The birth of 'Mt. Sensan-Ghi' took place in late 2017, shortly after I hit the wall of burnout at work.
At the time I was working a pretty varied customer service and sales type job at a small business offshoot of a mid-sized online firm. For obvious reasons I cannot and will not share identifiable details about my employment, but the most important part is there was a small and tight team of three running the place and they were growing. With my ample experience in customer service and sales for different call centres and shops; I applied and got hired quickly.
There we were, a four-man team, doing the work of far more than four people. We managed a small showroom and the online store. Even though deliveries were not effectuated from our location, every other aspect of the business was run via our location. Don't get me wrong, this was one of the best versions of that job I could have ever had, and when I joined in 2015 I had much to bring to the table and much to learn still.
I did not dislike the job or the work we needed to do, but it was hard work with long hours, with a long difficult commute for me. We worked hard because we had to. 'Mopping with the faucet open' became a running joke about our work. In the two and a bit years leading up to my burnout we not only did well, but grow even further beyond our capacity. We got one more employee during that period, but lost the aid of our manager when the big bosses decided we needed a larger location. It was our manager's job to now spend all of his time dealing with the new place while the rest of us were now in charge of keeping our heads above water while we transition.
Somehow we managed to stay afloat into our new location, but it took its toll on us all. My home life at the time wasn't great either, which only compounded into my having difficulty letting go of the pressure I felt at work; as over the months and years the overtime became longer, and the work from the day before needed to be caught up, until it became the weeks before, then the week before that, so on.
We needed more people but our manager was the only one who could do that, and his time was otherwise occupied. While we had physically moved to our new location, we were still a few weeks away from the opening of the new showroom and it this demanded all his attention. Too quickly the opening weekend came around and the first hours would set me up to not just crack but break entirely.
Though the start of the day was manageable, one of my first tasks of the day was a plumber with a heater to be returned. Though I can no longer remember what was wrong with it, I was required to wheel it from his car to the back where we took our stock and returns. It required a dolly and some manoeuvring to move, it weighed around 60kg in weigh and was narrow but tall. Everything had gone well until at the end, while loading it unto the returns pallet, it slipped and landed on my foot. My big toe to be precise. The thud was loud and the pain was sudden and sharp. I somehow managed to catch the heater and shove it onto the pallet before realising that my foot no longer wanted to support my weight correctly. The customer was then helped by a colleague, allowing me to hop around on one leg upstairs, to where the offices were.
Everyone was somewhat shocked to see me hopping and helped me sit and remove my shoe, dreading to see what the damage was. The foot had begun to swell clearly and my big toe was beginning to turn blue. From here on out the real blur begins, between the pain and the adrenaline. I remember being told to put my foot on a cold bottle from the fridge and do my best to answer the phones and emails, as the showroom was getting busy and it was only about ten in the morning.
I did not feel well. As the thumping of my heart hammered into my foot, I just wanted to go to the nearby hospital. My manager came upstairs to tell me I was needed to join downstairs, never mind my pain or swollen foot or sweaty face or paler complexion. The couldn't do it without me, they said. The truth was even with me we couldn't do enough. The blur of hours with no breaks, hundreds upon hundreds of customers when our old showroom saw numbers in mid double digits, at best.
By seven in the evening, one hour after our closing time, we managed to shoo the last customer away. I begged to be let to the hospital, knowing there were still several hours of overtime to be done in processing the day's orders. They let me leave.
At the hospital they gave me pain killers and an x-ray. The toe was broken but my foot was otherwise fine, though it would need a few weeks to recover and I was to rest. I messaged my boss and he expected me to come in to work. I simply said no and switched off my phone. I walked to the nearest bus stop and took a bus that drove past my place of work, I couldn't help but look down at the floor. I then got home and went straight to bed, and didn't leave it for three days. My next memory was my boss waking me by up knocking at my door after I had failed to show up to work the next work day; which had me frozen in bed with fear.