Dear Icy:
So further asserting yourself is of no use because your employers’ attitude is that if you don’t like whatever then you can leave, so your skills are replaceable and people are rewarded for being LIKED not for working hard. And you don’t want to leave because you need the money and you have nothing else lined up. You know of the serenity prayer, don’t you: … To accept the things you cannot change, to change the things you can, the wisdom to know the difference? Well, if you have to have the money they pay you and you have no other job opportunity right now- then yes, this is then an opportunity to develop that (sometimes excruciating) acceptance of the unpleasant, giving up completely on hoping for or expecting any changes. Accepting it AS IS. No longer engaging in disliking it and resisting it. It is the Buddhist principle of removing the disliking from the perception.

There is always some opportunity. If it is not learning assertiveness, then it is learning patience and acceptance of a bad situation without hoping for it to change, without complaining anymore, without resisting, without dragging yourself to work every day… MINDFUL ACCEPTANCE.

And keep looking for another job which is most likely to not be perfect either. My husband worked for a huge company and was so close to making big money, big money – it all went down the toilet because a certain woman higher up did not LIKE him. My husband is a great guy, hard working, highest integrity, but she did not LIKE him.

You wrote that you did everything you were supposed to growing up… and yet you feel so lost at 31 with this job. Everything you were supposed to… meaning you followed the rules? And you feel you are not rewarded just as you are not rewarded for all the extra work you have done.

Make different rules… your OWN rules. From the inside, put together new rules. Social conditioning, marketing, media, myths all tell us what we are supposed to do.

anita