It did not occur to me when I started this narrative that it would be this extensive. Maybe because I've never really put all this nonsense and frustration down in writing before and did not realize the scope of my situation. Or maybe it's because I'm just milking the drama. Whatever.
At this point I finally understood the dynamics of the Supervisor-hires-Best-Friend situation at my workplace. I had figured out that our supervisor was actually using the Best Friend as a surrogate to needle, pick, spy, agitate, and punish. And the Best Friend was really enjoying it.
But with me and the Best Friend, it was personal for her. I had been warned previously and rather foolishly brushed it off. After the incident that involved upper management, I was very highly aware of the danger.
I was lucky in one respect: others in my group had been company employees for quite a while. Retirement was close but they needed more time and thus had to hold their noses and try to hang on. However, I had been a stay-at-home mom until my children were in high school. I had only worked at this particular company for 10 years and I was free to leave any time I felt like it. So I sorted out options, examined my home situation, and with my wonderful and supportive husband began The Plan.
One: use my company benefits to the maximum during my final months.
Two: use my generous salary to make upgrades in our house
Three: To be very careful at work and make sure that, as much as possible, I documented every confrontation and event and word I exchanged with the Best Friend.
So first came any unfinished dental work, new contact lenses, a physical checkup, etc. Then we landscaped our back yard, expanded the patio with stamped concrete, installed granite countertops in the kitchen, and went on a fabulous cruise. The real strain was the tightrope act I had to perform at work.
Any conversation I had with the Best Friend was immortalized in emails by me. For example, if she confronted me and told me I had handled some particular item in a manner different than she wanted me to (did I mention she was a control freak?) I would simply send a response to her via email. In the email I detailed what I had done, the results, her criticism (usually silly nitpicking), my verbal response and any followup. I would end the email by saying "I'm afraid I missed your point and since my customer got exactly what they wanted I guess there is no need to pursue this matter" or "I followed the process set up by our supervisor - shall we meet with her so you can present your objections?" and so forth. There is an evil part of me that took great satisfaction in knowing that these emails bothered her. But primarily I considered them to be a necessary form of protection. Our supervisor and the Best Friend had already fired two employees and destroyed the careers of two others.
Being as dense as she was and with her blind animosity to me, she couldn't stop and I had plenty to work with. Time after time she tried to nail me, even publicly, and I won every bout. She just couldn't help herself. She lost all the battles because her depth of knowledge in our mission was so shallow and she always picked a losing cause. But every battle I won came at a price. The animosity level became almost unbearable, and she began coming into my office frequently every day to say "What are you doing now?" (like I needed a babysitter) and whenever I passed her doorway (couldn't avoid it!) she would bark my name and call me in for more useless pontificating.
So I embarked on the Final Stage of my escape.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Storm Clouds Begin to Gather
To continue my previous post, I was not particularly concerned about my new location nor my new neighbor. I should have been. The Best Friend had been rapidly elevated to second-in-command ahead of people much more senior and much more productive. And she liked this status.
Some of my co-workers approached me and warned me that the Best Friend did not like me because she was jealous of both my professional success and the relatively amicable relationship I maintained with our supervisor. Honestly, for the first year of the New Regime, I was personally and professionally treated very well while others went through Hell. This changed when my office location changed.
And this is where it got confusing to me. In retrospect. I see now that, despite her outward confidence and decisiveness and friendliness, my supervisor was quite a master of double-talk and deceit. Actually, in personal dealings, I now think she was passive-agressive to a very high degree. No, I do not have a degree in Psychology. Trust me, she was quite a piece of work and a mass of insecurities. That's what I did not understand - how very deep the insecurity and how very sneaky the dishonesty. I still believed that my status carried some protection. Not true. The value I brought to her group through my professional reputation and success turned out to be the very thing both she and the Best Friend considered to be a serious threat. Their campaign began.
This period of my last employment I like to characterize as being like working in the palace of the Borgias. There was a strong underlying feeling of paranoia and not just on my part. It's actually kind of interesting how easy it is to keep a group of well-educated and previously well-adjusted business professionals so distracted and worried. We were never sure if something we did would catch the eye of the Best Friend, who was constantly scouting for anything and everything that she could critique ad nauseum (usually with little or no expertise on the subject) or steal if she saw the possibility of kudos or status for herself.
In my function as finder-of-obscurities, I usually dealt directly with researchers who were high rollers in our industry. They simply called me or emailed me directly to place their requests. The level of trust I had earned in many levels of this corporation was exceptionally high and any outcome, successful or not, was accepted without any question. If I said it was unavailable, that was conclusive.
One such requester was quite highly respected in his field, not just in our company but internationally. He was a well-known, prolific author of books and journal articles and a frequent speaker in many venues. Furthermore, he was a luminary among upper management and quite an interesting guy.
I had created a simple Access database of items that were requested from me. I had three corporate credit cards to purchase these items and by golly I intended to keep immaculate records because money changed hands. The Best Friend found my database one day (it was no secret - it was on our group's network drive, but no one else but me used it). She discovered the name of the high-roller and flipped out. Unbeknownst to me, the Best Friend, who was catastrophically clumsy when dealing with everyone, decided to call this gentleman directly and inform him that he was not allowed to contact me at all and that she would be handling all his requests now. The first I knew of this was when suddenly, one day, one of our Vice-Presidents leaned into my office and told me to come into our supervisor's office. I was a bit apprehensive; completely in the dark. I needn't have been. I received an apology for something I did not know had even happened.
It turns out that the gentleman/high-roller had taken great umbrage at the uppity Best Friend and her tone of voice, and had complained directly to the president of our company. The word came down that the Best Friend was never to contact this gentleman ever again. I know now that that was the day that the Best Friend painted a bull's-eye right between my shoulder blades. But now I was aware that I was a target and I began to contemplate options and strategies.
Some of my co-workers approached me and warned me that the Best Friend did not like me because she was jealous of both my professional success and the relatively amicable relationship I maintained with our supervisor. Honestly, for the first year of the New Regime, I was personally and professionally treated very well while others went through Hell. This changed when my office location changed.
And this is where it got confusing to me. In retrospect. I see now that, despite her outward confidence and decisiveness and friendliness, my supervisor was quite a master of double-talk and deceit. Actually, in personal dealings, I now think she was passive-agressive to a very high degree. No, I do not have a degree in Psychology. Trust me, she was quite a piece of work and a mass of insecurities. That's what I did not understand - how very deep the insecurity and how very sneaky the dishonesty. I still believed that my status carried some protection. Not true. The value I brought to her group through my professional reputation and success turned out to be the very thing both she and the Best Friend considered to be a serious threat. Their campaign began.
This period of my last employment I like to characterize as being like working in the palace of the Borgias. There was a strong underlying feeling of paranoia and not just on my part. It's actually kind of interesting how easy it is to keep a group of well-educated and previously well-adjusted business professionals so distracted and worried. We were never sure if something we did would catch the eye of the Best Friend, who was constantly scouting for anything and everything that she could critique ad nauseum (usually with little or no expertise on the subject) or steal if she saw the possibility of kudos or status for herself.
In my function as finder-of-obscurities, I usually dealt directly with researchers who were high rollers in our industry. They simply called me or emailed me directly to place their requests. The level of trust I had earned in many levels of this corporation was exceptionally high and any outcome, successful or not, was accepted without any question. If I said it was unavailable, that was conclusive.
One such requester was quite highly respected in his field, not just in our company but internationally. He was a well-known, prolific author of books and journal articles and a frequent speaker in many venues. Furthermore, he was a luminary among upper management and quite an interesting guy.
I had created a simple Access database of items that were requested from me. I had three corporate credit cards to purchase these items and by golly I intended to keep immaculate records because money changed hands. The Best Friend found my database one day (it was no secret - it was on our group's network drive, but no one else but me used it). She discovered the name of the high-roller and flipped out. Unbeknownst to me, the Best Friend, who was catastrophically clumsy when dealing with everyone, decided to call this gentleman directly and inform him that he was not allowed to contact me at all and that she would be handling all his requests now. The first I knew of this was when suddenly, one day, one of our Vice-Presidents leaned into my office and told me to come into our supervisor's office. I was a bit apprehensive; completely in the dark. I needn't have been. I received an apology for something I did not know had even happened.
It turns out that the gentleman/high-roller had taken great umbrage at the uppity Best Friend and her tone of voice, and had complained directly to the president of our company. The word came down that the Best Friend was never to contact this gentleman ever again. I know now that that was the day that the Best Friend painted a bull's-eye right between my shoulder blades. But now I was aware that I was a target and I began to contemplate options and strategies.
Friday, November 14, 2008
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
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
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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