Bittersweet Symphony of Life
I’m a very patient and positive person and I absolutely love my job – I dread working it though because of my horrible boss.
I’ve been working for almost a year now, with a horrible boss to beat all horrible bosses I’ve ever had before.
Basically, my boss doesn’t know how to deal with people; he is very condescending, rude and talks at people, not to them – both employees and customers.
When I first started my employment, he told me and the other salesman that was hired with me to, “lie to customers if you have to, just to get them in the door so we can get their money.”
I knew then where his main focus was. He has often said he doesn’t care if they ever come back, just as long as he gets their money once.
Statistics do not lie – sales have plummeted since he took over managing. We’ve even lost quite a few business clients that had been with the company for many years. Unfortunately we’re dealing with nepotism when it comes to his employment.
However, I am very fortunate that I have a great rapport with my frequent customers, who have often told me that they are happy they do not have to deal with my boss. The month I officially took over all sales, I beat the previous years statistics.
I adore everyone else I work with – we all commiserate with each other about our boss on occasion. It would be nice if we could mutiny and take over operations – the ship would run so much better without him at the helm.
Alas, this isn’t a perfect world.
Without getting into details, I will just say that I was under an unusually huge amount of stress this week at work. I decided that I needed to change the way I was looking at my horrible boss situation, if only for my own sanity.
“Five years ago”, I thought to myself, “I would have been whining, ‘Why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this?’”
I’m thankful that I am not in that frame of mind anymore.
That’s when the song, Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve, started playing on my Pandora.
‘Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony, this life
Try to make ends meet
You’re a slave to the money then you die
I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down
You know the one that takes you to the places
where all the veins meet yeah
This song holds a lot of meaning for me.
When this song first came out, I was in one of my major adulthood transitional phases; this song always seems to pop up whenever I need to be reminded of my path and purpose. Of course in 1997 I ignored my path and purpose and instead took the path I was being told by others I needed to follow, but I digress.
While the lyrics danced in my head, I began to do deep, calming breaths to bring my stress level down and thought, “What is the lesson I need to learn from this? Why am I still here? There has to be a reason I’m supposed to still be here.”
The lightbulb powered on in my mind – to borrow a cliché, these things happening were happening for me, not to me.
So with that in mind, I changed my thinking to: perhaps I’m at this job to acquire good business contacts and leads for my next great job adventure that is right around the corner. I’ve also learned the ins and outs of yet another business to add to my incredibly awesome Jane of all trades skills.
It’s all about perspective.
I could choose to sit and wallow in misery every day at work, or I can go in with a smile on my face, do my job to the best of my ability, build great business relationships and help others at work find a little bit of sunshine in our dreary work environment.
A simple smile can change someone’s day and if I can do that for someone I work with or a customer I come into contact with, I am blessed and thankful.