Coming Out of the Dark

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