01:18 - 13.04.07
Bait and Switch
The great guru seemed to be telling me last week to take care not to take the bait. There seemed to be a lot of that going on for certain. I decided that writing about it as it evolved would be one of the ways to give power over to those trying to exercise control or to manipulate circumstances with which I have been dealing on a number of fronts.
My replacement as a Returning Officer was revealed to be one of the baiters and that did surprise me. It didn't become apparent until one of the people who worked for me last event clued me in. The pettiness of it really blew me away until I thought back to some old "karma" between us. You see, when I was ten years old my parents decided we needed a bigger home. I didn't want to move - I loved my friends, my community and my home. However, move we did to a much bigger home in a "high rent district". Here be professors, politicians, doctors and chiefs of a variety of undertakings. At least my pay as a babysitter increased, as did the number and frequency of my assignments. More disposable income, I guess.
What got worse was my social life. The family who sold the house they had built themselves to my parents had done so because hard times had come to the family. They moved a block away into a rental property - still a very nice home - then moved out of the city about a year later. There was one child my age, so we were in the same classes at school. She was one of the most popular girls in my grade and she blamed me for "forcing" her to move. As a result I was ostracized from anything social - which was most everything - that included her. She and her friends made a point of insisting on that. Because they were the "in" crowd most other students in that grade chose not to offend them by associating with me. I was lucky that a couple of girls - cousins, it turned out - broke with the rest of the group and allowed me to hang out with them. The fiat against me carried on for years; until senior high as a matter of record.
The replacement Returning Officer is the father of that girl. He made a point last election - he worked as part of the field staff as well as the polling day workers - of introducing himself to me as that person. We got to talking about that daughter now grown and living back east. He said she was complaining that she had lost touch with all the friends she used to have here. Because I still have the contact list from that high school reunion a few years back, I offered to pass on those names and contact information that I had. He said he would ask his daughter for a list of people she might want to reconnect with. I guess she was not receptive to accepting anything from me even years later, although I didn't hold any animosity toward her. Their home was a wonderful place and I could understand her angst. I really missed my friends from the community we had moved away from and could identify with her pain. That said I was only ten years old and had no influence either on my parents' choice to buy that home nor on the circumstances whereby her father lost his income. It seems that a reminder of that painful loss was a factor in the little bit of meanness that the father chose to engage in now. I guess the two of them feel that his taking over my position against my will is their karmic payback. Maybe my current connection with her old friends is the reason for the intended punishment now. Or maybe that is just my projection.
Remember, I mentioned a few weeks ago that the replacement had asked for the personnel files from last event and that I had offered to contact those people for him since the Privacy Act forbids passing on personal information - anything other than that contained on a "business card". Now it is true that on the oath that each person must take before being hired, that they are given the option to indicate whether they are willing to have that information passed on for employment purposes or not. The problem is, is at the end of each election we are required to send all those oaths back to headquarters in a special package all on their own. That is good management because all those employees' personal, identity and financial information is included. Something I definitely do not want to store in my home. Other ROs do make copies of all that, but all I keep are names and telephone numbers. Each subsequent election about one third of those will be invalid because people have moved, but at least it provides a starting point so that the great workers can be contacted immediately.
Turns out the replacement already had been given all that contact information but, instead of telling me that, encouraged me to email or call all the office staff that had been really helpful to gain their consent in order to pass on their information to him. It wasn't until the one staff person called me back to tell me they had been called by the replacement two weeks ago that I had any idea that he was encouraging me to do a lot of extra work - for free - for no useful purpose. Almost the opposite in fact. I thought I was helping him out the best way I could without breaking the laws that deal with human resources issues. He had called and left a voicemail request on another issue just after that one staff person called me, so I asked him why he hadn't told me about having all the files already, or that he had also been calling the same people and why he had encouraged me to contact all those people when he already had done so himself. His tone of voice was derisive and had that "sucker" intonation to it as though he was pleased with himself for finding a way to bait me. It seems as though he was hoping for a fight or a retaliatory response from me. There was a "get even" tone to his words when he acknowledged that indeed he had known what he was doing to me. Maybe trying to discredit me now as his daughter had done many years ago, for something that is not within my control then or now. Petty.
I decided not to make an issue of it. For one thing the calling and exchange of information between me and my staff was mostly very positive. Many took the time to tell me - even though I can offer them nothing now in terms of work - that they had enjoyed working for me. Of those who responded only about a third agreed to have me send their information on. Most of the others stated that they would come back and work if I was the RO, but not otherwise. That made me feel better in that I had no idea how many were only there because of my presence. However, I do hope they reconsider for their own economic sake. The one staff member who finally explained what was happening had a great deal to say on the subject. As a former government worker themselves, they had a very clear idea of what was playing out having witnessed such tactics before. It helped to know that in a lot of ways what has been done to me and 129 other former Returning Officers is part of the political process. It feels very personal when you are the one dealing with it, but in fact it is part of the fabric of "civil" service.
The other baiting had to do with the neighbours on both sides. They seemed to be trying to provoke a response to a number of threatening behaviours on their part. I chose to pretend that I hadn't noticed anything, but it did get to my youngest at one point. When he took out the garbage just after midnight on Tuesday, the one neighbour - stoned out of her mind - was yelling at him from the next duplex over. I could hear her, so I grabbed a garbage bag and the phone; heading outside after my son had been gone longer than is usual for him. I think he was waiting for her to go away, before he returned to where she could see him in the yard so he could lock up the gate again. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but I wanted her to be aware that my son wasn't alone and also that her behaviour had more witnesses than just him. The neighbour across the back alley also turned his outside lights on because of her noise. Other than the unlocking of our gate, my son hadn't made any noise. We go out at night to work in the yard specifically so that we don't have to deal with the neighbours on either side of us lining up at their windows to catcall while we do our chores. In addition, the male who lives in the other side of our duplex was standing at his window complaining loudly to his partner that my son was "spying" on them by virtue of going about one of his household chores. My youngest said that recently every time he steps out of the house now that male is verbally harassing him about "spying". It is as if that male wants us to be afraid to go outside on our own property. The city has a bylaw that states that garbage is not to be put out for pickup more than 24 hours before the scheduled time. In addition, we have chosen to make our time for that deposit outside the property behind the fence as close to pickup time as possible so that those same neighbours can't continue to spread those bags of garbage all over the back alley as was their practice before the new fence was built eighteen months ago. Remember the problems that caused with the good neighbour we have across the back alley from us? It seemed as though the neighbours on both sides of us are trying very hard to create conflict and division between and among the rest of our good neighbours. Fortunately we all talk to each other and have had great relations for several years. This isn't the first time we have had to band together to deal with the renters and their landlord in those two housing units. We have continued to communicate about what each of us is experiencing from those two sets of people and are aware of what they ar trying to do. I still think the landlord that owns both those units has asked the renters to cause as much misery for each of the rest of us who own our homes so that we will be willing to sell our homes to him. No other reason seems to fit the meannness of the people in the two rental properties.
So what have I been doing instead of writing to you dear diary. I've spent a lot of time communicating with my sons and siblings. Re-establishing some of the relationships that have been undermined or disconnected because I have had to work so much the past decade - two jobs plus parenting don't give one time for anything else. The other thing that has been neglected as a result is the amount of house maintenance I should have done. I have just been too tired and too time strapped before now. Now that the elections material I have stored for EC all these years has been shipped off, I have been able to start sifting and sorting through what is left of 28 years of living in this one home. Several bags of garbage this week were part of the process and there will be as much again next week by the time I am able to go through all the closets and cupboards where access has been blocked by all the work material. My youngest suggested one of the large storage areas be converted into a reading nook. I think that would be a great use of that space. The yard work might be possible too now that the weather seems to have settled. Last I posted I think I had said I was going to try, but shortly after that time we had a gully washer of a rainstorm for one day, then it snowed again. Wednesday was the first time that the grass emerged from its winter cover again.
I have also been doing a lot of research. Part of that is driven by my job search. Still no news from the one agency so I have been applying for other positions as they are posted. Although there are still some jobs located in this city, it seems that most of the postings in my areas of skill or interest are for other parts of the country or other continents. Health issues have been the other part of the surfing. The one friend wanted to know what I could tell them about Multiple Sclerosis. In addition, as I become healthier I have noticed certain things about my body and metabolism that weren't as apparent when my health was so compromised that every part of my body was affected. For example, I hadn't noticed how inflamed the sublingual lymph glands and the thyroid gland were, until the swelling went down enough to palpate the structures. How to best deal with that without using antibiotics as a crutch. I've spent a whole year now rebuilding my body's natural immune defenses and don't want to throw myself back into reliance on any type of drug. What to do? Finally, with that nice astrological Saturn-Jupiter-Sun alignment interacting with my ascendant and natal Venus I decided a formalized exercise routine might work out better if started with such a positive flow of energy. My muscles are still quite atrophied from being sick for so long and it takes a lot of self discipline to force myself to stick to a workout that rebuilds the physical structure. However I did manage with the immune - physiological - rehabilitation, so anything else should be easy. Right? Of course right.
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