How many read the article on Connect the other day about mental health, and how much the company cares about us?
Too little and too late.
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I started taking Prozac to help cope with the toxic work environment.
If you disagree with anything within this “we’ve always done it this way” culture, you get gaslighting like “maybe USAA isn’t for you”
The culture, workload, manipulation, and gaslighting at USAA has caused many people (including myself) to seek out mental health care including therapy and medication for anxiety and panic attacks. There’s a very cult-like mentality that USAA indoctrinate people with starting before their first day at NEO.
“Be part of something bigger than yourself.”
“It’s a privilege to work here.”
“Everything we do is for the sacred member.”
“Go above for those who have gone beyond.”
Any of these sound familiar? They all force the individual to minimize their own feelings and needs for the sake of the “greater good.“ After all, what could be more noble than making a positive difference for veterans? So people neglect their mental health. They have ever-increasing expectations from senior leaders, so they work long hours and burn themselves out. Any struggles that employees deal with are essentially mocked because what those veterans went through is so much worse. You must be weak. You must not be good enough. You’re inadequate. I had never experienced a panic attack before I started working at USAA, and that’s when things were mostly good at the company.
For the same company that created this problem to provide the “solution” to that problem in the form of EAP reminds me of Dave Chappelle’s “bottom bi--h” story. I suggest you listen to it, but the oversimplified shortened version is that a pi-p will often create problems for his most successful pr-------e, then turn around and provide her with the solution to that problem. It’s a form of manipulation used to make her reliant on him and make it harder for her to leave/escape. She doesn’t realize that if she were to leave, these issues would go away on their own, but in her head and from her perspective, the only way for the problems to go away are to rely on the pi-p to fix them for her. It’s an emotionally abusive relationship.
I see a lot of parallels between this concept and what’s happening at USAA. Work people to the bone, make them insecure about their job security, put them under a microscope to the point that they feel incompetent, find something minuscule to put them on a PIP over, make them doubt what they are seeing with their own eyes by pretending that the company is doing great and all of the problems are someone else’s fault (or just not happening), the list goes on. Then turn around and offer extra EAP sessions so you can look like the hero who cares about their employees.
It’s sickening.