The North End

Like two ruddy deers of the northland, you and your manager did the dance of hooves and the flash of pointed antlers, leaving you bloodied and submitting a letter of resignation. Can there be any victories, however small, against pure, unadulterated power? Only morale ones.

Maybe you’ve found your focus; maybe your on the cusp of a new mental regime.

But the pain of time committed, hours ground to dust, and the recollected joy that came with the moments of delayed gratification from going above and beyond the required task now linger like a phantom limb. It’ll take time to bury the demons. Throw dirt on ’em, dance on the grave, twist your head towards the rising sun and know that this is life’s blessing: every morning’s wake is a chance to either build on yesterday or, more importantly, to be someone new.

Ah, you find yourself at a fork in the road: Does your boss love you? Are you on your way to a well-deserved raise and a shot at total security and the easy life? Or does your boss actually hate your guts? Do they secretly pray on your downfall and hope to either keep you enslaved in a life of low servitude or to fire you and unleash a life of destitution on the streets?

Either way, this is the plight of the modern office worker. It could be the former, but it’s most likely the latter.

And so stress this weekend, run all the poorly executed situations and ill communicated feelings through your mind over and over again. Let it wreak havoc on your mental state until your sitting in a state of panic and manifesting physical ailments. All this over an entry level salary and the month-to-month stranglehold of a mortgage and health insurance.

How did it come to this? How did you go from being the altruistic-albeit-naive prince of professional peace to the butt of all office fodder? What do they say when you’re not around? That you’re elitist, smug, disdainful? Maybe you’re not such a team player or office support system after all, maybe those jokes aren’t landing and only the cynicism is the only thing that’s coming through. While you thought you were operating on the “campfire rule” everyone else was suffering under your toxic presumptuousness.

We come back to it: are you getting that promotion or are you getting fired?

I’ll find out tomorrow, Tuesday May 5, at 2pm CT.