Toxic

I look back and think to myself was it the stress that made my workplace somewhere I didn’t want to be or was a culture that I didn’t fit into, I constantly looked at myself and then realised it wasn’t me it was the toxic workplace I had allowed to affect my physical and mental wellbeing.

Toxic work environments breed unrest, competition, low morale, constant stressors, negativity, sickness, high turnover, and even bullying. Even worse? Toxic workplaces rarely stay at work.

Perhaps it’s bad communication from the top. It might be disorganisation, disenfranchisement with leadership, or general distrust. Whatever it is, everyone around you is unmotivated.

Sometimes a bad boss is the product of their bad boss and so on. It’s this generational hierarchy of poor leadership that makes the overall workplace, you guessed it downright toxic. 

I took quite sometime for me to notice that I don’t have friends at work, I have colleagues and in amongst that cliques were starting to form, you know it’s the group of people that sticks together, grabs each other coffee, laughs at inside jokes (of which they somehow have roughly over a million), and generally excludes anyone outside of their tight-knit ring.

Over the years I have slowly dissolved friendships as I feel let down all the time from bad choices, of those I thought were friends but really just there for the ride, others watched my generosity being taken advantage of and the lack of communication from their part got me down, so I did something about it.

I didn’t want friends, it was better to have associates for the things I enjoyed doing, that person was associated by that avenue of pleasure. I had those that loved to go to theme parks, those that enjoyed long walks, those that like a night out and those that like a night in watching a film.

I noticed it was starting to work, I wasn’t feeling let down anymore, I had inner peace and a plentiful circle of people I could enjoy time with. 

As silly as it may seem, I aired my problems to Hector, he cuddled up to me and with just a simple look and sigh it put my world into perspective, I realised what was important and what wasn’t.

My work at the time wasn’t important to me, my health was and so was my family and these were the deciding factors to me moving on and leaving for better future and growth.