Hello, again. I must admit that I did not think having this space to write out my thoughts would be as beneficial as I think it is now. Just knowing that I have a space where I can express myself freely, with the only concerns of judgement being from radom people who may encounter this space and never know who I am. I beleive this is the way the internet is most powerful, as in everday life, my thoughts have to be censored to such a degree that I almost end up never speaking at all. I always find it so strange how people will try their best to stop me from expressing myself. The concept of freindship does not really exist in this reality, I believe. Or, if it does, I have never experienced it personally. The closest thing I have experienced to friendship is people who will come around me, and try to do subtle actions that they try to hide as innocuous, just being friendly, but have the intent of impuning, and belittling me, and detracing from my self-confidence. A person will come around me smiling, and then in the presence of another person, they will always try to fabricate some sort of flaw in me, and draw the other person's attention to it. There are many instances, and examples of this, but it is difficult for me to explain it with the words that I know, and my current level of self-expression. I will try to give some examples of it, in order to explain it to myself as well, or at least gain a better understanding of it. One instance I can think of is when I was at a particular place. At the time I was just learning how to use JavaScript, and I would practice to make little applicaions. I did not have much experience with the language, but I was able to make a small calculator applicaion. I made it without any external help, just using the things I knew at the time. There was a female there that saw what I had done, and she was impressed that I was able to do it, and then her friend saw it, and with conviction she exclaimed that I was not able to do it. This would probably be something that most people wouldn't even think about, but for me, it lead to a state of confusion. I had just completed the application right before her eyes, and yet she was conviced that I was not able to do it. I started to wonder what she meant by that. I wondered if she meant that even though I had just physically completed the task before her eyes, I was not allowed to be able to do something like that when she was not. Even this part is hard for me to explain, but I will try. It is as though there is an expectation that is held for a person, that is based on their social standings more than it is based on their capabilities in physical reality. It is like a person's perception of what you are capable of is somehow more important than what you are truly capable of.
Another instance that I believe that can be used as an example is from the last job that I held. people's attitude towards me there was always as though I do not meet the requirements of being a respectable human being. As though I am supposed to immediately thought of as a denizen of society. For instance, I can remember a particular day that I was working at the place in my capacity as an acting quality analyst, where I was approached in my working quarters by the head of security. He did not have a good attitude towards me from my first encounter with him, and today, as I sat at my desk performing my duties, he came and stood behind me, and called me by a name that was not mine, so I responded, "No". After that he continued to stand there repeating the name, and I did not respond. Then he looked at another quality analyst seated beside me, and asked her if the name he called was my name. When she answered him that that name he called was not the name of a person that even worked in my department a look of disappointment came across his face, as though he had somehow wanted it to be me. He left after that. On another day, preparations were happening inside of my department, and only support members, which I was one of, were allowed to enter. I was one of the first persons to get to the office, and there was a security guard seated outside. I told her that I was a support member, but she told me that I was not allowed to go inside, which surprised me. So, I stood outside for a while, until another support member from the quality team arrived. She asked me why I did not go inside, and I told her that the security told me that I was not allowed to go inside. She was surprised when I told her this, and asked me if I told her that I was a support member, to which I responded that I did. She then went over to the security and had the security do her checks to let her into the room, and then she entered. After she entered, I looked at the security guard and asked her why she allowed the other support member to enter, to which she responded that she did not tell her she could enter. I did not understand what was happenening, but a word (that may not be accurate) that I would use to describe the events that unfolded would be something like 'discrimination'. I would not be able to prove that though, because there is nothing about me that is really worth being discriminated against, but I don't think there is a term for when someone is discriminated against solely on the basis of who they are. If there is not, I would coin the term 'individual discrimination'. I think it may be defined as a type of discrimination that is not religious, racial, sexual or any of the other types of discrimination, but it is more of a perception based discrimination. Perhaps, if I could express it as the thoughts of a person, it may be expressed like, 'you look like someone who I'm not supposed to treat equally to everyone else.' It is also very difficult for me to explain, as i don't think there are many people who experience this type of discrimination. Another thing that makes this type of discrimination hard to identify, and define is that it can be easily masked as ordinary social behavior, because there are none of the usual discriminatory factors that you can use to differentiate a person who is experiencing it from a regular person. One difference between myself and the average person though is that I have long hair, and a full beard that covers my neck.
Women are generally very confusing. I try all the time to make sense of their actions, but I am always unable to detect any trends in their behaviour. The only consistent trend is random responses, or perhaps a better way to phrase that is that women always try to ensure that their interactions with you, leave you feeling less happy than you were before you interacted with them. This idea is also hard to explain, because as a human being, I can only see things from the perspective of a human being. Like for example, if I were examining ants, I could use the disparities between ant behavior and regular behavior in order to beter understand and describe ant behavior, but in terms of humans, my understanding is only limited to my experiences, and different unrelated women will behave in similar ways, so it is difficult to determine whether something is an anomalie or just regular female behavior. One trend I notice for example, is that there will be times when i approach a female to make conversation with her, and she will show a complete lack of interest, in some cases she will even go as far as trying to disrespect me verbally or through her actions; but, after the interaction, where she has disrespected my, and rejected my attempt to interact with her, if I appear as though I am not hurt by the rejection, and carry on about my business without attempting to interact with her again, she will try to then interact with me in some way (this part is very hard to describe and explain). What will typically happen, is after my attempt to speak to her, and her refusal of my request, when I go about my business not attempting another interaction, the woman may do multiple things to try to regain my attention, like she will try to situate herself in my field of view, or she will try to find a reason to have something to say to me, or she will start behaving unusually 'fidgety', and do things like sigh extra audibly, or, in the country that I am from where this is popular, she will kiss her teeth. When this happens I am always severely confused, because if I try to interact with her again during this time, she will behave unusually agitated and disrepectful, but if I ignore her and go about my business she will go to great lengths to get my attention, or to say something to me, or to say something about me, and if I continue to ignore, she will start to behave as though I am doing something wrong. The situation is even more confusing when I do not approach a woman. Like if I go to a place where I know no-one, and no-one knows me, I will be aware that no-one is interested in me and attend to my own business, but when I do this women will be have as though I am doing something wrong. Let me try to find examples of this.
I was once at Burger King, by myself, with the intention of buying a chicken sandwich. As I stood in the line, from the corner of my eye, I could see a woman staring at me with a look of contempt on her face. I interpreted this to mean that she may have been offended by me in some way. I'm not sure how I could have offended her though, unless my existence is an offence. In order not to increase the offense I did not look at her directly, but instead focused on looking straight ahead, waiting on my turn to get served. This seemed like a reasonable action to me, because I figured that she has already disapproved of me, I do not know her, and she does not know me, I have also not tried to interact with her in any way, so there's no way I could be doing anything wrong to her, there was also a considerable distance between us. I did not think I was doing anything wrong, so I continued to avoid eye contact with her, and focused on trying to get served in the line, but she continued to stare at me. I didn't believe this woman would be open to having a conversation in Burger King, so I didn't think she was looking at me as a potential partner, I also don't believe she was looking at me because she wanted us to be friends as there was a good distance between us, and no reason we would have to talk to each other. I could not have been doing anything wrong, unless the very act of standing in the line at Burger King was an offense. The woman continued to stare at me though, and she stared at me from I was at the back of the line, until I got up to the front of the line to be served. I continued to try to avoid her gaze as best as I could, but her stare was so intense, that other women started to look at me as well, and the situation got so serious, that even the security guard in Burger King came to me, and asked me to move from where I was standing. I complied, and moved, but confusion is not a strong enough word to express what I felt at this point. I could not have been doing something wrong, unless I was doing something wrong by not actively giving this woman an opportunity to reject me. It is strange, but I think that was actually it. I beleive that there is a drive in women, that even if they are not interested in you, they want you to show interest in them, so they can get an opportunity to reject you.
Another instance of this I can think of, is when my son was on holiday, and I took him to a park one day. I did not know anyone at the park, so, as my son was off partaking in the park with his friends, I was minding my business on my phone. I was aware that no-one had any interest in interacting with me, and so I did not bother to pay attention to anyone around me, as I find in many instances, that people are offended whenever I pay attention to them. So, as I was there on my phone, a couple came and sat down on a bench not far from me. I could not think of a reason why these persons would be interested in interacting with me in anyway, as we were not close to each other, and we were at a public park, I was also not in their way in any way, so as far as I was aware, we were completely disparate from each other, and there should be no reason for us to ever want to interact with each other. Yet, as I sat there, through the corner of my eye, I noticed that the woman was periodically turning her head in my direction, which was away from the gentleman she came to the park with. Of course, I continued to mind my own business, not bothering to raise my head from my phone. The next thing I noticed was that she started speaking extra loudly, and stated behaving very 'fidgety', like bouncing as she spoke, and kissing her teeth, and looking over to me with an increasing look of agitation. I continued to mind my own business, as I was certain there was no way I could be doing anything wrong, but then she started to create situations to try to get my attention. She walked passed me, walking extra close to me, so I would have to move to let her past, out of the corner of my eye as I watched where she was going, she walked past me to a counter area, and stopped as though she was looking for something, or at something, and then she walked back past me again, so I had to move to allow her to pass. I was still conviced I was not doing anything wrong so I continued to focus on my phone and ignore her increasing agitation, she was also there with a man, who I assumed was her partner, so I did not want to appear disrespectful as though I was trying to steal her from him, or something like that. Thankfully, my son finished his activities, and I was able to leave the situation, before anything more happened.
Hello, internet! I hope you're doing well. I am... okay - I think; I'm not really sure to be honest. But, anyway, I'm talking to you now, because I guess I was searching for... something, and I stumbled across a website on this neocities thing. It was very interesting; a website where a woman basically documented her entire life; a biography I guess. I'm not nearly brave enough to make a biography of my self on the internet, but the site also had a jouornal, which I found really interesting. I think I kind of like the idea of making a journal of my thoughts that will continue through time, even if I pass away; at least that's my intention for making this site. I know some css, and I could edit this site, but I don't think I'm going to. Maybe; we'll see. So I'm talking to you now because it's been a while since Ive talked to another human being that isn't a family member, and my only family is my sister (at least the only family I talk to anyway). I doubt anyone's going to see this site, or be interested in reading its contents, but I feel kind of good about the thought of that; this site is more for me than anyone else. I called the site 'myunfilteredthoughts' becuase that's what it's going to have. I saw a video recently that said there are some human beings that don't have an inner monologue; that they just think in pictures. I find that simultaneously weird and enviable; the only person I talk to is my inner monologue, and I sometimes feel as though I would be led to talk to other people if I didn't spend so much time talking to myself. Right now I'm just typing out that inner monologue as it comes to me, so this whole thing may be kind of disjointed because it's not planned and I don't plan to do much editing; I'm just writing my thoughts as they come to me.
Have you ever felt as though life is pointless, and I don't even mean that in the depressed, "let's all drink the coolaid" way. Just that there is no point to doing anything in life. That is a thought that has started recurring to me recently. I feel nowadays like everything I do accomplishes nothing, and is ultimately for nothing. And, then there's the part of me that says, "No. Do this now. Build yourself up in your downtime. It will all pay off later." I'm kind of stubborn, and don't really ever feel like giving up, so I suppose even if life was pointless it wouldn't make much of a difference; but, then there are some days where I think, "Is it really worth it?" and honestly, it's not, but like I said, I'm stubborn. I've been unemployed since March of this year. I quit my job. I quit my job because of the situation that unfolded there. Let me take a red herring here to tell my story, and then I'll share why I quit my job.
So, I've never held a job for more than two years before my last job. I've always been competent, but never felt comfortable anywhere I went. Whether it was the job itself, or the people that worked there, something always caused me to leave. This last job I had, I was in it for four years. It wasn't any better than any other job I had been in, but I had said to myself, before I got the job, that I would settle down there and turn it into a career, and I was doing a decent job, considering the environment, I believe. i think toxic is the best word that could be used to describe the environment; I asked chat GPT what a toxic environment really was, and I don't rememeber the exact answer, but it was something along the lines of a work environment where people form cliques, and gossip alot, and basically behave like they're still in high school. That's probably every work environment nowadays to be honest, but I think that last job had it the worst of all the places I've ever worked; although I may also just think that because I worked there for longer than any place before it. But, truthfully it was really bad. I've never been good with people. Even when I put out the effort to try to socialize, it's like people can just sense that there's something different about me. I read a dnd manual once, Aleph RPG, where you could give your character traits that severely lower their social skills; characters in the game would just instantly pick up on your character's social deficit, and I feel as though I have that character trait in reality. I'm the kind of person that always beleived that life could be like a Disney movie, where if you tried hard enough people would eventually get used to you and figure out that you're not really that bad, you just have a different personality from most people. That never materialized. Instead, what happened, was that from my first days at the job, I was hated and treated worse than the average person. When people hear me speak, they sometimes find it hard to believe that I would be treated so much differently than the average person, that it must just be my interpretation of situations, rather than the situations themselves, and that may be true to some extent, but I still just have this feeling that everyone at that company that interacted with me had a stronger than usual desire to break me as a person. I remember in particular in my earlier days there, I was woking for a project that handled the servicing of loans to people. A new product was being rolled out that was supposed to lower the length of a customer's loan by one year. I was in the first batch of people being trained to handle this new service. I'm not sure if I was the only one who was really paying attention in the meetingk, or if everyone else in the meeting was just bad at math, but looking at the training materal that we got, that was generated by the system we'd be using to service loans, doing some basic arithmetic, summation, you could see that the training material actually increased the loan by one year. With my naive self I thouht it was just a mistake, and probably no one was paying attention to it, so they didn't notice. So, i brought attention to it. What happened next is king of surreal; the account manager was the one leading the meeting, and there was a trainer from a neighbouring branch, and they defended the training material. But, the thing is, it was obviously wrong, so I wondered if it was that they really just didn't understand math to such an extent that even when the error was pointed out to them they still would not be able to see it. Because the material was obviously wrong, what they argued is that it is just right, but becuase the math in the training material just didn't make sense logically, it was more like they were not able to provide a valid explanation for the discrepancies that were being pointed out, but they also didn't have the mathematical capcity to understand why they could not explain those discrepancies. Like you want to move on, but you can't becuase something just isn't adding up, but you just don't have the capacity to see why it's not adding up. So, they gave me explanations like what was going to happen is that the customer would sign the contract, which, in the training material, extended their loan by one year, but they would stop their payments sooner, as though they had gotten what they were supposed to get, one year less, and the money that would be left over (because when you worked out the training material you could see that the person would still have two years worth of payments) would just be forgotten about by the company. To me that didn't make sense, as it was a legally binding financial document, but I was just an employee going against the word of the account manager and a trainer, so out of fear of seeming insubbordiante, I dropped it. Some of my other co-workers who were also in the training tried to convince me that it was fine as well, but they could not. They came over to me saying that they were going to explaing the material so I would see that it was fine, but in the middle of the explanation they were struck with confusion, as though they could see that it didn't make sense, but they just could not understand why it didn't make sense. Either way the meeting moved on, and no one but myself was able to spot the error, and the account manager never acknowledged it either. The only way I found out that there really was an error was because the training material was changed for the next group of trainees, and up to this day, the general consensus of everyone in the first meeting was that I was just disruptive; they eventually never were able to see the error.
Skipping forward in time by some months, an opportunity for a promotion opened up. An email was sent out with all the qualifications someone should have in order to be elligible for an interview for the position. I happened to meet all the qualifications, so I applied. The interviews were had, and every other person who applied was given an interview, but I never got an interview. The operations manager for the account, after the interviews were over, held a general meeting, where she spoke to everyone about the results of the interviews. I didn't think I'd ever get another opportunity to ask her why I never got a chance, so I asked her. She said that the reason I never got an interview was because I had a work infraction. I was kind of surprised, because I never received any sort of information advising me that I got an infraction, so I checked it out; and it turned out that I didn't have an infraction. Other things happened on that program, for instance I had gotten another promotion, a sideways promotion, and the clients for the program complimented me for being good at this new role; shortly after that I was demoted. Even though I had said that I was going to form a career out of this new job, there were too many things that happened on that program (things that I'm not writing about now) that gave me the impression that I was being purposefully held back. As though I had been black flagged by the higher ups, or something. So, I decided to leave that first program. The company wasn't the kind of company where you could share concerns about wanting to move to another program, it was more of a situation where people who were staffed, like people in Human Resources didn't really see you as being on their level, so you wouldn't be able to voice your concerns and have them be dealt with in a mature and professional way, and what is worse, because of my personality (because I don't generally act as though I feel threatened by people higher positions than myself, because I'm confident in my skills and abilities) people in positions higher than myself, including the HR manager, felt threatened by me, and perhaps jealouse of me (Imagine that! And they were better of than myself). But, it was the kind of company where people in higher positions behaved like you should be afraid of your own shadow in their presence, and lavish them with praise, even though it was a company where people were promoted more for their associations than their merit. So, in my leave of the company, I took my sick days, and went over the sick days. The plan was to never return, but in the interval, I was called by the company again to join a new program. The offer sounded better than the program I had been in before, and so I accepted. The program I was on before closed down two months after I left, as the clients cut their ties with the company. They never gave us a reason as to why, but I suspect it was due incompetencies in management.
The new program I was on was great for a while. There was a co-worker on the other account, who had been given a promotion to team manager, before it shut down, that transfered over to the new program. He was a great guy, but he was not very bright. Even saying that feels kind of weird, but it's the best way I can describe him. We would get instructions passed to us from our new clients via email that we'd all be able to read, and he would wildly misinterpret the information. Sometimes I would say something, because what he was saying was so far from the mark, but I would also fear seeming insubordinate, because he was not the type of person that you could talk to in private and tell him anything. He was fired two months after the program started. We were never told why, but again, I beleived it was because he just didn't 'get it'. Time passed on this new account, and just like I had beleived on the first program, I thought that my co-workers just weren't warming up to me because we hadn't spent enough time together, but they never warmed up to me. It was also weird, because I was one of the more 'technologically savvy' people on the account, so people would look particulaly to me to fix their issues. They would try to fix it themselsves, and ask their friends to fix it, and they would fail, and then they would come to me, and I would fix it. So I was thinking to myself, 'surely they must be gaining at least some affinity toward you', because I became the primary person who was trusted to fix things and to know things (the knowing was because I had taken the time to read through all of the documentation for the new program before the clients removed the documentation), and still, even though they would trust me to fix their issues; seek my aid out, even over their own managers; even people on teams that I was not on; they never treated me as though I was getting any closer to being a friend. (I also have to rant on this a little because it really was weird, and this is what I'm thinking right now, because they would trust me wholeheartedly to resolve their problems, and then behave like they wanted nothing to do with me once the problems were resolved.) Anyway, more time passed on the account, and I became the go to person for knowledge and solutiions, and I never wanted to seem offensive, so I would always offer to help. I did talk to some people on the account, but we never really got close enough to where I could think of them as friends, although that was good enough for me. After some time, a promotional opportunity arose on the account, so naturally, I applied. I actually got an interview on this occasion, and after the interviews were over, in the interview debrifing, the human resource manager said he was disappointed with my performance. I asked him which part of my performance, and how I could have improved it, but he could not answer; and then the account manager said that there were questions I was asked, where my answer should have lead them to ask follow up questions, but I never got to the follow up questions. In particular, he said that when asked what the duties of the new position are, I did not give enough of the duties. So I asked what he would have said, and he answered, "I could talk all day about the duties that this new role entails, but for the sake of brevity, I'm only going to name three,"
I felt bad that I didn't get an opportunity at the new position, but not particularly like I deserved it more than anyone else, just bad in general. More time passed and a new role was opened up for a promotion. The first had been a managerial promotion, this time it was quality analysis. I spent a lot of time preparing for this role, to the point that I got a certificate from the company's internal training to say that I was qualified for the role. I was the only person who got that certificate. On the day of the interview I was the last person to be interviewed. Everyone who went in before me stated that the entire process was extremely awkward and the receoption that they got during the interview was more of a feeling of apathy than anything else, but I figured that's just how interviews are supposed to go; the interviewer's going to try to stress test you. Either way, I went in confident in my knowledge of the role this time. When I entered the room, I understood what the other applicants meant. The feeling I got in the room was as though the interviewers didn't really care about evaluating me. The best way I can describe the feeling, at least how it felt to me, is that it was a feeling like: imagine a man, standing before a council of gods, and as the man made his plea for a cause that was of quintessential importance to him, the gods looked down on him without concern, saying, "What does this mortal want? Does he not see that he is standing before a council of gods? We already have everything our hearts could ever desire, why doesn't he just shut up, and go die somewhere like a good little mortal?" Regardless of their apathy, I held my compusure, and I answered all of their questions with certainty and assurance. I was even asked the question about what the role entailed again; I made sure to repeat what the manager had said to me verbatim, and offered them three duties entailed in the role. Their attitude of disconcern was so intense that at one point one of the interviewers yawned and appeared as though they would have preffered to have been sleepiog at the moment, but no one would be able to tell that I was impacted by their actions as I carried myself as though I spoke to an audience wrapped in my every word and I exhausted all of their questions.
The second statge of the interview was a test on our ability to use Microsoft Excel. I didn't know anything about using Excel at the time, but I was able to figure it out, and I was the only candidate to hand in the assignment. Eventually, I was placed on an acting contract, my work had paid off. The contract would be based on my performance, and my ability to meet certain standards and it would be renewed on a three month basis. When I started the role, I didn't know anything about using Excel, but because I had known some JavaScript, and functions in excell were so similar I soon became good enough at it that I could automate the process of generating reports needed for quality analysis. this wasn't that great of a feat, but the sheets I made became the sheets that were used by my senior in the role who had been in the role for seven years; before that she would always get her calculator, and do the reports manually, getting the average of the individual scores for the thirty plus people on the account. It ended up being that instead of her teaching me how to do the reports, I ended up having to teach her how to make the spreadsheets.
I don't really know why, but I understand that humans tend to have the tendency to want to think of themselves as being better than other people, and if they're unable to get objective evidence of that naturally, they will tend to want to create situations that approximate it artificially, and I was not spared the effects of that tendency. So, in the new role, the persons in higher positions than myself would always try to overule any judgement I made in relation to the quality of someone's work. Much more so than they would do to my senior qulity analyst, but because I usually focused on using logic to the best of my ability in any judgment, my decisions would stand most of the time. They would also ask me to do absurd tasks that they would never ask my senior team mate, because they knew that she would know that her role did not entail her doing those things; I would do them some of the time just to get them off my case. The senior team-mate was way more relaxed in her role, as she would sometimes say she couldn't bother to do some of the tasks that were assigned to that role, like sending out a tip to the team everyday. I think my attitude rubbed off on her a little though, because after a while she started to have the same interest in it that I did, even going so far as to make sure that the colors and font used for reporting were the company approved colors and font, which she was not doing before. I think we both did a very good job in our roles, ensuring that the information we gave out, and the judgments we made were accurate and helpful. I once (with my naive self) even asked one of the team managers if she had any issues with my performance, and she answered, "If I did, I would let you know." but the way she said it gave me more of a feeling that she was saying I'd better watch my ass than that she was giving me a complement.
More time passed in the new role, and I got no complaints about my performance. I remember a particular instance though, where the report was showing that the team had performed not as well as expected in a particular time period, and the managers, as well as my manager held a meeting to discuss the results. They asked me if I was sure I did the calculations correctly, and I gave them the exact calculations I used, which were provided by the client, and I showed them the resultes I got. My manager came up with the solution that in order to increase the score that was derived I should have tried dividing by a bigger a number. I had to explain to her that dividing by a bigger number would result in an even lower number, but she did not want to beleive me. The results were accepted as they were, and thankfully, the clents raised no issue over it. After that, on one day, I happened to see an email that was my manager was sending to HR reminding them that my pay should be lowered on my next contract. At the time, I didn't really pay much attention to it, as I thought she was just doing her job, and there was some work related reason for her to send an email like that, so I didn't ask about it. Even though I had saw it, though, I was still surprised when my pay cam with a lower amount than what was on the contract the first time. I had gotten the pay before I actually got the contract, and wasn't aware that my pay had been lowered, so I went to my manager to ask her about it, explaining to her that there must have been some mistake, as she had never formally said anything to me about the reduced pay, and I doubt she was even aware that I had seen when she sent the email. When I went to her and asked her about it, she didn't tell me at that time either that she had sent the request for the pay to be lowered. Instead, what happened was that I received the new contract in my email that had the lowered amount on it. I still did not know why it was lowered, because noone said anything to me about my performance, or why it was being lowered or anything. I asked the account manager (not my manager about it), and at the time, he explained to me that it was lowered because there was a change in the rate of pay; it so happened that I had gained 1 dollor in may rat of pay, and lost a significant amount in my overall pay, but I was still making before I was making before the promotion, so I let it go. Other things happened on the account, and even though I had felt like an outcast before, I felt like an even bigger outcast now because I could not talk to the co-workers I used to talk to before because they would always be unable to relate to anything I would talk about in the new role, but also the people who were already in high positions would not talk to me either, because they didn't think I had been in the role long enough to be able to be on their level. Still I just did my job; when I was sure about everything else, I just buried myself in work so I would not feel the need to talk to anyone, and, strangely enough, whenever I would get lost in doing my work, they would always call my attention away to do other things, but only whenever I was seen doing work, and because I was new to role still and didn't want to make enemies, I would comply, but I still kept on track; noone ever complained about my performance. Three months later when my contract was renewd again, I saw this time that the amount that it was reduced to before was cut in half, meaning I was making less than half of the amount I originally started with. Because of the way how the power structure was set up at the company, I knew that if just asked directly why I was getting less pay they would probably respond to me as though I was a nuissance who always had a problem with their pay, so i jokingly asked my manager if they were trying to wean me off of the pay. She laughed when I asked her. Then, she said that the new lowered pay was the pay I was supposed to be getting from the start, and that the first two payments I got were actually errors, and I should never have gotten so much. Saying that I was confused would be an understatement, because the company did not usually make mistakes when it came on to payment; they were usually very careful in the way they handled money, so making an error for six months in a row in terms of how much I should have been paid struck me as odd. It was also a company that would make balances if there was an error, so I was thinking that if there was indeed an error in something so serious as money that I would get an email formally outlining the situation, or at least a warning that it would happen. Furthermore, the way how the company would usually handle an overpayment was that a sum of money would be deducted from your pay until the overpaid amount was repaid, but I never got a formal notice of overpayment, and my bankslip never showed any signs of an overpayment being deducted, so I thought it was very strange for them to make an amateur mistake like that, as though the amount I would have been paid for this role would not have been predecided long before I got into it. Still, because I was new to the role, didn't want to seem like I was causing too many problems, and was still getting more than I got before the promotion, I let it go. three months later my contract expired again. I didn't receive the contract for two weeks, and my pay did not reflect the new amount I was supposed to receive in the new role, but I though it was just late, and didn't want to be that guy that's always coming with the same issues about pay, so I didn't say anything. An entire month passed, and I didn't get a contract, and my pay also didn't reflect any bonuses, and nothing was said to me. Two weeks into the second month when I began anxious about what was happeneing I sent a message to my manager (I sent a message because she now worked at a different location than I did), and asked her what happened to the contract. When I asked her she responded, "What contract?" So I said, "acting contract." and then she responded, "Oh you didn't get the contract and you didn't get the pay you were supposed to get for an entire month." then she followed up, "I forgot." At this point in the days to come the strsses that had accumulated over the time were beginning to weigh on me, because I was now having fisues with my personal finances, because I wasn't getting the amount I had gotten before (at the start, the new amount was able to pay off my rent completely with a decent leeway, now I was struggling to make that payment), I could never budget for anything, because I was never given any forewarning about changes in the rate, I would just be surprised with a new contract and no explanation, added to that my manager had just simply 'forgotten' to renew my contract, and yet with all of this I was still expected to perform all the duties of the new roll without fail. People still treated me like I was their enemy and yet they would still come to me with their hardest issues, and I was still expected to solve them; everyone still went out of their way to make my life difficult, and I wasn't even being paid properly. So, one day when I came to work, I went out for a walk to the place I would usually have lunch. It wasn't opened at the time, but I was still feeling a lot of pressure, so I took a taxi into the town (as we worked just outside of town), and went somewhere just to sit down and think for a while. I had a conversation with a woman I met there. I had seen the woman before but I never spoke to her. Now, the conversation I had with her was like a man who could somehow be seen as normal (this part is hard to explain). Afterwards, I took a taxi back to work, grabbed my things from my locker, and went home.
Eventually I did get the new contract. Right after I got an email notice advising me that I had been terminated for job abandonment because I did not show up for work for four days. I don't really know if what I did was right. I can't really explain the full circumstances of the situation with these words because there was a lot more going on than I shared, but I believe the environment did not provide me any alternative, and I don't feel as though what I did was wrong.