Resentment is a phenomenon that can crop up so easily in any scenario, particularly one that you’re subjected to each day. And what scenario is a more common phenomenon than work (even in these times of millennials being declared the first generation to end up poorer than their parents)? Mirroring the course of most relationships as they go from start to middle to get me the fuck out of this hellhole of a rut, the employer-employee dynamic has a honeymoon shelf life that is far shorter.
Yet during the interview process (especially by the third one since corporations love nothing more than to dangle and force people to do a song and dance for their own sick pleasure), you might never be able to guess that in mere months, you’re going to feel very akin to April Wheeler in Revolutionary Road, ruing the day you ever tied yourself to Frank, the enervated representation of your spirit-oppressing employer. Sure, during especially distinct moments of the pothole in your rapport, he’ll try to make you remember the more blissful times by promising you what is tantamount to things being better (just as Frank insists it will be once they move to Paris) “soon.” Maybe once you’ve delivered on a proverbial TPS report or some such. But no matter how diligently you try to please him, it can never be the way it was when he first knew you. The magic. The false projections of what type of employee you could be. Your true self can simply never measure up to the fantasy of you.