This is a story of how a young 24 year old woman resigned from a 5-figure job in just six months due to overwork.
My former boss is a famous TV personality in Malaysia – often doing MC events, singing and performing. Therefore I won’t be sharing too many personal details but I will share how in just a short six months I got diagnosed with acute stress disorder and burnout.
I was working for Norah (name changed for privacy) as a personal assistant – which is a fancy way to say I was a driver, cleaner, maid, secretary, and anything else she could think of.
I used a recruitment agency to find this job. You just had to submit your resume, a short video and your expected salary and they matched you to different jobs which then you could shortlist as “interested”. That’s how I found the position as Norah’s assistant.
The Job Description was vague but the pay – well it paid RM12,000 a month. Little did I know it was an absolute trap.
The first month was hectic but it was not insane. I expected that given the salary. It was a lot of computer-based admin work. Scheduling, booking flights, making appointments, emails etc. After the first month of probation, I had to sign a contract. The contract stipulated that if you quit within the first year, you had to pay a penalty of 1 month’s salary.
For the amount I was being paid, at first I felt really lucky to have landed this job. My friends were jealous as they were earning a fresh grad’s salary. Part of the job was to travel around with Norah, so I knew I would also get to experience that.
Slowly the tasks started expanding from admin tasks to “Can you pick this up for me when you’re coming?”
It was a hassle, but still I was compliant. After the first month when I signed the contract, she started to make me stay back, sometimes till midnight – especially when she had an event or important meeting the next day. She basically made me do every task that can be outsourced.
One day, I was told that I needed to organize her 13 year old daughter’s birthday party for around 200 guests that was to be held the next week. Not only was this my first time organizing an event, but at that scale it was more than I could handle. I spent the whole week sleep deprived, trying to coordinate vendors and staff.
To make matters worse, a few of the vendors pulled out at the last minute due to the fact she kept changing her mind on what she wanted. This caused me even more stress and she put all the blame on me for not finding “professional” caterers.
That was the first time I almost quit. Then I remembered the contract.
Norah would often gift me some of her PR packages that she received, and at that time I thought it was worth all the struggles of the job. Another incident that made my skin crawl was when she asked me to clean her cat’s litter box. Mind you, she has 9 cats and they have a room to themselves in her huge mansion.
The first time she asked me, I was annoyed but I just did it because I didn’t want to tell her this wasn’t part of my job. It was just one litter box (out of 4) that needed cleaning and it was a 5 minute job at most.
Then it slowly became something I was regularly doing and not even realizing how she slowly manipulated me. She had a way of speaking – it wasn’t rude or harsh – but she could get everyone around her to do exactly what she wanted. Before I knew it, I was cleaning the whole damn cat room even though she had a live-in domestic worker.
The worst experience of all was when I followed her for a family holiday to Europe.
Little old me was beyond excited to go to Europe for the first time. It was a family holiday which included her 3 kids, husband, parents and her sister. All of them were flying first class and I was in economy.
During this trip, I not only had to plan and schedule all of their activities, buy tickets to amusement parks and site-seeing places, but worst of all – she used me to babysit her kids several times.
When the adults wanted to go for a fancy dinner or a theatre show, she dumped the kids with me and would tell the kids “Oh, kak Mim will take you jalan-jalan”. Over the span of a two week holiday, I took care of the kids no less than 7 times.
In the end, there were no bonuses for the trip, no time alone for me to explore – nothing. I felt used and overworked and was expected back at work the next day after the trip to continue planning her next event.
By the six month mark, I was completely exhausted and was constantly falling sick. I was getting stomach ulcers due to the stress. That was the moment I decided my health was more important than the money.
At that moment, I couldn’t handle it anymore. I decided to quit and pay the penalty.
I sent her a message saying I can’t do this job any longer and I transferred the money the very next day. I have not heard from her since.
Luckily for me, I had managed to save up quite a bit, since I never actually had time to spend any of the money I made.
Since I’ve been living with my parents, my expenditure each month is quite low. I have been unemployed now for 2 months and only slowly been feeling better (ulcers are healing!).
To those in similar situations, I hope you know your health is so much more important than money. And to those bosses out there who overwork their employees, I hope you realise that behind every efficient assistant is a human being with limits.
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