Unintentionally Unbound

I went from having an enviable position on paper, I suppose. I had a government job, with average pay. I was not the bottom of the rung, holding what might be considered a lower middle ranking. I benefited from a fair amount of autonomy with no one reporting to me. It was such a good deal that I stayed in that role for over 11-years, despite a lot of background issues, restructures, rationalisations and associated reactive poor management decisions. Most of these were central decisions, rather than local ones, as is often the case in government.

Why leave?

The simple fact of the matter is that most workplaces are a hot mess of seething insecurities and intrigue.

Before you know it, you can quite easily become engulfed in a hotbed of office politics and wonder how you sleepwalked into a situation that makes you want to dive face first into a vat of chocolate, or wine, or both.

In my experience of the world of work, whatever the perks may be, there is always a dark side to any job. I am not resigned to that fact and I wish that were untrue, but it is how my working life has panned out so far. In my case it was the low-level, insidious, bullying that forced me to obtain a diagnosis of dyslexia just to get myself some protection from it. I never imagined I was actually dyslexic. That was a surprise to me but seems almost embarrassingly obvious now.

When I handed my dyslexia diagnosis to my manager he stormed through the open plan office clutching it saying “this has snowballed” for all to hear. I heard recently he is retiring. Several years too late, in my opinion.

While applying to do a part time MBA alongside my current work, I felt intimidated in the face of very little primary or secondary school education due to the fact everyone thought I was dying until the age of 11. At 45 years old, I am still alive, although that is more by luck rather than judgement. No one noticed I had dyslexia. I have qualifications, but they are fairly mediocre.

No one really understands that I learned to read and write from a hand-me-down copy of Wuthering Heights, which was supplemented by old Jackie Collins and Sydney Sheldon novels I found laying around.

I am the Queen of faking it until you make it. The only problem is I never really seem to make it and maybe that is ok.

I have been both lucky and unlucky. Or have I?

Perhaps I have simply recovered from a series of adversities through dogged determination and hard work.

I have had too many career highlights to fully cover here.

My mind sometimes wanders to the character assassination in the name of personal development to “toughen” me up when I worked in London by a well meaning Deputy Director.

There were the conversations male managers had with my breasts.

I spent decades trying to forget the Police Sergeant who tried to rape me at the work Christmas party, disciplining me for being late for work the next day.

Then there was the running around I was expected to do for my male equivalent, who was Harrow-educated and possessed a hyphen.

I still grit my teeth in remembrance of the woman who wanted to “mentor” me, as an older working class woman. When I left, she disappeared without a trace rather than be associated with what she saw as a sinking ship.

Those twilight times.

I spent a surreal period of my life in my late thirties/early forties working as a cam girl between jobs rather than claiming unemployment benefit while “manufacturing” an online job as a gig economy freelancer to plug the gap on my CV/résumé. I became exceptionally good at in-bathroom voiceovers (to escape the cats) so that I had a legitimate cover and my online background screening business became an unexpected hit.

It was still shouting at kinky men on webcam and shaking my not-insubstantial bosoms that kept the wolves from my door, however.

What next? Respectability?

Part of me hopes so but there will always be an inner rebel inside me seeking to disrupt established ideas that make no sense. I want to be able to create, write, learn, laugh and live without fear of bullying, harassment, discrimination. I no longer want to be one of the many working poor, either, but I am under no illusions when it comes to the likelihood of financial security.

More importantly, I want to help others escape a toxic workplace environment and live the best working life they can — Whatever that may look like for them.