For a long time, almost two years, I was under a black cloud and in a black mood for quite a while, even as I was making the last couple of entries. I had a job that I really loved and excelled at. I had been recognized professionally at very high levels in the corporation where I worked. But no entity, corporate, academic, military, mom-and-pop, etc. is immune to a dishonest/sneaky middle manager.
Mine became a supervisor by professionally assassinating my previous supervisor. Once in power, this woman began fixing things that were never broken to begin with. I'm not talking about change - normal administrative adjustments etc. She began to target people and did so with the object of eliminating or castrating anyone and everyone who uttered one peep of criticism or disagreement. She made it subtly clear that it was her way or professional death. She targeted (successfully) two individuals for career destruction. Basically, it was more important to her to create a facade and sell it to upper management than to actually understand and enhance the daily function of the group she supervised.
Not content with this, she then hired an amazingly incompetent woman who had applied to this group twice and been rejected twice because her skills were not even up to minimal standards. It was not until the new-hire had been here for a while that it slipped out that our supervisor already knew her and considered her to be her very best friend in the whole world. Get the picture? It's what happens when a very insecure but very VERY ambitious person gains a little power. They surround themselves as much as possible with employees who will not challenge and will not compete with the supervisor. Then they hire sycophants (look it up) who serve as Mini-Me and are delighted to carry out this agenda. [see: "Negative Selection - politics" in Wikipedia]
My particular problems arose because of my status within the group. Without going into too many details, I was well-recognized within our international corporation for quality and for service. My job was to locate and obtain obscure and unobtainable items, and I did it very well. I loved it - maybe because I'm part Bulldog and part Sherlock Holmes. My professional status made me valuable to my supervisor and she allowed me to flourish. However, she did this by physically moving me away from the rest of the group on the premise that I needed a special location so that others would not bother me. Here's the catch. My new office was right next to the Best Friend.
TO BE CONTINUED
Friday, November 14, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
I Love Elections
Vote early and often - Mayor Richard Daley (Sr.) of Chicago
The Philippines has the highest murder rate in the world. This murder rate doubles in election years - factoid
We used to live in a small (very small), rural Texas town, less than 15,000 strong. There was actually a local newspaper, but they published only twice a week, Tuesday and Saturday. Small town newspapers at that point in time (15-16 years ago) basically amounted to gossipy blogs and advertising supplements. Not to mention the all-important Farm Report and Hog Futures. However, every 2 years that paper was transformed into a pipeline that fascinated me to the point that I would stand at the window, watching for the paperboy to toss it at our house. Sometimes he even got close.
You see, every time that elections rolled around, congressional, senatorial, presidential, school board, city council, etc., that eternal behemoth, Small Town Politics, reared its majestic, bewildering, salacious head and I was once again hooked. Our little newspaper swelled to THREE sections, not just two, and I jumped happily into the maelstrom / soap opera / mud patch to see who was wallowing and why.
Oh, the stories I could tell. One city councilman, intoxicated by his own power, wanted to get his son hired as a city policeman, presumably to become Chief of Police within a decent length of time, two or three months. The fact that junior had quite a reputation in town for hijinks and guilty pleasures did not seem to be an obstacle to daddy's aspirations. So daddy began following our current chief around town, vehicularly and on foot, trying to document and accumulate dirt and perhaps even identify High Crimes and Misdemeanors. The chief, spooked by this behavior and not realizing who his shadow was, began assigning a deputy here or there to follow the follower. No, I am not making this up. Once the facts came out, all parties then began throwing verbal punches and all this kept our little journalists quite busy for a while.
I love this one: our District Attorney one year was not only fighting his political opponent but also the high school. Seems his darling ittle daughter had called a substitute teacher a B**** and had been assigned Saturday School. Daddy's girl was furious with this injustice and both mommy and daddy called for a special session of the school board in order to protest. You see, according to them, this poor child called the teacher a B**** because she WAS a B****. And her parents could not understand what the fuss was all about. Their reasoning was that the teacher and daddy's political opponent had manufactured this whole thing in order to embarass him. Honestly, he didn't need any help. He was perfectly capable of embarassing himself.
Some of the shenanigans were not funny. Several campaign workers for one candidate were arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned for following US Postal Service trucks around, noting which senior citizens received absentee ballots, removing the ballots and carrying them to the recipients by hand. Those who did not want to fill out the ballots as instructed by the miscreants were threatened with loss of benefits and other nasty problems. I hope the criminals rot in jail.
My favorite is this: Imagine, if you will, a County Tax Assessor (female) locking herself and the county voter registration books in a broom closet at the county court house with the Texas Rangers pounding on the door, shouting, "Ma'am, you're gonna have to come out of there sooner or later!" Time and nature and the Texas Rangers won, the voter records were sent to the state for audit and we learned why. Turns out that almost a third of the most faithful and active voters in the county had been residing in the cemetery for years, decades even. Who says there's no life after death?
Tags: politics, Texas Rangers, small towns, voter fraud, elections, local politics, district attorney, school board
The Philippines has the highest murder rate in the world. This murder rate doubles in election years - factoid
We used to live in a small (very small), rural Texas town, less than 15,000 strong. There was actually a local newspaper, but they published only twice a week, Tuesday and Saturday. Small town newspapers at that point in time (15-16 years ago) basically amounted to gossipy blogs and advertising supplements. Not to mention the all-important Farm Report and Hog Futures. However, every 2 years that paper was transformed into a pipeline that fascinated me to the point that I would stand at the window, watching for the paperboy to toss it at our house. Sometimes he even got close.
You see, every time that elections rolled around, congressional, senatorial, presidential, school board, city council, etc., that eternal behemoth, Small Town Politics, reared its majestic, bewildering, salacious head and I was once again hooked. Our little newspaper swelled to THREE sections, not just two, and I jumped happily into the maelstrom / soap opera / mud patch to see who was wallowing and why.
Oh, the stories I could tell. One city councilman, intoxicated by his own power, wanted to get his son hired as a city policeman, presumably to become Chief of Police within a decent length of time, two or three months. The fact that junior had quite a reputation in town for hijinks and guilty pleasures did not seem to be an obstacle to daddy's aspirations. So daddy began following our current chief around town, vehicularly and on foot, trying to document and accumulate dirt and perhaps even identify High Crimes and Misdemeanors. The chief, spooked by this behavior and not realizing who his shadow was, began assigning a deputy here or there to follow the follower. No, I am not making this up. Once the facts came out, all parties then began throwing verbal punches and all this kept our little journalists quite busy for a while.
I love this one: our District Attorney one year was not only fighting his political opponent but also the high school. Seems his darling ittle daughter had called a substitute teacher a B**** and had been assigned Saturday School. Daddy's girl was furious with this injustice and both mommy and daddy called for a special session of the school board in order to protest. You see, according to them, this poor child called the teacher a B**** because she WAS a B****. And her parents could not understand what the fuss was all about. Their reasoning was that the teacher and daddy's political opponent had manufactured this whole thing in order to embarass him. Honestly, he didn't need any help. He was perfectly capable of embarassing himself.
Some of the shenanigans were not funny. Several campaign workers for one candidate were arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned for following US Postal Service trucks around, noting which senior citizens received absentee ballots, removing the ballots and carrying them to the recipients by hand. Those who did not want to fill out the ballots as instructed by the miscreants were threatened with loss of benefits and other nasty problems. I hope the criminals rot in jail.
My favorite is this: Imagine, if you will, a County Tax Assessor (female) locking herself and the county voter registration books in a broom closet at the county court house with the Texas Rangers pounding on the door, shouting, "Ma'am, you're gonna have to come out of there sooner or later!" Time and nature and the Texas Rangers won, the voter records were sent to the state for audit and we learned why. Turns out that almost a third of the most faithful and active voters in the county had been residing in the cemetery for years, decades even. Who says there's no life after death?
Tags: politics, Texas Rangers, small towns, voter fraud, elections, local politics, district attorney, school board
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