Where the hell have I been?
Let's see. It's been about a year since I posted my last blog. There are a multitude of excuses, but basically life got in the way. It has a tendency to do that.
What's been going on? In the past year I have: gotten kicked out of my rental house due to the deadbeat landlord (see below), bought a house, moved, had 3 family members die, had a computer that died, got fired, got pissed, got hired, spent more time on the road than in my new house, found the fastest route to the airport (limited only by the laws of physics), and learned Portuguese.
Okay, I didn't learn Portuguese. But I learned how to say "fuck you" and "your mother's pussy has teeth" in Arabic.
So aside from the deaths in my family, which are unfortunately a part of life, the biggest thing that happened to me this past year was getting fired.
I have never been fired before. I'm an overachiever by nature so I'm not used to failure professionally. I'm not sorry it happened, because if nothing else it taught me a great lesson in politics and I proved to myself that my integrity meant more to me than my paycheck.
The somewhat short version: I was asked several times to perform my job function in an illegal manner. I was told on numerous occasions that I was performing poorly, and the way to "do better" was to take certain, shall we say, liberties in my work style. I refused each time to my superiors and continued to perform my position legally (and morally) in every aspect. When I didn't do various things that came up, I was told that I was using "compliance" as an excuse to not perform my job functions. After two of these somewhat formal meetings about my "poor" job performance, I began to ask colleagues at other companies their advice on the situation. I didn't want to look for another job because I had only been working for this company for 6 months when this started becoming a major issue. But I also didn't know what I could do to alleviate the pressure on me to perform illegally.
This was definitely a humbling experience. My superiors consistently told me I did not have the mental capacity to do the job. I was lazy. I was uninformed. I was wrong. I was overreacting. I had poor word choice. I was not eloquent. I did not understand the job. I had poor posture when sitting (I am still baffled at that one).
Basically , I sucked.
I have never really had a self esteem issue. This experience really tested that.
Luckily, one of the people I asked for advice was a former boss. Once he heard what was going on he told me to get out as fast as I could. I think his exact words were, "get a new job NOW."
It turns out that he had a job that needed filling and asked me if I wanted it. I told him I wanted to try and stick it out a year at the old job before I hopped to another one. Part of the reason was because I was afraid of how it was going to look on my resume, the other part was just me being stubborn. I didn't want to admit I had failed.
My catalyst to the new job was a meeting we had in February. Me and my coworkers were told in no uncertain terms that we were expected to do things that were VERY illegal. This was the first time that I knew for sure that I was not the only one they were pressuring to do these activities. We were all speechless. Someone did manage to say, "we can't do that, it's illegal." To which the reply was, "no, it's really a gray area. It is not defined as "illegal activity." Yeah, right.
I called my old boss the very next day and asked how soon I could start. I started getting things wrapped up to quit: cancelled appointments, tied up projects, made a list of what needed to be followed up on after I departed, copied my entire work computer (and made sure to make multiple copies of my documentation of the illegal activity), and so on. One week before I was going to quit I got fired. Technically I wasn't fired, I was asked to leave. My choice was to quit immediately or my boss (let's call him Dick) was going to put together a human resources plan that I couldn't possibly accomplish, and then I would be technically fired when I failed this plan. Wow, such choices.
Dick had no idea that I already had a job lined up. I told him I needed a few days to think about it (just because I wanted to squeeze out every penny I could). I told Dick I would call him on Wednesday and tell him my decision (I work from my house in Texas and he works in California so all this is by phone/email). On Wednesday I called Dick and and told him I would resign and would send him my resignation letter on Thursday.
Then the funniest thing happened...
On Thursday, Dick started calling my home office phone at 6 AM. That's 4 AM California time where he lives. He called so often, my husband unplugged the phone. I never heard the phone ringing since I had decided to sleep in and take the day off. My husband called our home phone around 1 PM and told me that he had unplugged my office phone because Dick was calling every 5 minutes and it was annoying him. He said, "Looks like Dick wanted your resignation letter first thing Thursday." I said, "Well I never committed to any time frame other than Thursday."
Besides, it was going to take a good deal of time to write a resignation letter that didn't contain the word dicksmack at least 10 times.
In that next hour I finally found my way to my home office. I thought I might start throwing out the ton of work papers I had and would no longer need. I plugged the office phone back in and checked the voicemail. I had FIFTEEN messages. On the first few messages Dick firmly stated that he needed 'that item we discussed' immediately. The next few get a little louder and more rambling. A few referenced emails he had sent and phone messages he had also left on my cell phone (damn, did I have that thing turned off too?). Each new message was louder and more frantic than the one before. Every message contained 4 different phone numbers I could reach him at (work line, work cell phone, personal cell, admin phone)...just in case I wasn't sure how to reach him. The last message was almost incoherent because it was sooooooooo loud. All I could understand on it was "This is UNACCEPTABLE. UNACCEPTABLE. UNACCEPTABLE. DO YOU HEAR ME?"
Yeah, the neighbors fucking heard you.
Then I got on and checked my email. Similar pleas for me to contact him immediately and submit the 'item we previously discussed.' Some references to a physician I never contacted (Oh shoot, did I forget to do that?) that needed to be followed up on immediately, but he could take no action to have it resolved until he had 'the item.' Lots of emphasis on how imperative it was for him to follow up by the end of the work day.
I sent the resignation email at 6:15 PM. California time.
Dick was fired the very next week.
Karma's a bitch.
***********************************************************************************
Now in keeping with my format...
My Beef This Week
I have noticed that I am becoming less and less tolerant of people who act entitled or are so self absorbed they have no idea what demands they place on other people. I used to always excuse it, writing them off as oblivious but harmless. Now I'm not so sure. People get busy and their attentions shift....sometimes. But when someone consistently behaves in such a manner, they either know the time/effort/money that it took and believe it is OWED to them, or they are so caught up in themselves that you are not worth their attention.
Is it really so hard to acknowledge the effort/time/expense? Is it too much to ask for reciprocation? Is it really "all about you"?
The source of this rant is a baby shower my mom threw this week. My mom has a friend (let's call her Tina) that falls into the above category. She's known her for decades. Tina's daughter just had a baby and she was going to throw her a shower. This means my mom is going to throw her a shower because Tina could never do this on her own. My mom told Tina that she was very busy this month and would have little time to help Tina organize a shower. Tina said, no problem because she could get Betty to help so Tina schedules the shower anyway. Tina calls my mom a few weeks ago because she can't get the invitation made and needs help. After trying to help her over the phone for over an hour, my mom finally just gets the info from Tina and makes the invitation herself. She emails that invitation to Tina to print and mail. Tina calls back an hour later because of printing problems which cannot be resolved over the phone. My mom ends up driving to Tina's house with the printed invitations (she had to use her own paper stock to do this). There were also some issues with the address labels, but they went about the same way as the invitations. The day before the shower Tina calls my mom and tells her Betty was supposed to come over and help her clean for the shower but is now unable to come. My mom tells Tina she can't help that day because of previous commitments. Tina tells my mom she will clean as much as she can on that day, but asks my mom to come a little early the next day to help her finish cleaning and set up for the shower. On the day of the shower, Tina calls my mom around 7 AM and asks her to come immediately because she was not able to clean and although she had finished the cake, she had not been able to go to the store for sandwiches, fruit, mints, plates, punch, cups, plasticware....My mom goes to the store and buys over $100 of stuff and goes to Tina's house. Betty shows up and they all clean for 3 hours and then prepare the food and set up for about 2 hours. They finish just as the people start to arrive.
My mother gives Tina the receipt of the groceries and Tina promises to repay her, but hasn't yet and will unlikely do so. My mom anticipated this would happen so she did not buy a shower gift and told Tina's daughter that the shower was the gift from her.
Tina remains oblivious to all that my mom has done. She gives her cursory thanks (Betty too) and gives no indication that she understands the magnitude of what my mother has done for her, nor the difficulty my mother had accomplishing all of this because of her already full schedule.
Tina is not a bad person. She's very nice. And is a very loving human being. She is just totally fucking oblivious. My mom and she have developed this relationship over a long period of time and this is part of why this type of interaction with them is so lopsided. Tina has always been a dependent-type personality, but her dependence on my mother to do certain activities or tasks has slowly but steadily grown over almost 30 years.
My mom is the type of person that will go out of her way to help someone. Tina is a person that always needs help. Now my mom is stuck in chronic helper mode. Tina has gotten used to the help and my mom is too nice to say no if it is possible that she can help. It would just be nice if Tina would acknowledge the help my mom gives her with the recognition she had 30 years ago, but patterned behavior has long ago paved over her ability to do this.
I am my mother's daughter. I find myself doing things like this all the time and I'm trying to quit. Not quit helping all together, just quit helping where I can tell there is no recognition of my contribution. I'm too fucking busy to be planning other people's parties for the next 30 years.
*******************************************************************************
I know this has been a long rambling blog, but I'm done. Considering it's been a year, this really isn't too bad. I probably would have kept going but it's almost 3 AM and I have to get up at 6AM to cover a breakfast symposium for a my coworker Tina.
What's been going on? In the past year I have: gotten kicked out of my rental house due to the deadbeat landlord (see below), bought a house, moved, had 3 family members die, had a computer that died, got fired, got pissed, got hired, spent more time on the road than in my new house, found the fastest route to the airport (limited only by the laws of physics), and learned Portuguese.
Okay, I didn't learn Portuguese. But I learned how to say "fuck you" and "your mother's pussy has teeth" in Arabic.
So aside from the deaths in my family, which are unfortunately a part of life, the biggest thing that happened to me this past year was getting fired.
I have never been fired before. I'm an overachiever by nature so I'm not used to failure professionally. I'm not sorry it happened, because if nothing else it taught me a great lesson in politics and I proved to myself that my integrity meant more to me than my paycheck.
The somewhat short version: I was asked several times to perform my job function in an illegal manner. I was told on numerous occasions that I was performing poorly, and the way to "do better" was to take certain, shall we say, liberties in my work style. I refused each time to my superiors and continued to perform my position legally (and morally) in every aspect. When I didn't do various things that came up, I was told that I was using "compliance" as an excuse to not perform my job functions. After two of these somewhat formal meetings about my "poor" job performance, I began to ask colleagues at other companies their advice on the situation. I didn't want to look for another job because I had only been working for this company for 6 months when this started becoming a major issue. But I also didn't know what I could do to alleviate the pressure on me to perform illegally.
This was definitely a humbling experience. My superiors consistently told me I did not have the mental capacity to do the job. I was lazy. I was uninformed. I was wrong. I was overreacting. I had poor word choice. I was not eloquent. I did not understand the job. I had poor posture when sitting (I am still baffled at that one).
Basically , I sucked.
I have never really had a self esteem issue. This experience really tested that.
Luckily, one of the people I asked for advice was a former boss. Once he heard what was going on he told me to get out as fast as I could. I think his exact words were, "get a new job NOW."
It turns out that he had a job that needed filling and asked me if I wanted it. I told him I wanted to try and stick it out a year at the old job before I hopped to another one. Part of the reason was because I was afraid of how it was going to look on my resume, the other part was just me being stubborn. I didn't want to admit I had failed.
My catalyst to the new job was a meeting we had in February. Me and my coworkers were told in no uncertain terms that we were expected to do things that were VERY illegal. This was the first time that I knew for sure that I was not the only one they were pressuring to do these activities. We were all speechless. Someone did manage to say, "we can't do that, it's illegal." To which the reply was, "no, it's really a gray area. It is not defined as "illegal activity." Yeah, right.
I called my old boss the very next day and asked how soon I could start. I started getting things wrapped up to quit: cancelled appointments, tied up projects, made a list of what needed to be followed up on after I departed, copied my entire work computer (and made sure to make multiple copies of my documentation of the illegal activity), and so on. One week before I was going to quit I got fired. Technically I wasn't fired, I was asked to leave. My choice was to quit immediately or my boss (let's call him Dick) was going to put together a human resources plan that I couldn't possibly accomplish, and then I would be technically fired when I failed this plan. Wow, such choices.
Dick had no idea that I already had a job lined up. I told him I needed a few days to think about it (just because I wanted to squeeze out every penny I could). I told Dick I would call him on Wednesday and tell him my decision (I work from my house in Texas and he works in California so all this is by phone/email). On Wednesday I called Dick and and told him I would resign and would send him my resignation letter on Thursday.
Then the funniest thing happened...
On Thursday, Dick started calling my home office phone at 6 AM. That's 4 AM California time where he lives. He called so often, my husband unplugged the phone. I never heard the phone ringing since I had decided to sleep in and take the day off. My husband called our home phone around 1 PM and told me that he had unplugged my office phone because Dick was calling every 5 minutes and it was annoying him. He said, "Looks like Dick wanted your resignation letter first thing Thursday." I said, "Well I never committed to any time frame other than Thursday."
Besides, it was going to take a good deal of time to write a resignation letter that didn't contain the word dicksmack at least 10 times.
In that next hour I finally found my way to my home office. I thought I might start throwing out the ton of work papers I had and would no longer need. I plugged the office phone back in and checked the voicemail. I had FIFTEEN messages. On the first few messages Dick firmly stated that he needed 'that item we discussed' immediately. The next few get a little louder and more rambling. A few referenced emails he had sent and phone messages he had also left on my cell phone (damn, did I have that thing turned off too?). Each new message was louder and more frantic than the one before. Every message contained 4 different phone numbers I could reach him at (work line, work cell phone, personal cell, admin phone)...just in case I wasn't sure how to reach him. The last message was almost incoherent because it was sooooooooo loud. All I could understand on it was "This is UNACCEPTABLE. UNACCEPTABLE. UNACCEPTABLE. DO YOU HEAR ME?"
Yeah, the neighbors fucking heard you.
Then I got on and checked my email. Similar pleas for me to contact him immediately and submit the 'item we previously discussed.' Some references to a physician I never contacted (Oh shoot, did I forget to do that?) that needed to be followed up on immediately, but he could take no action to have it resolved until he had 'the item.' Lots of emphasis on how imperative it was for him to follow up by the end of the work day.
I sent the resignation email at 6:15 PM. California time.
Dick was fired the very next week.
Karma's a bitch.
***********************************************************************************
Now in keeping with my format...
My Beef This Week
I have noticed that I am becoming less and less tolerant of people who act entitled or are so self absorbed they have no idea what demands they place on other people. I used to always excuse it, writing them off as oblivious but harmless. Now I'm not so sure. People get busy and their attentions shift....sometimes. But when someone consistently behaves in such a manner, they either know the time/effort/money that it took and believe it is OWED to them, or they are so caught up in themselves that you are not worth their attention.
Is it really so hard to acknowledge the effort/time/expense? Is it too much to ask for reciprocation? Is it really "all about you"?
The source of this rant is a baby shower my mom threw this week. My mom has a friend (let's call her Tina) that falls into the above category. She's known her for decades. Tina's daughter just had a baby and she was going to throw her a shower. This means my mom is going to throw her a shower because Tina could never do this on her own. My mom told Tina that she was very busy this month and would have little time to help Tina organize a shower. Tina said, no problem because she could get Betty to help so Tina schedules the shower anyway. Tina calls my mom a few weeks ago because she can't get the invitation made and needs help. After trying to help her over the phone for over an hour, my mom finally just gets the info from Tina and makes the invitation herself. She emails that invitation to Tina to print and mail. Tina calls back an hour later because of printing problems which cannot be resolved over the phone. My mom ends up driving to Tina's house with the printed invitations (she had to use her own paper stock to do this). There were also some issues with the address labels, but they went about the same way as the invitations. The day before the shower Tina calls my mom and tells her Betty was supposed to come over and help her clean for the shower but is now unable to come. My mom tells Tina she can't help that day because of previous commitments. Tina tells my mom she will clean as much as she can on that day, but asks my mom to come a little early the next day to help her finish cleaning and set up for the shower. On the day of the shower, Tina calls my mom around 7 AM and asks her to come immediately because she was not able to clean and although she had finished the cake, she had not been able to go to the store for sandwiches, fruit, mints, plates, punch, cups, plasticware....My mom goes to the store and buys over $100 of stuff and goes to Tina's house. Betty shows up and they all clean for 3 hours and then prepare the food and set up for about 2 hours. They finish just as the people start to arrive.
My mother gives Tina the receipt of the groceries and Tina promises to repay her, but hasn't yet and will unlikely do so. My mom anticipated this would happen so she did not buy a shower gift and told Tina's daughter that the shower was the gift from her.
Tina remains oblivious to all that my mom has done. She gives her cursory thanks (Betty too) and gives no indication that she understands the magnitude of what my mother has done for her, nor the difficulty my mother had accomplishing all of this because of her already full schedule.
Tina is not a bad person. She's very nice. And is a very loving human being. She is just totally fucking oblivious. My mom and she have developed this relationship over a long period of time and this is part of why this type of interaction with them is so lopsided. Tina has always been a dependent-type personality, but her dependence on my mother to do certain activities or tasks has slowly but steadily grown over almost 30 years.
My mom is the type of person that will go out of her way to help someone. Tina is a person that always needs help. Now my mom is stuck in chronic helper mode. Tina has gotten used to the help and my mom is too nice to say no if it is possible that she can help. It would just be nice if Tina would acknowledge the help my mom gives her with the recognition she had 30 years ago, but patterned behavior has long ago paved over her ability to do this.
I am my mother's daughter. I find myself doing things like this all the time and I'm trying to quit. Not quit helping all together, just quit helping where I can tell there is no recognition of my contribution. I'm too fucking busy to be planning other people's parties for the next 30 years.
*******************************************************************************
I know this has been a long rambling blog, but I'm done. Considering it's been a year, this really isn't too bad. I probably would have kept going but it's almost 3 AM and I have to get up at 6AM to cover a breakfast symposium for a my coworker Tina.
posted by DrKNOW at 2:58 AM
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