anger

tomorrow marks another day in which i am still unemployed. it's not for lack of trying. but what really chaps my ass is the fact that i am unemployed. for no real reason than for the fact that i made a few mistakes. sometimes i wake up at night and i am in that room with my aggressors spewing crap at me about how i didn't line up baselines and a 2-day package didn't arrive on time and that was a good enough basis to fire me. granted, this wasn't the first batch of "mistakes" i had made. i make mistakes all the time. show me someone who is perfect and i'll show you someone who doesn't have to answer to anyone, like my boss. she made plenty of mistakes, but no one but me knew. and silly me, i didn't report her to HR for them, a tactic that she wasn't kind enough to reciprocate. i have issues with authority, especially when that authority is passive and weak and just does what the higher-ups want her to do without really thinking about it, making it us versus them or me versus her. never mind that someone had once told me that i would be getting that position. never mind that her boss told me that he had bigger plans for me in the way of new projects. never mind that i had been lied to since my interview. i feel like my tenure at ALA was not unlike the process of finding all the flaws in our "newly built" condo... the people in the know kept certain important items to themselves and then i/we were held accountable for the problems that popped up. in the condo's case, we had to shell out $3000 each to fix the roof. in my job's case, i felt used and lied to and got fired.

what but really pisses me off is that i sat there in that meeting and took it. like a fucking pussy. and everyone's been saying, "oh, you did the right thing. you went out with dignity." fuck that. i don't give two shits about dignity. i care about the truth. if i had really done anything wrong that was worthy of getting fired, i wouldn't be so angry. but that list of crap just keeps popping up my head again and again. and see those two sitting at the table, with the HR woman across from me, telling me in not so many words, that i am a completely useless piece of shit. that it would be easier to run the department without me because i fuck up so much. and the one last hurrah that i tried to save my ass ended up kicking me in it because i wasn't supposed to transmit confidential information over company email. and all three of them gave conspired looks at one another like, "wow, she really is an idiot. she deserves to be fired." there wasn't one advocate on my side in that room. and my attempt to find advocates just failed miserably. this is typical of ALA in that 1) there was no HR person in the initial termination proceeding meeting to tell me that this information was confidential, 2) they give you enough rope to hang yourself. when karen said that my email was "highly inappropriate," i wanted to jump up and slap her. "until you've been in my shoes, you stupid cunt, don't you tell me what's appropriate." since you're treating me like this, you don't ever get to tell me what to do again. so go fuck yourself.

and it wouldn't have mattered if said that. if i would have told HR all of the mistakes that she had make that wasted time, that cost money. the mistakes where all i could do is say, "ok, i'll change that back." or the one that cost our department $100 in notepads where troy just said, "that's ok. just be careful next time." and i asked her if she knew we had about 100 notepads in the supply closet. no, she didn't, she said. well, thanks for asking anyone. but she didn't get written up for that. none of my mistakes cost ALA any money that anyone has been able to point out to me. but evidently it doesn't matter.

now i have lost all confidence in any kind of job i can do. i make mistakes all the time. will they cost me my next job? if i wouldn't have made any mistakes at ALA would they have found some other reason to let me go? i hated that job mostly because i hated working for karen. she was passive-agressive and didn't know how to lead. she just knew how to tell people what to do, which does not a great manager make. but troy thinks her shit doesn't stink. they are a match made in heaven. they can go on and give a shit about a division that doesn't mean a goddamn thing to the real world. and to miss karen, who's had maybe one other job before ALA, she doesn't know what the real world is. she doesn't know what it's like to share wealth of knowledge or understand that other people might know more than her about certain things. but because i didn't work for ALA for 8 years, that meant i didn't know a fucking thing. well, if i don't know a fucking thing about ALA it's because people like you don't fill me in. you horde it, like junkies, like blackmailers, waiting to pounce on my ignorance like a cat on a mouse. and any attempt to gain knowledge was frowned upon, that i didn't need to know things like that. nice.

so my message to the people who fired me at ALA: karma's a bitch. and i hope that you never need to get a job at a place where i am working. but you wouldn't ever think that could happen. a low-life like me could never get to a position where i could have a say in matters like future hires. you are both so very stupid.