8:35 a.m. - 2003-06-29
Completion
Well, dear diary, I needed a few days to let all the things I was feeling percolate through my system and release. Writing about it might have slowed the process. I'm not fond of wallowing although I do my share, I guess. I need to look forward not back.
For me Thursday was a very bad day. It was one of those two minds things. I knew it was in my best interest to leave the politics in that team, but I hate leaving work undone and I loved the material I was working with - lots of brain candy. I enjoyed working with all the students. They were each really cool people and unique individuals - not jaded or damaged by the garbage that goes on in the corporate world. The staff that were trying to intimidate me enough to leave insisted on lunch together that day, using corporate manners to create the illusion that there wasn't a problem. Lunch conversation was mostly about what they owned or controlled.
It always leaves me buffaloed that corporations that are supposed to be such good examples of a well run business, don't even realize that they are being eviscerated from within. I spent a lot of time Thursday wondering why I had tolerated the work conditions I found myself in, when the company doesn't appear to intend to use the information brought to light during my stint to clean up their own house. I know a good part of it was that I couldn't afford any more unpaid time - no other work was available through the agency I work for.
The other thing that I spent a lot of time worrying about was how long the break in between contracts was going to be this time. I'd just as soon continue working with A, my current supervisor, because good bosses are very hard to find and often they are worth whatever inconvenience there is otherwise. However, I just can't face another long dry period with no income coming in. I have to pay my bills too. A called me both Thursday and Friday thanking me for sticking it out and apologizing for not being able to protect me any better than he had. Truth was, every time he intervened, it was obvious that it had put the staff in question on notice. The problem wasn't his efforts, it was the intractable malice of the ones damaging their own company.
My number three sons' friend, living out on the west coast, sent me an op ed piece he had written about bullies. He was talking about the best defense he had witnessed while still at school. It was to get twenty or thirty kids together, who had been vicitimized by said bully, create a ring around that person and then take away their power, not by lowering themselves to his level and using violence, but by openly calling them by their real name - bully - and making fun of them during recess. Not taunting, but just telling them that they weren't such a big deal without access to all their "weapons". You know, the stealth, isolation of their targets, the enforced secrecy/oppression by humiliating their victims and the threats of continued abuse. That wasn't to say that the bully couldn't continue their assaults, but now everyone else would remember the scene at recess each time the bully did something. How do you translate that into a corporate setting.
Friday was almost a reversal of Thursday in that I became increasingly happier as the day went on. When A called in the mid afternoon he said I sounded downright "bubbly". That's not something I'm ever accused of being - except when I'm with children, then it's ok to play. B didn't come into work at all - second day that week away continuing the pattern of absences. I think it was sinking in that the work I had been doing was now going to fall back into their laps and there was a sense of panic about it. They won't be able to hide the lack of skill they have now, by having me do all the extra work they could not. Who will they use as their next victim?
Saturday I just did whatever I wanted to. Finished the latest Harry Potter book. I guess there's a version printed in Latin now, what's up with that? Read the newpapers that had accumulated all week, trying to find answers to a weird thing on Wednesday. Walking back to work at lunch on Wednesday there had been police cars and vans thickly clustered all through the downtown core, security guards were at the entrances to a lot of the main shopping areas and they obviously meant business. At about two that afternoon the emergency radio signals - the ones we used to hear in the sixties to practice for the bomb - took over all the radio frequencies. If I hadn't seen the security measures at lunch I would have shrugged it off, but it left me feeling very unsettled instead. Practice maybe? For what? Didn't give it much more thought yesterday though, I had housework to deal with too. I had certain goals I wanted to meet by day's end so that I can get a proper cleaning in before the next assignment rolls around. Exercised, cut my hair - down nearly to my waist and starting to look a little scraggly - to shoulder length. Generally just self care. Finishing off all the loose ends. Now I can move forward.
�
�
