Toxic People and Trolls Under the Bridge

I just got laid off from a temporary design position that instead turned out to be simple manufacturing labor and I can’t remember the last time I felt such overwhelming joy in leaving a job. The owner and CEO was easily the meanest and most toxic person I have ever met in my whole life. I have never seen one person take so much delight in making other people miserable and be so successful at it.

Mean people suck!

There is a Chinese saying that venom comes from the head and it was certainly true at this company. The owner felt that people were just meat that she could exploit at will, while paying the very minimum because as she explained, she could fire whoever she wanted and simply put an ad on craigslist and have two hundred new people to choose from the very next day. Her evil attitude and demeaning contempt for everyone else permeated the very air like a sickening stench and contaminated everything in the office and manufacturing area. Her negativity trickled down to everyone who worked for her and it was evident in their faces, their defeated spirits and their actions. For some reason that I couldn’t understand, it was easier to endure the misery of working there than it was to go get a decent job somewhere else.

By the end of the second week I was almost overcome by my own negative attitudes and self-talk. I had been reading books on leadership at lunch and a quote by Viktor Frankl stuck in my mind. He said while he was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII, that one day, standing stark naked, hungry and filthy dirty before the Nazi guards, he realized, “No matter what they do to me, I still am in control of my feelings and how I choose to respond to them and to life.” That’s when it hit me that the purpose of me being there wasn’t about my skill-set; it had everything to do with mastering my self-talk and being in control of my own thoughts. I resolved right then and there that she could jerk me around like a circus pony or shit on me however she wanted but it wasn’t going to affect the good attitude I held within me. Some days I had to stop my thoughts several times each minute, hundreds of times an hour and replace the negative, self-defeating thoughts with a positive focus and a smile.

At break time and whenever I had the opportunity to talk to someone I started to share what I had learned with the other temporary workers. I explained that they were in charge of their own feelings and that no one could make them feel worthless without their permission. I also convinced them that the best thing they could possibly do was to go find another job and then quit as soon as possible. Ultimately, I learned a valuable lesson: in every negative situation or environment, no matter how bad it might seem, there is something positive to be learned. You might have to dig quite a bit to find it but it is there.

From my brief encounter with this nasty woman I will always remember that there are mean and nasty people in the world who enjoy being that way and like trolls under the bridge, they may want to bring me down but - I am in control of my own thoughts and I will choose every time to not let them ruin my day. :)