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?