Nooooo

I work in a restaurant, and as a manager I am required to attend weekly meetings. Which is fine! We meet at the restaurant and talk for a few hours then we go about our days. But now, they want to meet at a different restaurant each week in order to feel inspired by the new dishes and experiences. As a person with anxiety and panic, my heart is beating out of my chest with this new information. In fact, I'm in the car right now on our way back to the restaurant after our first "dinner meeting".

There was so much focus on me, we were eating and everyone is staring at me and talking to me. I was so uncomfortable. They were talking about all the things they want me to do to prepare for another many change and I couldn't do anything but sit there and nervously make and avoid eye contact.

I do not want to do this every week.

I can't.

I too suffer from this kind of anxiety. What I usually do to overcome the situation is try put an image in my head of something that relaxes me or even makes me laugh. If I start to get nervous I'll imagine Calvin and Hobbes wandering around the room. It sounds crazy but it grounds me and I can keep it together.

Hi

I can see why this is making you anxious as I also find change very disruptive and anxiety provoking but I think you are approaching it in the right way and I hope things get easier for you the more you do it you will get used to the new environment.

Hibee

It's definitely the fact that I'm in an unfamiliar place in very close quarters with all of my bosses. I like having an escape route, and it's hard to escape when you're in a meeting, especially in a restaurant, especially with the bosses. It wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't the center of the conversation. I get very uncomfortable when people are staring at me. They just tell me all these things they want me to do and I get so overwhelmed with it all. Understand that this is my first head chef job, I'm 23 years old and graduated culinary school less than 2 years ago and now I have so much responsibility. I like my job, I've just got a lot on my plate and it never gets easier.

I went through this 3 months ago, that's when I joined this forum actually. It was the first time I had to write a menu, and they are already making me do this again. So I'm very stressed and anxious and I don't want to go through this again. I was just starting to recover from all this and now I feel like it all crashing back down. At least they all know that I struggle with anxiety. I've talked to them about it before, but I don't think they really understand that this whole situation makes me completely uncomfortable. One of the,m looks out for me though, he noticed I was getting really anxious at the end of our dinner and suggested to the rest of the group that we should be on our way.


One of the owners bought our dinner this time, but I'm certainly not going to pay for a dinner that im being required to go to! If that's the case I'll tell them I can't afford it.