It’s wearing me down.
Due to reasons I’m a nurse.
Possibly not the best choice for an introvert who wants to work and go home, but it is what it is.
I had a conversation with management and they told me I don’t open up, which is fair and true and told me to be more empathetic with my coworkers.
Except that I can’t and I don’t care about most of them. As said, I just want to work and go home. I consider most of them childish, gossipy and immature. Of course I didn’t tell management this.
I told them an extrovert is not who I am, if you force me to open up, I cannot disconnect during my pause and I’m going to work worse. I like doing my pause only when I’ve done my job whereas my other coworkers do their pause sooner, no matter if patients are cared for, which I don’t understand but whatever. Some people including my manager think I do that to avoid them. No, I just want to do my job before I relax. And I relax alone.
They believe this is a choice. When my coworkers talk and talk, they overload me and I just want to work and go home.
I’m constantly misunderstood. My job shouldn’t be to give attention to my coworkers or to management, yet here I am.
I’m applying for jobs elsewhere but I’m afraid I’m going to have this problem wherever I go, simply because most people in nursing are gossips and enjoy attention. This is what I fear the most, having to constantly change workplaces due to perceived slights and office theatrics I don’t want to play and I’m so not good at playing.
Masking up and creating a workplace bubbly persona would destroy my mental health. Too much overload.
I’m not in a position where I can study something else, cause nothing interests me that much and I need money now.
Ideally I’d find a workplace that respects who I am without incurring a heavy financial penalty, but don’t know what nursing option would give me that.
What I also don’t want to do is to create a job interview persona, because sooner or later the real me will surface, a person extroverts don’t want to work with. I’d like to go to a job interview telling them exactly this, that I’m not there to socialize but to work and go home and that I want to do my job but this doesn’t mean I’m letting them exploit me (giving me a bigger workload than to other nurses for example).
I want to come clean to any future employer about this. Should I?
Most of my co-workers don’t like me. My boss doesn’t even like me. But I’m known for the quality and consistency of my work. So I pop my earbuds in and go about my day, and they leave me to it for the most part. Every now and then my boss asks me to take on a special project that requires more group interaction than I’m comfortable with, and I just have to grit my teeth and get through it.
I’ve become more numb to being disliked over the years. I try to accept and respect that they are who they are and that’s ok as long as they also respect my social boundaries. And even when they don’t, I have learned to kindly, but firmly, assert those boundaries.
I wouldn’t bring it up in an interview. Knowing how extrovert-centric the job market can be, there’s no need to shoot yourself in the foot by making it an issue if it doesn’t come up. Once you have the job, if they decide to fire you because you’re not enough of a social butterfly, despite your good work ethic, then that’s their loss.