Letter 11: My first bad boss.
There's always gotta be that first one who wakes us up to what we DON'T want.
I have had the luck and privilege to have several amazing leaders in my life who have helped me grow and navigate this thing we call a “career.”
You know, those REAL inspirational humans who leave a mark on us forever.
And on the other end, we have the bosses who weren’t so great. Or even…horrible.
Sure, we’ve all had plenty of lackluster experiences with leaders. In fact, a lot of them we probably can’t even recall.
But a bad boss we always remember.
I was an infinitely curious young human, and I had about 18 jobs by the age of 21. I wanted to dip my hands into EVERYTHING: retail, sales, roofing, telemarketing, waitressing, warehouse stocking, you name it.
I felt like every gig had the potential for magic. I’m an only child who lived in her imagination constantly and always built new opportunities up to be endless possibilities for excitement.
I did not fully understand what capitalism was at the time. My intentions were pure!
I hopped around from job to job, eventually landing in the medical industry for a good ten years before tech.
For years prior I’d been stumbling around healthcare gigs for a while without much direction. I worked for a few local clinics working in billing where I’d pop on my headphones and listen to Ben Folds Five while processing all the EOBs (that’s insurance talk for ‘explanation of benefits that I could).
I moved from Duluth back to the Twin Cities and started a position as an insurance claims processor, and suddenly Ben Folds wasn’t quite cutting the mustard or my boredom anymore.
The money was decent for a 23-year-old recently out of school, but I was working from 6am-3pm and could often be found napping in my car during breaks.
My boss was tagged by everyone as The Ice Queen.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Rogue Humans - Let's Make Work Suck Less. to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.