As soon as I got home from work tonight, I sat down at my computer and spent over an hour searching all the job postings on various websites and uploading my resume to various companies databases. Work wasn't overly frustrating, or at least not any more than normal, this evening, so its not like I was applying for jobs with that worrisome sense of desparation that I've had in the past. Instead, I was driven more by the fact that my job and the people I work with become more and more tiresome each and every day. Today it was more the people I work with that pushed me to pursue a "real" job rather than the job itself....
Tom and I work together, we have for the entire duration of our jobs. Months went by before our coworkers realized that we were together, which is the way we wanted it to be. Relationships in the workplace tend to be under constant scrutiny, especially at MC where the daily gossip seems to drive the place. We mainly kept things quite to avoid all the gossip and extra scrutiny that other people have been subjected to in the past. Of course, you can only keep things like that quite for so long, before people start to notice that the same two people go to lunch together every single day they work and start asking a bunch of questions. After a while, the newness wears off and people get bored of workplace relationships, and they think nothing of the fact that Tom and I are together. In fact, we've been together longer than most people care to remember when it comes to the history of MC. And so, we were no big deal...
That is until Tom decided to announce our engagement to our coworkers. Since then, we have been put under the microscope once again. Every day I have to field questions about our pending marriage, from wedding dates to plans to the ring to location and so on and so on and so on... From the girls I work with, I get the typical wedding arrangements questions, like what kind of dress I'm going to get, where I'm going to have it, what kind of ceremony I want, are my parents going to help us out, stuff like that. Those questions, while I don't know the answers to most of their questions, they're certainly easier to field than the questions the guys ask me. Most of the guys I work with (and Jenny, since I tell her just about everything that goes on between Tom and I) tend to ask far more personal, and less superficial questions that I just don't know how to answer, and I have yet to figure out how to get them to stop asking me questions without getting flushed in the face and walking away....
Most of the guys at work can't stand Tom, they think he's a giant asshole and can't understand what I see in him. Tom's antisocial tendencies do turn him into one of the biggest assholes in the entire store, so I can see why the guys have such a hard time with him. I've tried talking to Tom about maybe trying to lighten up a bit, or at the very least, try to keep to himself the fact that he dislikes just about everyone we work with. But, Tom has been an asshole to some of these guys for such a long time, no amount of change in Tom's behaviour will change the way they feel about him. Hence the questions I get from them... Of course, theres the standard, "Why the hell are you with an asshole like that? You deserve so much better..." But then theres the "Are you sure you know what you're getting yourself into?" and "You really want to spend the rest of your life dealing with that psycho bitch and a kid that isn't yours?" or "Does he really make you happy?" or "Why are you selling yourself short?" and "You're too young to be getting married, especially to someone who's going to keep you as tied down as Tom. Are you sure you want that?" Being asked those questions once in a while isn't so bad, but having to deal with that almost every single day I work is getting a little tough these days. Its bad enough I've been asking myself those same questions the moment I said yes to Tom. I believed him when he made those promises to me when he asked me to marry him. But when I have people questioning my decision every step of the way, it gets a little difficult, you know?
As much as I love being able to work with Tom and see him as much as I do, I really could use a new job, with new people. I know moving to a new job won't necessarily solve all my issues with it, but it'll at least take the problems out of the spotlight for the time being, until I can sort them all out.