I was nearly ruined by burnout

I stood in the bathroom mirror and wiped my eyes. The reflection staring back at me was blurred and distorted — as if the mirror itself was weary of holding up my broken image.

Cold faucet water ran over my hands, as I scooped a handful up and brought it to my face. I glanced up again and saw the bloodshot eyes in front of me.

“I look like hell,” I thought, pinching and pulling at my cheek with two fingers, to make sure this was actually me. I’d even slept well that night, so I shouldn’t have looked this way. My time was limited, so I rushed into my usual morning blitz to get ready.

It was another page in a long chapter of working insane hours. I’d been on a bender for months now, after the company laid off employees, including a few good people from my own department. I was furious at the time — but my manager said it would all work out in the end.

“Don’t worry. We have plans,” He said.

Plans meant there was a “workload reallocation assessment” — which was presented as this exciting thing by HR. Only for it to mean we’d all be doing the same amount of work in addition to the work of those employees who’d left. It was hard for me to get excited about this abrupt change of face.

I realized nothing was going to get better. Our CEO was living a lavish life, brushing shoulders with Tom Brady, playing golf with celebrities, and still squeezing us all for more profits than the many millions he already made.

“I’m looking for a job tonight,” I whispered to myself in my cubicle, seething, and wishing someone would overhear me.

Burnout is measured through cynicism, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization — and I was maxing out all three. This compounds when there’s pressure to keep a happy face at the office. I felt an unspoken cultural expectation to never complain, to be agreeable and say every request was, “No big deal.” This dilemma is common and creates emotional fatigue, which is when you present emotions that don’t match what you are feeling.

My job hunt began that night, and within a few months, I was getting interviews. Unfortunately, I was reminded of how frustrating the process is.

Quite often, the jobs you really want won’t call you back. When they do, and you land an interview, they’ll often jerk you around.

“We love your qualifications!”

“This went really well! We can’t wait to go to the next step in this process!”

Only for you to never hear from them again.

I was at my wits end, and felt like I’d have accepted a job offer digging graves at that point. Finally, I got a call from a great and well-known company: Home Shopping Network.

I pulled into the headquarters. It was a towering corporate building with reflective windows and an HSN logo as its crown. In front, was a wide still pond with several alligators floating leisurely. Some dark and cynical part of my brain wondered if underperformers were thrown in.

In the waiting room, five TVs softly played different shopping channels, forming a strange and quiet montage of ridiculous products and quirky actors evangelizing them. A mousey and grandmotherly woman greeted me and sat behind the counter typing as I waited for my interviewer.

Home Shopping Network wasn’t the answer and I learned that quickly. A woman came to escort me to the interview room and, as the elevator opened to the fourth floor, I saw a wide and dense grid of cubicles that looked like the aftermath of a paper storm.

They were abandoned cables dangling out of walls, computers seemingly ripped from their wombs. Lonely sticky notes dotted walls and keyboards languished without monitors.

As we walked, I saw two employees total on this huge floor, and they did not look happy. One looked exhausted. The other looked frustrated. I’d seen this play before so I tried to finesse a question to my escort, “So…is it always this busy?”

She turned and said, “We did some cost reductions and layoffs recently. But you need not worry! It has already passed. We have great opportunities going forward.” I grimaced, knowing that macro issues usually bled downward onto the backs of workers.

In my experience, a financially unhealthy company will struggle to maintain a healthy culture. The two just aren’t compatible.

I walked into a medium sized conference room that overlooked the highway below. Initially, things went well. I sat across from a nice blonde woman who interviewed me. Then, she connected me to a press conference call with the biggest jerk I’d ever met. He was hostile and pushy, like I was being investigated for a homicide. He cut me off when I was talking multiple times, to interject with questions.

Then, he started opining about his beliefs on the nature of workers.

“Some people are just lazy. I believe work ethic is a feature we are born with,” he said. His theory sounded pretty flimsy and irrelevant to the discussion of me being a good employee or not. I was relieved when our talk ended.

As the nice blonde woman escorted me back out of the office, and towards the golf cart that awaited me, I better understood the post apocalyptic feel of the office, and the employees looking miserable.

A small part of me argued, “Just take the job if they offer it. It’s a huge pay raise and a good brand to have on your resume.”

The logical side of me knew I’d be swapping one problem for a larger one. Even if the company was “rebuilding” as they’d told me, that didn’t at all resolve that they had financial distress to deal with. I may have well ended up working even longer hours, and feeling even more exhausted by the waves of work that came in.

I eventually found the right job. Years later, I now work on my own as a writer, yet still see the desperation of so many workers. The frustration and job fatigue are well evidenced by the wave of labor strikes that have happened in recent years.

My mistake in all this was not realizing sooner that the path I was on was completely unsustainable. I waited until I was in end stage burnout, when the world became grey and miserable, before I finally started making moves.

And to those still stuck in it, I’d encourage you to make a change, or talk to your boss about the situation in a constructive way. I’d also encourage you to draw clear sturdy lines between your day job and your personal life. Clear windows of time where there is no thinking, discussing, or doing work are proven helpful to your wellbeing and reducing burnout.

Please take care of yourself, and audit your life from periodically. We only get a little bit of time on this Earth. Make the most of it.