Out One Door, In Another

Who’s out?
D. She quit.

She announced her resignation about a week and a half ago. I congratulated her, as is the appropriate thing to do. Then I went to the restroom and bawled. D was the one person that was making this job tolerable. Yes, I knew she was looking. Yes, I knew that eventually she would be gone. No, I didn’t know it would be so soon.

Ever since she announced her resignation she has been a different person. Apparently, once she knew she didn’t have to stay here much longer she didn’t need me as a friend anymore. She pulled away. She didn’t talk to me much. She didn’t work with me as easily as before. She had a chip on her shoulder that they didn’t pay her in lieu of having her stay the two weeks notice that she had given them. She wanted out. . . immediately. They wanted her here to make a smooth transition. She stayed. . . but she became minimally cooperative with everyone. . . including me. . . the one who was supposedly her friend. In retaliation, I pulled away. I barely gave her the time of day the last few days.

Today, she’s gone. She never said goodbye. She never told me she’d me miss me. She didn’t even tell me that yesterday was her last day instead of the originally planned last day later this week. She just told me she was leaving early yesterday. I only found out she was gone for good when Boss came around and shared the news with the rest of the department after she was gone.

So. . . good riddance D. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. What a bitch.


Who’s in?
TS2. She’s moving into my house next week.

She came over to look at the room, and the rest of the house, and to talk to me, W and N. I think we will all get along quite well. I think I’m just going to have to be very careful about my feelings about TS2. I could see my crush getting me into trouble in more ways than one. I could see it being awkward, oh so awkward between W and me if he found out about my crush. (It is, after all, quite different to say you’re fine with your wife being with another woman and having to actually live with it.) I could see TS2 feeling uncomfortable about me having a crush on her if she found out about my crush, particularly since W and I are still legally married. Also, I could see me getting jealous and depressed when she starts dating someone because it will be right there in front of me. And if I think about it I can envision dozens of other ways it could get me in trouble.

But. . . TS2 needs a place to stay, and I’ve got plenty of room in my house. And I can’t help but let my thoughts drift to a place where somehow TS and TS2 could end up together. What a dreamer.

They Always Leave

As I started writing this it was a dead heat between family revelations and work shit so I started with work shit only to have family revelations win the poll by a narrow margin. Luckily for my reading public this one was practically finished already so I’m putting in the hopper to post on Monday. Wow. Two posts within one week’s time. Totally radical, dude.

One day last week just as soon as I came into work, before I even had a chance to get coffee, the newest coworker (been here just since spring) in my department shared with me that she has given notice and will be leaving to return to a former employer. I was sorry to hear of that because she’s a good worker, catches on quickly, and is pleasant to be around. She is also vastly over-qualified for the position she has here and even though I genuinely believe she did not intend to do so she parlayed this situation into a much better job at the old employer. So I congratulated her, and sighed knowing that we may not be so lucky to get someone as good as she is when they hire her replacement. Oh well, life goes on.

Then, not a half hour later D asks me to go on a break with her. It isn’t at all unusual for us to go on breaks together. However, usually we do so in the afternoon rather than the morning. She clearly had something on her mind that she wanted to discuss with me. We went to one of our quiet places near work and sat down. Then she dropped the bombshell. On top of our new coworker leaving, D is also going to be leaving and moving one state away for personal reasons. The only difference is that D is uncertain of her timing. She has no new job to go to yet although she is actively looking. Once she finds something she will be out of here with no regrets about leaving.

D shared with me why she is moving to another state. I won’t share it here as that is her story not mine. I will share here that I think it is a lame reason that she is moving, a reason that makes little sense to me yet it isn’t my business so I said nothing critical to her about the move. Certainly she shouldn’t stay here just because I finally have a friend near by, something that has been few and far between in my life.

I’ve known for a long time, practically since she started last fall, that D is unhappy at work. The job is not a good fit for her, and she has as much or more difficulty getting along with Boss and Betty (a new name for the sidebar, given due to her annoying Betty Rubble laugh; this is a coworker who thinks she is God and has convinced many of the superiors around here of this which makes life more difficult for the rest of us mere mortals who can never live up to her perfection in every way) than I do. While I’m the live and let live type who tries to do just roll with the flow, D is the type who wants things the way she wants things and fights for it. She has bumped heads with Boss many times. Betty intimidates D (as she does me also) so that D is incredibly uncomfortable with Betty. D won’t fight Betty, and it drives D crazy because she doesn’t handle being the underdog well. I can’t fight Betty, and I just ignore Betty as much as possible and do my own thing as I’m used to being the underdog in most situations. All of this to say that as unhappy as D is here in this job it would be ridiculous for me to try to persuade her to stay.

So I’m screwed. No, I don’t think I’ll lose my job anytime soon particularly since I’m sure I’ll have extra duties at least for a while, but life at work is going to get a whole lot less pleasant unless at least one of my new coworkers just happens to click with me like D did.

Word to the wise: if your department has a lot of turnover, like a revolving door kind of turnover, you may want to look at the cause. You may want to see if there is something you or others in your department are doing to make newcomers feel unwelcome. I’ve worked in two places like this now in the last few years, and in both cases I can identify significant flaws in how the department is managed that contribute significantly to the high turnover rate.

And, well, life goes on. . .

Thursday Therapy: Deflection

I am really good at one thing. Oh, there may be other things I’m good at in addition to this, but this one thing is what I’m talking about today. I am really good at deflection – the act of turning aside or off course according to the dictionary.

When I am trying to deal with my own issues it is very easy for me to turn aside or wander off course, particularly by analyzing other people’s behavior and issues. Oh, I’m a master at dissecting someone else’s behavior and the causes behind it and what they ought to do to change it.

I caught myself doing this very thing a lot this week, actually since last week’s therapy session. The newish coworker I’ve mentioned here several times (let’s call her D because I do believe she’ll appear here in my blog as a recurring player so she needs a letter all her own) before has been my most recent victim subject. It started fairly innocently. Then I went from one little thing to focusing more on her many problems (in my head only; of course I’m not one of those people that would talk to her and try to show her the error of her ways) than my own. It finally occurred to me that what I was doing here was deflecting, perhaps even projecting some by criticizing behavior in D that I don’t like in myself.

The sidetrack in my thinking started when I overanalyzed (What? Me? Overanalyze? Shocking!) something that Freud said in my last session with him. As we discussed my “need” for men in my life we were addressing what it was that a man in my life provided for me. One thing we came up with was that I feel that as long as I have a man in my life I have a safety net, someone who will take care of me if I can’t take care of myself. (How’s that workin’ for ya’ Trueself? Not so well Dr. Phil; now get out of my head.) I brought up something D had said to me one day as we were telling each other life stories (in the way that new friends do). She said to me “Oh no! You aren’t one of those women who always has to have a man in her life are you?” Well. . . yeah. . . as a matter of fact that’s exactly who I am. Freud said (I know I’m getting this all out of chronological order, but for the life of me I can’t really remember the proper order of how things were discussed.) something about D may have a support system outside of having a man in her life. (EPIPHANY As I write this I just now realize what I’m really in need of is a support system. It’s just that I’ve always defined support system as a man in my life. But it isn’t a man in my life that I need. It is a support system.) I replied that yes, in fact I know that she has a support system comprised of several of her siblings.

Anyway, thinking about the comparison between D and me I realized that from what she says she leans heavily on her siblings, one in particular, so much so in fact after being laid off she moved a few hundred miles to live in the same town with her sister. Even after getting a job that requires more than a one hour commute each way she continues to live in the same town as her sister rather than moving closer to her new job. So much for her being the pillar of independence. And this thinking led me from one thing to the next, analyzing a good bit of what she says and does, and were she to ask I could lay out an entire schematic of things that she could change to make herself into a better, more whole person.

Yeah, a whole week or more with way too much emphasis put towards fixing someone else when in fact there is nothing at all for me to do to fix D. I ain’t volunteering fixes that haven’t been asked for, and she ain’t asking. So. . . much. . . wasted time. . .

BUT. . .
Just having the epiphany above as I was writing has helped pull me just now back from the deflection and refocus efforts on things I can do for me, to make me a more whole person. What I need to do is a two pronged thing here: first, I need to work on my own self image and determine what I truly can depend on myself to handle while second, I need to work on developing a support system or perhaps to some extent just recognizing the support system I already have.

Maybe I don’t have to bear all the burdens all by myself.
Maybe there are ways to share those burdens in an appropriate way so that they aren’t so daunting to me.
Maybe I don’t have to be a lone wolf all my life.
Maybe I don’t have to give up being me in order to be part of the pack.
Maybe there’s hope for me yet.