Personally it was the worst decade of my life. Bad work situations, recovering from the recession. It sucked ass.
The first half of this decade was kinda bad for me, but things got a lot better in the latter half, particularly in the past three-ish years. We went from having very little money, living with my parents, no jobs, and an old beater car to having good jobs, a nice condo, two new cars, and an amazing dog.
Dealing with crazy rent increases sucked and I was so happy that we were lucky enough to get some help in putting down payment on our place from our folks.
But dumb rent shit is nothing compared to the hell that was my previous job. It didn't start off that bad (although the pay absolutely sucked), but with ownership and management changing multiple times, it got worse and worse, to the point where I felt like I was working in an IT sweatshop. Nobody gave a shit about anything.
It got nuclear-level bad when I got promoted (this was definitely a place where you did NOT want to move up) and had to work with a horrible piece of shit, power-hungry, abusive bitch who verbally harassed and mentally-destroyed me until I was finally able to go to HR and get the hell away from fucking witch. She made the environment incredibly toxic, targeted people and got them fired, and "feuded" with other managers. I was told they had a complaint file from like 50 different people, and yet she was never demoted or fired. But karma did finally kick in when she attempted to go for a supervisor position- this was not open to anyone currently-employed and she went over our boss's head to get an interview with the higher-ups anyway. The boss had no idea about this. She got laughed out of the interview and then our boss found out and made her go take some certification tests she had always skipped because "it was too busy." This broke her and she gave up on the place.
And while that was great, working there at this point was still so shitty for me. The bitch was taken down, but now just being there
was a bitch. I had a shitty work schedule and had to work Saturdays, which always was awful since nobody wanted to be there and people would frequently call out or just no-show and/or quit. I was the only manager there so all of this was my problem to deal with. It got worse when I was told they were switching people to 10 hour shifts (you'd get off three days a week, but I did NOT want to be there that long) and I was going to get saddled with an even worse schedule and would have to work the entire weekend, with the times being something like 2pm to 2am, I.E. I would never get to do much of anything with my wife. This stressed me out so much. I tried stepping down, but got yelled at. My boss was just as stressed as I was and I was pressured into staying as a lead. -_-
Then...hope. A buddy who had quit a year or so prior got me an interview where I am now. The first interview went great, but I fucked up the second one (three people sitting on all sides of me and bombarding me with questions = nerves shot to hell) and figured I was fucked for now and would have to work the awful schedule, planning to use the days off to pursue job leads.
And then a miracle occurred!
They called me and offered me the job! Turns out I was #2 on their list of candidates and the #1 pick decided to stay where he was. Working where I am now is the polar opposite of the shithole I was at and it took a good year or so to get over the old place. People actually care here and I feel like a person instead of a number. Stress levels are way, way down. And it helps that the pay is a hell of a lot better. Been doing great even got a nice big raise recently. Things feel much better.
So, home stuff is good. Job is good. It's nice to be able to waste money on crap and do some traveling again. Now I just need to work on ME. My health declined a lot at the previous job (seriously, even the CHAIRS were so bad and busted up that I had back problems from them) and I have been working to get my ass recovered and get in better shape. Just recently started a new diet change last week and I already feel so much better. Gonna kick the next decade's ass and make it mine!
