Help. Can’t tell if I’m worthless or if it’s the job. Deleting later
I’m not sure what kind of “-ism” this place has going on. But there was a distinct quality to the environment that makes you feel worse than invisible if you don’t fit in to them. People were surface-level nice, yet there was always this subtle expression on everyone’s face that your presence somehow cheapens the experience of the room and what they believed it’s worth. I’ve been here 3 years. Law office.
I often felt like a diversity decoration. Not to belong, just to be seen belonging.
Eventually, I started internalizing that feeling of unworthiness myself. I found myself performing constantly to compensate for it, only to feel emptier afterward. There is a social hierarchy there, a kind of signaling you are never fully privy to no matter how hard you work or how well you play the role.
I was consistently placed at the corner table by the bathroom, literally and figuratively, and over time I have started believing that was where I belonged.
Sure, I was not a perfect person. I never claimed to be. But now that they know, I can’t escape it. I feel like the piercing they tell you to stay away from when you’re new. Meanwhile, HR is in bed with upper management. The only other black coworker in my department shot himself last year, and the favoritism couldn’t be more obvious, everyone has worked here together since the beginning of time.
They will place you in a 4x4 while convincing you that you deserve even less space than that. This job drains the life out of people, then congratulates itself for extracting their labor. Your humanity becomes something evaluated, scored, and interpreted through confirmation bias that was already decided beforehand.
It is difficult to let people be wrong about you when they are constantly projecting who they think you are onto you. You are expected to endlessly prove your worth in an environment that already feels antagonistic. And even when you finally earn your place, the reward is strangely underwhelming.