"Unpromoteable": Why I Left the Best Job I've Ever Had

So here's a post that may piss some people off, but its really a story that needs to be told, and I'll tell you why at the end. It's the story of why I left the best job I ever had after four pretty great years, and did so without a safety net.

But to get to the end, I should backtrack a little. Halfway through the summer of 2017, after I had been working there for a little over two years and had already been promoted and received a few raises, I started having a problem commuting. I would get stomach pains every time I got on the bus in the morning, pains that would lead to panic attacks. It got so bad I started getting off of the bus not long after I got on it and would have to take an Uber to work, at an average of forty-five bucks a pop. We first thought it was stress-related; my supervisor was on leave so I was shouldering a lot at work, had just applied for another promotion and had no idea if it would work out, and, oh, yeah, I was getting married in a month. So no shortage of stress, right? But it persisted, even after the wedding, after my supervisor came back, after I didn't get that promotion (wouldn't be the last time I didn't get that promotion, but more on that later). I started seeing doctors to figure out what was wrong and got jerked around quite a bit; first I was just overweight, then it was gall stones, then I needed to get my gall bladder removed (I was but that wasn't the point, the stones are there but harmless, and I still have my gall bladder three years later).

While I was either leaving doctors flabbergasted or exposing the inadequacies, I was never quite sure, I moved to taking either Uber or Lyft to work everyday, whichever was cheaper on that particular day. So it's safe to say I was spending $200 a week on transit just in the mornings. Keep that in mind as the story unfolds.

Finally, I got in to see a truly awesome gastroenterologist, who immediately diagnosed my stomach pains as acid reflux, put me on a pill that helped with that, and then further figured out through some testing I have "mixed IBS," which is a version of Irritable Bowel Syndrome that expresses itself sometimes as constipation and other times as diarrhea.

It's as fun as it sounds, let me tell you.

We also figured out stress is a very heavy trigger for me, and that's why I was always experiencing symptoms in the morning. Not knowing how long the bus would take, if it would break down, if it would get stuck in the tunnel... even taking Ubers to work, not knowing how bad traffic would be, would we get stuck on the bridge, would I be late, etc. It was all just very bad. The doctor also helped me get social accomodations at work for it to be okay for me to be up to see hour late because of my condition, and for the first year that was fine. I worked hard. I got passed up for that same promotion two more times in the span of a month and got transferred to a new team for what I was told was the express purpose of preparing me to be the next one promoted. So I learned the new team, worked hard, forced myself to sit in an Uber cramped up with pain day after day, because I loved whereI worked.

Let me say that again. I loved where I worked. Did I complain about it? Sure. It's work, that's what people do. But I knew it was the best job I ever had. I loved the friends I had made there. It was the kind of work I enjoyed.

So I worked hard for another year, until the next chance for a promotion came up. In that time, some management changes happened, both in my department and in HR, and they started giving me problems about my accomodations. I don't know if they thought I should just magically be better, if they didn't understand what a chronic condition was, but they didn't want to approve it for another year. The doctor had to recertify, and no matter what he wrote on the form, they challenged it. I had to go back three times. They started counting the minutes I missed, instead of allowing the hour a day. All this was making my condition worse, because again, stress. And through all this, I worked hard. I hit goals. My team succeeded constantly. And when that next promotion chance came up, I still didn't get it. And that's when someone in management finally told me the truth.

Because of my chronic health condition, they considered me "unpromoteable."

That's right, I was told no matter how hard I worked or how good I was, I'd never be promoted because I had a health issue. So I thought it over for a few days, talked it over with my wife; talked about how offer 40% of my paycheck was going to transportation, how my days were twelve hours long, how I was always taking short lunch break to make up for the time I missed in the morning, and how all of it was for a job I just found out after four years of hard work didn't have any interest in giving me a future because of something completely out of my control.

So after thinking it over and talking it over, I gave my notice. Did I have a job waiting? No. Partly because I couldn't figure out how to job hunt in New Jersey while working in Manhattan because clearly committing wasn't an option anymore, but mostly because I couldn't stomach working there any longer than I had to.

That's why I left the best job I ever had. Do I regret it? I regret it had to happen, because at one point a future there is all I wanted; I sure as hell regret not still having the amazing health care they provided now that diabetes has me 15K in the hole and stuck in a miserable, remote- only job hunt, I regret the amount of shit my wife and I have both gotten about the decision and the situation it led to from people with a shocking dearth of empathy, but I don't regret my decision once I realized that future I hoped for there was forever going to be denied me.

I just wish I could find the next "best job I ever had" somewhere that will appreciate me, sooner rather than later.

31 Days of Halloween

 

I've seen a lot of things floating around the interwebz lately about how Halloween is cancelled because of the pandemic, just like everything else has been in the last few months. Well, we here at SSTAS (the "we" being me, my wife, and our two cats, who are of course very invested in my success here, as we all know cats are never disinterested, aloof little bastards) have very strong feelings about Halloween in general, and even stronger feelings about the cancellation thereof:

Fuck. That.

We're going to go in the exact opposite direction of cancelling Halloween and do Halloween every day with 31 Days of Halloween! Thirty-one days of horror-themed programming, a movie a day, with some TV shows thrown in, to make sure Halloween gets its due this year. And I'm not talking about how some cable channels do it, where they show the same seven movies again and again all month long. No, we're doing thirty-one different programs. Don't believe me? See for yourself!

As you can see, there's a nice mix of everything in there, new movies premiering on various streaming services this month, a bunch of classics, a ridiculous comedy or two, a few binge-worthy new shows (highlighted in blue) and what are probably a few controversial choices too... I'm looking at you, Rob Zombie's Halloween movies!

Aside from luxuriating in horror to celebrate the glory of Halloween, another purpose of this is to broaden my wife's horizons when it comes to horror movies; she never really watched any growing up and hasn't seen really any of Freddy, Jason, Leatherface, and all their friends. I've done a good job in the almost seven years we've been together exposing her to more and more, but since she still tries to only let us watch horror flicks in the daytime with the curtains open wide, it's time to really do a deep dive with her. That's why we're starting off light and easy with Trick r' Treat, taking a break in the middle for what I'm sure will be the absolutely ridiculous Hubie Halloween, and then finishing up on Halloween itself with the Exorcist, a movie even I've been too afraid to watch for a long time. I'll probably write reviews up for the new shows and maybe the new movies and do weekly updates about how it's going, what my wife did or didn't like, how much sleep we're losing, things like that.

Of course, this isn't the extent of what we're watching. There's also Halloween Wars and Outrageous Pumpkins on the Food Channel, Eli Roth's History of Horror season 2 on AMC, and of course whatever various Walking Dead shows make it on the air this month, it's getting hard to keep track. And on Halloween after we watch the Exorcist bright and early (because even I won't watch that shit in the dark at night), we'll fill the rest of the day with various things like It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and other Halloween themed TV episodes and stuff. And I'm sure we'll get to the alternates I have listed at the bottom of the calendar too. 

So that's our 31 Days of Halloween plan. Got any thoughts on the movies we'll be watching? Or even better, got anything you know YOU'LL be watching this Halloween? Let's talk about it!

P.S. It's been pointed out that the calendar pic above might not be the easiest to read on some devices, so just to make things easier, here's the planned movies and shows in list form:

Trick 'r Treat

The Prophecy

The Strangers

Monsterland

Stuff

The Lie (Welcome to the Blumhouse)

Books of Blood

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th Part 2

Haunting of Bly Major

The Final Girls

Black Box (Welcome to the Blumhouse)

1408

Hubie Happen

Love and Monsters

Leprechaun

Helstrom

Nightmare on Elm Street

Evil Eye (Welcome to the Blumhouse)

Rebecca

Malevolent

Fright Night (2011)

The Amityville Horror (2005)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Emelie

Nocturne (Welcome to the Blumhouse)

Halloween (2007)

Halloween 2 (2009)

His House

The Exorcist

I Got the Diabeetus.

So, it's been awhile, right? But boy have I got a story to tell. I know, who doesn't this year, right? Mine starts around Valentine's Day, when I started feeling kind of funky. I was constantly tired. My muscles ached. I'd get numbness in my hands and feet. I was always thirsty and peeing constantly.  I would get ravishingly hungry, but then be tired of eating after two or three bites. I couldn't even make my way through a PB&J. This went on throughout the month of February, a month in which I lost 30lbs. My wife would come home from work to find me in the dark, under a blanket on the couch, fast asleep almost every night. We knew there was something wrong with me, but, without insurance, we hoped we could just go the home remedy route for whatever it was.

So we treated the symptoms. Gatorades for the constant thirst and frequent urination. Protein shakes to combat the hunger but inability to eat, and also the way too rapid weight loss. Of course, this was a mistake, as we'd come to find out, given the sugar and carb content of these things, but we'll get there.

Things started getting really bad as March started. The first Friday in March, March 6th, my heterosexual lifemate was having a karaoke party for his 40th birthday. I was excited, but also nervous as hell given how I was feeling. I got up to shower and get myself ready for the party, and could barely make it through the shower. I felt like I couldn't breathe. My back hurt. I had to finally give in; I called my wife and told her she needed to come home, I needed to go to the ER.

I went to the ER, got checked in, got all kinds of tests, the whole thing, and by later that night I was out of the ER... and into the ICU, where the nurses told me I had one of the worst cases of diabetic ketoacidosis, or DKA, that they had ever seen. They were surprised I hadn't slipped into a diabetic coma. My blood sugar on admittance was 700, and I had an A1C of over 12. So clearly I was diabetic, and the home remedies we tried didn't help any. I spent two days in the ICU, getting my blood sugar taken hourly, getting various insulin doses hourly, going through IV after IV of fluids for extreme dehydration, getting a phosphorous drip. It was hell. I spent the nights alone, face to face with my mortality for the first time. Which sounds extreme, I know, but that's how sick I was. It was close.

So after two days in the ICU, I was moved to the general hospital floor for another two days of insulin and multiple meetings with a diabetic coordinator and a nutritionist. By the third day, I was feeling immensely better. I had an appetite. I was no longer peeing every two hours. I wasn't exhausted. I finally went home Tuesday afternoon with my blood sugar around 200 and a list of medications I could barely keep track of... two different insulins, a diabetes pill, a cholesterol pill... and an overwhelming schedule of when to take them. I had also gained back 14lbs while in the hospital. The food there clearly wasn't that bad.

Now, the adjustment began. New diet. New medication regiment. I was taking 35 units of a daily insulin once a day, and 12 units of a pre-meal insulin three times a day and possibly a fourth time before bedtime if needed. I'm not going to lie and say it was easy; there was tears, hunger, depression, guilt. Even though they said it wasn't, it felt like a death sentence. The first month was hell. 

But it got better. I got used to the new diet, and begin to figure out what I could and couldn't eat without spiking my blood sugar. I even figured out how to still have dessert. And my body recovered. My insulin doses started lessening. After just two weeks the pre-meal insulin went from 12 units to 6 units, and after two months got changed to just as needed, and I've never needed it. The daily insulin went from 35 units to 30 units, to 20 units, to 10 units, to just last week being taken off of it completely. Through it all, my blood sugar has been fine. It rose a little, but still well within normal, safe limits. And what's really made all this possible has been the weight loss. Around my birthday in January, I was 250lbs. Not six weeks later when I went into the ER, I had dropped to 220lbs. When I came out of the hospital, I was back up to 234lbs. Today? I'm at 205lbs, a weight I haven't seen in eight years, at least. Now don't get me wrong, I still have bad days; because of just how screwed up I was, I have side effects I'll never fully be rid of. But overall, I feel healthier than I have in a long, long time.

Of course, things aren't all great. I left the hospital with a flock of bills that totaled over $85K. Since I'm a self-payer, the hospital dialed a lot of that back, but I still have almost $15K in debt to pay off from this, and that's not counting the frequent clinic follow-ups and medications. And this all happened a week before the world went to hell and took the job market with it. Combine that with being in a high-risk group for Covid no matter how well I'm doing, and it's made finding a decent job impossible because I'm limited to remote work only, which has not been easy to find. Things are tight. They're good, but they're tight. That's why you might see if you look to the right of the page a new little widget that says "Support me on ko-fi," because I could use some support. That's all I'll say about that.

I'm hoping to make this a fresh start, a return to blogging. I've got a few fun ideas for posts coming up, a few serious ones as well. And probably some health-related ones as time goes on as well. Hopefully you'll join me for the ride.