Work & the Cost of Your Soul
Its not worth it
When I was sixteen, I lay on a rugby field at Grey College in Bloemfontein, gripped by the worst pain I’d ever known. A loose scrum had collapsed on me during a match, shattering my leg into 27 pieces, as the doctor later told me. I tried to stand, only to see my leg bent at a grotesque right angle. I clawed at the grass, my fingers bleeding, as spasms wracked my body. The coach called for an ambulance, & a kind-hearted teacher we called Os checked on me. Through gritted teeth, I told him I felt “fokkin’ seer.” At Universitas Hospital, morphine dulled the agony, but I waited eight hours in the emergency room before surgery to reset my bones. For sixteen weeks, I wore a plaster cast from toe to hip, my medical expenses covered by the newly established Chris Burger Fund, created to support rugby players injured on the field.
In September, I read about Chris Burger, the fund’s namesake. A versatile Western Province backline player, he was 28 when a loose scrum collapsed on him in 1980 at the Free State Stadium. Dr. Moss recounted how Chris lay motionless, telling the team doctor, “Dok, ek het geen gevoel in my bene en arms” (Doc, I have no feeling in my legs and arms). Carried off on a makeshift stretcher, he was rushed to Universitas Hospital, the same emergency room where I’d lain. Despite efforts to save him, his broken neck proved fatal. Fully conscious, he faced death with courage, telling Dr. Moss, “I know my God. I am ready to go.” He passed peacefully of respiratory failure the next morning. A loose scrum took his life, just as one had nearly taken mine. He died; I lived.
Along life’s path, I’ve endured other pains & witnessed traumatic deaths, some as bad or worse than that day on the rugby field. Those stories belong to other chapters. But no physical pain, no matter how excruciating, compares to the soul-crushing weight of a toxic work environment. Physical wounds heal with time, casts, & morphine, but psychopathic intimidation & manipulation erode something deeper, your spirit, your sense of self. You can choose to endure a debilitating workplace for financial gain, but at what cost? When the loose scrum of a toxic job collapses, it’s not your life at stake, it’s your soul.
I faced that choice at Investec, where a manager in the dealing room turned my days into a living hell. Incompetent & a master of backstabbing politics, she thrived on making others miserable. I confided in my wife, who saw the toll it was taking. “Leave,” she said. So I did. The second time was at WBS/iBurst, under a micro-managing narcissist who suffocated any spark of creativity or autonomy. When a retrenchment package came up, I seized it without hesitation. This time my wife wasn’t around any more to ask, I did that from muscle memory.
Physical pain, I learned, is temporary. You can grit your teeth, claw the grass, & survive. But a workplace that grinds down your soul? That’s a price too high to pay. No paycheck is worth trading your spirit for a loose scrum that leaves you broken in ways no hospital can fix.
