Bent Words

Bent Words

October 02, 2021

I know exactly what it is now! I know why I felt like crap last couple weeks. I know what it is niggling at my brain and scratching at my soul, screaming at me to cry for a while, let it out and move on.

Sam’s last day 9/24. This was sad and I cried about that and then I moved on.

Later, T-Rex and Carl called me to discuss my titles. At the end of the call, they said that they couldn’t see me transferring to Mail Ops to be a button pusher. I’m a real go getter, they said, who doesn’t rest until I find the answer. They said I would be missed and I laughed it off and said something to the effect of, “Don’t worry! By the end of next year, we will all be back together, working under the same mailing umbrella.”

It was a joke, number one. Who the hell am I to predict what’s happening in the next year? I don’t know anything! This whole PSR split has occurred several times in the past 30 years and they have always come back together as someone higher up realizes they cannot be broken up or combined into one role as CAM/PAS. It’s cyclical. It always happens like that.

Number two, I’m apparently the only one who didn’t recall verbatim what I had said. T-Rex or Carl sure did though! Perhaps they wrote it down so they could scurry back to my boss to fill him in.

Then I have my current boss call me out for spreading rumors.

“Can I put you on the spot?” he asked.

“Sure!” I replied.

“Did you hear or state that we will all be in Mail Ops in 18 months?”

“Uhhhh, I don’t know, Dude. Maybe?? I don’t know if I said exactly that but I’m not spreading rumors.”

If I said, I said it to two people during a casual conversation. I just made a stupid comment. I didn’t put any weight behind it. So after that call, I reached out trying to figure out if they thought I heard that rumor or they thought I was spreading that rumor because Matt has also accepted a position in Mail Ops.

I didn’t want that!! It took the wind out of my sails. He called me up straight away after he found out and even my husband noticed the disingenuous way I congratulated him. It’s not that I don’t like the kid, it’s just that our ideas of a strong work ethic are different. I worked with him for 6 years, dude. I wanted Mail Ops to be MY thing. Then he starts telling me he’s going to drop the three titles we are moving onto him because there’s no point in taking them on if he’s moving to a different department and finally I had to let it out of the bag that I, too, am accepting a position in Mail Ops so I need him to take care of the titles he was trained on because I CANNOT handle more work right now. I don’t know anything about those titles as they were not my titles. He was trained, he needs to accept responsibility. I did not say any of this to my leads, present or future, because I am a team player and will work with him just fine if I have to. No big deal.

But I was still feeling off and I couldn’t pinpoint it.

I made a few calls. Apparently I made Carl feel badly because I mocked his new Team Lead position by saying we would all fall under one mailing umbrella in the future. Sorry, dude, it’s just where I see the future of mailing. It’s an OPINION. It’s not that I actually saw a unicorn running through the field on my way to the grocery store so don’t go calling up the newspaper to report the sighting. SETTLE DOWN. It was either him or Travis and they can go pound sand. Don’t try to involve me in drama, ruin my reputation or mock my position which I accepted more than a month ago. Congratulate me and move on.

Boys are bigger gossips then any woman I’ve ever met.

It’s okay for you to trash MY new job and call me a button pusher and say I’m selling myself short but you can’t dispel one comment and chalk it up to chatter?

Then my boss tells me how excited he is for the direction of CE and the new opportunities available.

“Laura. We could have discussed hours and pay. We could have started load leveling and worked on your areas of concern.”

Great! Why didn’t you say any of that when I was first moved over? Why are you saying it now, AFTER the fact? Are you trying to make me feel like crap?

I have been too busy WORKING to be able to keep up with all your shenanigans. I don’t keep tabs on what others say or start stupid rumors. I do not need your nonsense to follow me around. Cut your losses and leave me alone. I’m not out to hurt anybody and if that’s how you see me, you’re dead wrong. I’m upset because you guys keep putting me and my job down instead of lifting me up. You keep branding me when I don’t think you’ve even taken the time to really get to know me. I don’t DO drama and I don’t want my character to be cut by a bunch of bullies. And that’s why I felt so OFF last week. This is how I was treated when I was in grade school – picked on, put down, pushed back, laughed at, mocked, my words used against me – and it hurt like hell then and it hurts like now because you all WERE people whom I respected and looked up to. Now I wouldn’t trust ya’ll if you offered me a hearty hello.

I get emotional. I do care. I do get flustered and I am way more excited than my soul can contain at preset and you’re not going to take that from me. You tried to knock down my new-found self-esteem by throwing a wrench in my game but I’m going to let it go and move on with honor.

It will be announced next week, I hope. And if I can get ya’ll on the phone at the same time, I’d like to just say a few words…

I may have stated that within a year or two, we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming by working together under one big mailing umbrella but that is just an opinion. It’s also my opinion that skinny jeans on men are NOT okay. I’m not a manager and I have NO CLUE what will actually happen in one to two years and it might be that boot cut jeans make a GLORIOUS comeback.


Written at 8:27 a.m.