WHO says 15% of working-age adults worldwide were estimated to have a mental disorder in 2019 while a 2018 survey found 29% of workers in Malaysia reported poor mental health conditions — Freepik
FOR about two years, June (not her real name) could not get a good night’s sleep.
The 35-year-old would wake up every few hours at night, dreading the thought of having to go to work the next day.
Her restless sleep also meant she was exhausted the next morning, which did not help when she knew she had to face the same abuse at work again.
“I developed anxiety, started fidgeting, and began biting my nails and skin,” she recalls.
This was not the experience she was hoping for when she landed her job in the creative industry at the time.
Though initially enthusiastic about her new job, she eventually became overwhelmed by the amount of work she was given and the demeaning manner in which her then-boss treated her.
“I was constantly asked to stay in the office well past working hours, sometimes until midnight.
“I was given one task after another, and it became overwhelming because most of the time, it was other people’s unfinished work.
“I had to work even on weekends and my requests for time off or to use my annual leave were consistently rejected.
“My former boss had a habit of shouting and swearing in the office and I was subjected to that countless times.
“It was demeaning and not worth my meagre salary,” she says.
There were only two occasions when she got a brief respite: when she was hospitalised for a medical procedure and when she had a severe gastric episode.
But even then, she says, the gastric incident had to take a turn for the worse before she managed to get ant time off.
“When I had the severe gastric episode, my boss told me I needed to finish my work before going out to get food.
“I was hospitalised the next day.”
June did try to alleviate her situation.
She tried setting boundaries such as not replying to emails on her days off but after a few weeks, she says her boss shamed her for this behaviour in front of all her colleagues.
Her boss also threatened to fire her if she continued doing that.
These experiences led her to seek professional therapy, during which she was advised to quit her job.
“I’m glad I took that advice.
“There was nothing else I could do because the bosses were set in their ways and I didn’t see any of them changing their attitudes.
“They just kept squeezing us until we were half dead.
“I’ve worked at a few places in the last 12 years and I knew this was not normal at all,” she says.
Unsympathetic bosses are something 28-year-old Crystal (not her real name) can relate to.
She was mostly satisfied with her job in event planning before she gave birth to her first child, but things began to change after she returned to work from maternity leave.
Her bosses began questioning her whereabouts and her working hours, even though her work was still being completed, and she explained she needed to take care of her new baby.
Already struggling with negative postpartum emotions at the time while caring for her baby, she now had to deal with hostile bosses as well.
“Now I was being ridden with guilt at work for having a baby because apparently, I cannot work and became a different person after having a baby?” she says sarcastically.
On paper, she says, her company was supposedly accommodating to new mothers but her new reality at work proved to be very different.
Like June, Crystal eventually decided to leave that place of employment.
Luckily for both of them, they managed to find greener pastures elsewhere.
