely no secret of the fact that I was on SSDI and trying to get off of it due to the death of my breadwinner husband.

My boss was verbally abusive to me, calling me “too stupid to learn [my] job.” She talks like that all the time to people; I’ve heard her tell my team lead that something she said was absolutely stupid and ask her why she would do such a thing.

When my boss put me on a Personal Improvement Plan at 90 days — the last step before firing you — a member of HR was present for that meeting. I mentioned her verbal abuse because HR was present; I asked if saying I was too stupid to learn my job was considered verbal abuse because it sounded like it to me.

So then HR started an internal investigation before the holidays. They talked to several of the employees I named, all of whom agreed that verbal abuse from her was common, and some of them even said that they could see that I was specifically targeted. That’s most of what my case centers on, although I have other issues I’ll mention to my attorney.

I quit before having to go back to the office after the holidays. I just decided I couldn’t do it, no matter how much I needed the money. I’m never allowing myself to be abused, ever again.

Getting real about my childhood helped me

During the past couple of months, I’ve started to process a lot of my childhood, which I’ve written about here. I’ve fully come to terms with the fact that my childhood was much worse than I ever let myself admit.

My relationship with my parents will probably never heal because they’re waiting for me to apologize to them for lying, in addition to telling all of you that I made up everything bad about my childhood. I mean, only 4–8 percent of child abuse or neglect claims are false, but it’s possible I might not be in the 92–96 percent that are true. They’re still making me question my reality as always.

The best thing that came out of that, although it’s also been very painful, is that I’ve finally realized how much I have to offer now.

The job market is extremely tight; I know that. Everything takes forever. It might take longer than I expect but I’m going to survive until then. The job I’m likely to get in the end, based on the jobs I’m applying for now, is going to pay at least double what I was making before. All of them are jobs that LinkedIn tells me are a good match for my experience, so it’s only a matter of time until I find one.

The reason I know that is because after I redid my resume, I now have a very solid resume that accurately reflects what I’ve done in my career. The internal recruiter at JPMorgan Chase found me when my resume looked so much less focused, and he still found me anyway and knew my potential.

I’m a career writer with more than 15 years of experience. I have skills in marketing, editing, SEO, and a specialty in medical writing in particular. I read medical journals for fun and understand them, which from what I understand, few people without a science background can do. (I really am that big of a nerd that I read medical journals for fun.)

JPMorgan Chase has other writing positions available that don’t pay as well as the VP role they interviewed me for but they still require three days a week in the office. I really, really hate commuting and I want to avoid it at any cost.

I have a fully-equipped home office setup and my kids are usually gone all day. I’ve worked remotely for years and years.

In reflecting a bit, I think that all of this had to happen so that I would finally recognize my own worth and become more focused on my career. I don’t belong in customer service jobs, even though I’m good at the customer service part. It’s hard work and I don’t feel any disrespect toward the people who do it, whether it’s my former coworkers or the customer service reps I talk to on the phone. I know it’s a hard job.

But it’s not where I’m supposed to be. My experiences say that I should be seeking remote writing-related jobs. I have 15 years of experience, all of which have been working remotely. I have a whole ton of valuable skills that shouldn’t be wasted.

I’ll finally make enough money to afford my rent without needing help from my kids. I’ll still have them pay it because it helps both me and them, but I can actually qualify for this place on my own without their income once I get a better job.

This is the final component of putting my life back together: knowing that I have value in the job market. I can and will take care of myself financially soon because I can.