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23:51 - 10.02.06
Coda
My home is so full of boxes now I hardly can think of how to manage them. Over the past three days bringing them from the office to here has filled first one third of the basement, then the landing and this afternoon the living room. By order of the government no less. Might not last long though. You see... well might as well start at the beginning.

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning,about 2:30 in the am, there was pounding on the front door. Normally that would mean me heading for my telephone in case the neighbours' drinking buddies have mistaken my home for theirs and are trying to gain entry. However, given the events of last week I woke wondering if it was my assistant coming to pick me up to attend another alarm. I lay there in a half daze trying to work things out. Didn't help, but I did slowly become fully conscious. Then the banging stopped. Guessed it wasn't her after all, but got up anyway too restless to sleep. Did some paperwork that needed finishing and prepared for the morning. Went into the office and packed up the next layer of material that needed to be shipped off to Ottawa - finances, technology and some paperwork that needs to be filed in the vaults. Oh yes, they do have those in a huge warehouse the size of several football fields. Left around 10:30, after waiting for some staff to drop by without ever connecting. My assistant had her regular job to go to while I had some writing and phoning to deal with. No facilities in the office to work with anymore, remember? I was trying to find some small hauling firm that would pick up all those boxes we had to hold back and cart them all to my house. I also needed to arrange with the furniture company to come pick up the last of their goods and with the alarm company to remove their system. I wanted it all organized for Friday, when I had also scheduled the meeting with the local rep to do what I thought was to be a brief discussion about the official evaluation to come with repect to the operation of my office.

I had received an email from her the week after the election stating that she wanted to set a time to meet to discuss the evaluation for an RO with respect to administering the event. She said her deadline to talk with everyone was the 20th of February. Returning Officers had had several emails over the course of January from Elections Canada which mentioned in passing that local reps would "participate" in evaluations by submitting their own comments. That didn't worry me too much - except for the fact that each time our local rep didn't like what I said, she would threaten me by stating that it might go in her notes for my evaluation. It sounded a lot like those EMS questions thing where if we said no to a question where yes was expected, it was deemed we hadn't answered it - the receipt of the writ, for example, was on there again even before the document was even sent from Ottawa.

In that email asking for a meeting time, she also commented she had little or no communication with me throughout the period of this election and no communication whatsoever from the election until February 2nd. She stated too, that she had attempted to touch base with me on polling day, but I had no record of that from any of my staff nor of any attempts later. Certainly no calls came through on my line when I was in my office. Remember I was a bit busy with a number of other issues dear diary and was working with my staff in other parts of the office that week. The only real information I had about her activity and availability, was an email from one other Returning Officer addressed to the whole region asking where she was given he had been looking for her for several days, a week after the event. He said couldn't get a response from her regardless of the method used.

She re-emphasized wanting all the incident reports although I had already told her they were under investigation by the police and could not be handed out to any one else. I had cleared that with the head of security in Ottawa early on during that first break in to be certain I had made the correct decision. She stated that she wanted me to be more compliant with "Ottawa's" expectations for communications - meaning hers of course - since a cursory check of my sent emails revealed I could find about 25 from October to January 26 that were sent directly to her. Most of those referenced conversations, visits, faxes or emails as a reason for a response. A short read of you posts, dear diary, came up with another 9 distinct instances in a one month period alone. Apparently she had forgotten all those, plus the fact that I had asked her for assistance on January 26 with the last budget period with no response at all as you may remember. In addition there were nearly 200 reports I sent to Ottawa all contained in their tracking system. I reminded her that I had a decade of experience in my current position with an additional 20 years doing just about every other electoral type job. I didn't have many questions to ask other than those that needed direct answers from technical staff or those requiring the assistance of the security teams. I printed out the emails to give her hoping to discuss our differences in communications style. A decade of working as a consultant in a hard knock industry means I've learned to never communicate anything I expect to have to deal with except in writing. That applies equally when dealing with governmental issues too.

That said I hadn't a good feeling about the process, especially when one of the other ROs said she attacked him verbally about his management skills and demanded to know if he was going to resign. He noted he had had his staff sit in and that they had really taken a round out of her when she made those allegations about his abilities to do his job. I decided to schedule my interview so that my assistant was present to act as a witness. She did not want to come on the Monday of this week because of personal issues so I rescheduled for Friday with a maximum of 1 hour time set aside to complete what I expected would be a brief discussion since she had so little recollection of our discussions over the event. I also expected the meeting to be short since it was never presented as THE evaluation in those EC memos.

To go on with Wednesday afternoon's work though, I booked the alarm removal for 9 am, the meeting for 10 am and the furniture people for 11 so that we would have chairs and a desk for an hour, but no longer. I left a voicemail for the one Central Poll Supervisor just checking to be certain that nice young man demanding to be paid had really worked that day against my own information. She called back later and affirmed he had had to be replaced as a no show. Still no luck on the pick up and delivery service. I was about to call one of the courier services we had used during the election, since we still had an account with them. They weren't all that satisfactory, but since they only had to go from our office to my home I thought it would work. About then my assistant called and said a couple of her oldest son's friends had a large truck and would be happy to do the pick up for a fee that evening. Good enough.

They came by just before six pm and my youngest and I joined them to complete the work party. My assistant and I packed more boxes and organized the work, while the three young men did the hauling to the underground parkade. It was the shortest and easiest route for the amount of material we had to move that night - about 50 large boxes. By 8 pm it was all deposited at my front door with my youngest and I carrying everything from the front step to the basement. I wasn't certain if my house insurance would cover any injuries if someone fell downstairs, and of course, they wouldn't have had any insurance for personal injury either. Pretty sad state of affairs when one has to take those things into consideration, but with five curious cats milling around checking out all the new scents, I didn't want the additional risks. No walk that night but my legs and backside certainly got a workout with all the carrying we did. Some of the neighbours' curtains seemed to be getting a good workout too. They need to get tvs or something, I guess, if their lives are so boring that my weight lifting experience was entertaining.

Thursday was a rest day. Just a little paperwork. My youngest and I decided our now daily walk, would be to go to one of the big box stores to pick up some household goods. Walked through one other entire community and part of our own to get there. Stopped at Tim Hortons to get coffee to sustain us through our shopping expedition. I bought a hand held tape recorder, because of the incidents that have occurred this event. I had really wished I'd had one for the verbal abuse that was thrown at us during advance polls and also during that one endless phone marathon on voting day itself. It might have been enough to tell people they were being taped, to stop the nonsense. I thought too about being told not to be alone in that office and decided it made sense for me to carry it in case something untoward happened there or at my home in the few next weeks. After picking up new dry goods too, we headed home for the night. I spent the balance of the evening doing the last weeks'laundry in between corresponding with different people I'd missed during the election - trying to catch up. My sister had taken photos of the office and building for the complaint about handicapped access and those arrived in my inbox too. I emailed her and talked with my Dad on the phone about a more relaxed visit with each of them, one on one, to make up for the missed time on the Monday - eating out with my Dad and shopping in one of the trendy but very arty areas with my sister. Everyone has their own definition of fun,right?

Friday started out alright, until my assistant mentioned she had to leave early for her work. Her work partner in the cantina was off visiting a sick relative. Great. I had packed my new recorder in my purse expecting to be on my own for part of the afternoon to finish off the last details of the move out of the building. I thought about using it if the interview went overlong, but decided that would not be a good idea. Got busy with the security company rep and packing up even more boxes. My assistant and I filled up her vehicle and were sitting wondering where the rep was, when she called about 10 minutes after 10. She said she was just leaving her home and would be there immediately. I talked with my assistant and tried to call her back on her cell phone because my assistant was now saying she could only stay for about 15 minutes of the interview. The local rep arrived half an hour after the scheduled time. I commented to the local rep that I was disappointed that she had arrived so late and hoped she could finish up within that 15 minutes, since I had other things scheduled too. I had noted to my assistant, not a few minutes before, that it was common practice in the industry I work in to wait 15 minutes for someone late for a meeting as a courtesy, but after that one left. At least that is what my supervisors did, explaining that a show of disrespect for their time and an acceptance of that meant that the other person probably was not entering into a discussion in good faith. Wasting someone else's time with impunity, in their eyes, was an attempt at a power play.

When I started to explain I had to get on with other responsibilities after that remaining 15 minutes of the scheduled meeting, the local rep started blowing her top and got on a real head of steam. "This is THE interview and if I was as professional as I claimed to be" - she referred to my contract work as her reference there - "then I would know that a full evaluation was something that took at least two hours" - especially "since I had communicated with her so poorly". Interesting oxymoron that. I handed her the photocopied emails and went with my first intent of discussing different communication styles as a weakness to work out between us, but got another full blast of anger. I started to point out that in my work places, all contract issues were communicated in writing. Verbal exchanges are just too liable to be misinterpreted or misunderstood. She dismissed those observations out of hand after just talking about her expectation of my professional knowledge based on that contract work. My next comment, since she would not hear what I had to say about communication styles, was that communicating with her was a very small part of the official evaluation grid,most of it was meant to deal with how I had prepared and executed my tasks. When I mentioned the one email sent after the election - the time she accused me of not communicating with her at all - she was nearly bellowing about how many hours she had put in to working it out. Well no, we were talking about pay period three after the election. I had absolutely no support from her then. She dismissed that emailed issue as of "no importance". She started to blow sky high again at that point demanding that I stay and go through the entire evaluation process, insisting that she felt I hadn't done my work well although her only real stated complaint was the "lack of communication" again.

I excused myself while my ARO sat there with her, went to another office and called EC's help line. Asking them for clarification for the evaluation process, thinking I misunderstood their emails. As it turned out, the local rep had misrepresented the whole thing this morning when she pulled out that official evaluation grid and threw it on my desk when I said I didn't think that was part of the process I was supposed to go through with her. I ended up talking with the head of training and evaluation. I told him, given her attitude toward me throughout the event and some of the things she had said both then and now, I didn't see how any type of fair evaluation could take place. She was only willing to discuss the communication issue, which is all that she has any direct knowledge about anyway. Come to think about it, not even that, since she would not listen to any of the the points I made, instead using personal putdowns to dismiss my responses that were offensive, to say the least.

He said that meeting with her wasn't a necessary part of the process if I didn't feel I was fairly treated. I had told him at that point I would only consent to proceed under protest and duress, because of her anger and insults. He asked very pointedly if I had agreed to be assessed by her. I responded that what she had indicated to me about the process and what she was doing in reality were two different things. I noted I had never been informed that her assessment was "the final one" as she tried to infer, as she was turning several shades of purple and her voice was rising. He indicated that the intent of the meeting was just a preliminary discussion about process and not the final evaluation. The real evaluation was carried out in Ottawa in a two step process among their staff. Their comments and my feedback. He said they would come up with an alternate plan for me and that he thought a cooling off time was in order anyway, given what I told him. He seemed quite concerned and asked if I was alone with her and if she was in my home.

My assistant had left her alone in my office and was standing and waiting in the office with me as he explained that. I had left my personal belongings in there and decided I didn't want her left alone with them. Paranoia strikes deep. As we were walking back toward my office, the head of training asked me to hand my phone over to the local rep. He proceeded to explain the change of plan to her. She was really angry by then. She was refusing to leave the office and obviously felt she was going to instigate and sustain a shouting match. I pointed out that my ARO had to leave for work and so did she, since I would not be with her alone, because I felt uncomfortable without a witness given her behaviour. At that moment two males from the furniture rental place walked in. I think that it finally sank in then that she was not going to be able to get me on my own for further abuse or maybe threats without it being noted by several independent observers. Her voice was raised again at that point. She stated that "you may think you're in charge, but it is Mr Kingsley who is in charge". Actually I know I am not in charge. I follow the legislation that guides the process, as we all are required to do. She sounded like one of those evangelical TV preachers who talks about themselves and God as though they are interchangable. I think she's got the same idea about herself. She had asked for my AROs phone number while I was on the phone in the other office, so I guess she intends to talk with her privately. Don't know how I feel about that, but I can't tell my assistant not to talk to her. Feels like an attempt at entrapment to me though. Find any little bit of information that she can twist to something else........, but I hope I'm just being paranoid. During this election I've dealt with breakins, thefts of data, "bussed in voters", candidates who were trying to manipulate our office into the middle of their publicity stunts and and violently angry people almost on a day to day basis. Some days what kept me sane was thinking about my friend in Ramallah and realizing that there were other places with more serious problems. Now this as a coda. Another violently angry person to deal with. Someone who was charged with providing support when requested. Right. Could be those boxes get sent back to Ottawa a lot sooner, if the local rep has her way I think. I really don't know what to think at this point about that either.

Calmed myself down after she and my assistant left by helping the furniture movers with their tasks. The building manager arrived during that time and we did a walk through of the suite of offices just so he could see we had done no damage. He seemed to be trying to comfort me by saying if he'd been around when people were abusive - we had been talking abot the handicapped incident and advance polling - he would have looked after things for me. I was wishing he had stopped in earlier when the local rep was throwing her tantrum. We talked about the possibility of another election before the end of the year and he just laughed and said maybe he'd be seeing me soon again. Shortly after that he sent up the head of the cleaning team they have on contract. She said he had asked her to ask me for direction with respect to the cleaning. I warned about the locks that would mysteriously lock themselves even with the tumblers removed and we taped those off so her staff wouldn't end up stuck in a room by themselves. There were still several boxes of stuff to remove from the offices, so I hauled those down to the main lobby after that. My assistant had swung by my home after her shift ended at 12:30 pm so my youngest could unload her car. She arrived about 10 minutes after I had completed all that work and we loaded her car up for hopefully the last run of the event. Dropped some things off at the post office then headed home. Amen.

Tonight more emails and I watched Cinderella - my other acquisition from shopping last night. I had never caght her comment to Bruno, the dog, about changing one's dreams to non-violence even with respect to those who cause you harm, before. Maybe I needed that teaching tonight. Clean up one's own mind before worrying about what someone else is doing.


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