Oh and by the way - No, I haven't started my fucking period yet.

You know, if I really am pregnant (which I still doubt because, although I've not yet taken a test, long-time readers may know that I am late every once in a while. Stress doesn't help), this is gonna put a major damper on next weekend's "You have to come over and drink up all this booze you didn't drink during December's party-party!"

~~~

Work is...sucky. Major sucky. I started to write some things yesterday and never got the time to finish so I ended up just deleting what I had begun.

It�s not the actual work that�s sucky, really�it�s some of the people that work under me. I know I say all kinds of great things about them all the time, but underneath all of my appreciation of them lies some ugliness. It has existed since I started here. It has to do with certain people having a huge problem with my being hired in to be their boss; it has to do with the fact that I am a woman and how various people around here are still unable to work productively with members of my sex. It also has to do with the fact that I have a hard time accepting that not everybody is going to love me.

I need to get over that. In truth, I think I have made great strides over the last two weeks, in getting over it.

Suffice it to say that I have now said �Fuck them! Fuck them all!� I have decided that if people have a problem with me, it�s their problem. So long as I know I am doing my job well and treating people with respect in the process, I am NOT going to worry about what other people think or feel about me anymore. Even if they work for me.

This sounds so simple. Why did it take me two and a half years to get to this point?

See, some people around here (mainly just two) have jumped on the recent departure of our Problem Child as a chance to make me look bad. Their problem in trying to undermine me in this way was, they had no idea what was really going on with PC. They heard her side of things, which was all about how horrible I am, but they didn�t know the other side � the side that makes me refer to this woman as our Problem Child. In their attempts to make me look bad, they ended up making themselves look bad�very, very bad�because it became rather obvious what was really going on.

There have been complaints against me before, made by the same people�although I was always supported by the Little Big Man, I was still in a precarious position. I didn�t know that the LBM and others around here didn�t at least doubt me, ya know? I knew what was going on, but how do you tell someone, �You can�t believe those two because they are out to get me� without sounding insane? Obviously, I never said anything like that.

Just over a year ago, a gal (Hilda) in my department quit and said it was because she couldn�t deal with me. I felt horrible, because I never even knew there was a problem, let alone one which would make the woman quit. The same people who tried to make trouble for me this week tried last year, too. They have tried intermittently since, in various ways.

After Hilda quit, I took the opportunity to learn a lot about myself and how better to deal with people who work for me. I took everything greatly to heart, even what these trouble-makers were saying about me. It took me a long time to even feel comfortable within my department, let alone to get back on what I feel are positive terms with everybody, because I didn�t trust that what appeared to be true was, in fact, what was really going on.

I�ve been lectured by LBM ad nauseum about all of the things I needed to change, all of the strategies I could employ to get along better with everyone. Let me just say right now, that I have never EVER deserved any of those fucking lectures. But I listened to them. I took it. Yes, I had his support, but I still got lectured. I took what I could learn from the situations as they occurred and said little in my defense, aside from what was already obvious.

By the time this week rolled around, I was loaded for bear. They hit my last straw. First PC would take no responsibility whatsoever for the fact that she was miserable here and then this happens. At the beginning of what I thought was to be this week�s lecture, I just raised my hand and said, �OK, before you get going this time, I am going to say something...� and I basically let it fly. I want to take these things constructivly, but there is a point at which I shouldn't have to listen to this shit anymore.

I am a good person. More importantly to this environment, I am a good Manager. I communicate well, I am supportive, I focus on what really matters, I am consistent, I encourage others� career growth, I have integrity, I treat everybody with courtesy and respect, I allow a whole lot of fun on work time. Yada-yada. I�m not saying I�m perfect and I have learned and changed a lot in the last five years or so I�ve been supervising people. I AM saying that I wish I�d had more managers like me throughout my career.

I don�t even deal directly with the two people complaining very often. The real problems these two people have with me has nothing to do with who I am or what kind of job I am doing. One of them has worked here for 15 years and yet has made no efforts toward personal or career growth and so has been in the same position the entire time. He was pissed from the get-go that I was even hired in over him and he has resisted me at every step. This is the one person on my team I can not stand. He is only working here because LBM doesn�t feel we have enough reason to fire him � I would have gotten rid of him a long ass time ago. He doesn�t answer my questions, he doesn�t listen to my instructions. He is an arrogant SOB who thinks he can do no wrong and that he should be rewarded simply because he has been with the company so long (yeah, welcome to the 21st century, where we reward actual accomplishment, not your number of years with the company. Idiot. If you'd removed your head from your ass even once in the last fifteen years you might know this).

We just did his employee review this morning. Among other things, it was revealed that he thinks he should make more money than I do only because of how long he has been here. Well, as inferred before, he thinks his shit don�t stink (which is so far off base as to be laughable. But did he actually listen to our review so he could learn from it? Of course not). What did he do to think he should make so much money? He went to Monster.com and got the salary range for an Accounts Receivable Manager � so NOT his position. So when we pointed all of this out to him, he went running to the owner of the company and caused a big too-doo, over nothing, He is still not going to get the monster size raise he thinks he should get.

So there�s that one. I deal even less with the other person who has a problem with me. She is our Credit Analyst and usually deals directly with the LBM. Most of our conversations (when we have them) revolve around �Did you see that soccer game this weekend?� type of stuff. And yet, she somehow has huge issues with me.

Again, she hated that I was even hired in the first place because much of what I ended up doing was stuff she had been working on up to that point. To make matters worse, while LBM and I are very similar personality types, Kim has a VERY different personality. We just don't jibe, most of the time. She is also still rather young and has been here for a few years. I think this is her first �real� job so she has no idea how the real corporate world works. The company I work for is NOT typical of the corporate world in many ways. It is very obvious to me that she has no clue. My point in all of this is, she has no idea how good she has it. Few in my department do and the only ones who realize it are the ones who haven�t been here as long and therefore have worked elsewhere.

It is very obvious she has no respect for me. I�ve known this all along, but never took it seriously. She does the majority of our Financial Analysis and this is my weakest area. Aside from this part of my knowledge, she doesn�t know jack shit about what I know or do not know and that�s why I never cared what she thinks. But since she knows I am weak in this area in which she excels, she apparently assumes I am just an idiot in general and acts like that.

The real problem with both of these characters is they thrive on causing problems. They talk to everybody else in the department and spread their venom.

Man, I fucking hate that shit.

After PC quit, I initially felt horrible, especially as I was going through her emails and realized she�d been talking to everyone else in the department, giving them all her side of the various stories. I�d worked so hard at reconnecting with the members of my team after Hilda quit and I thought all of my work was undone by this one PC.

I had a different attitude by the next day. After thinking it through I decided on my newfound �Fuck them! Fuck them all!� attitude because, let�s face it � if these kids can�t base their opinion of me on the way I treat them rather than what they�ve heard come out of the mouths of others, then�well, fuck them! That�s their problem, not mine. Because I totally know that my issues with PC had everything to do with PC, not me.

By the way � since PC quit, she has tried to get us to illegally change her status to �fired�, so she can collect unemployment AND she has tried to get someone to forge LBM�s name on a Letter of Recommendation and type it up on our company letterhead.

Nice.

Had she handled her resignation correctly, the little idiot could have had her fucking Letter of Rec. anyway.

Anyway, the end result was I am not the one who is coming across looking bad here. These two idiots shot themselves in the foot this time, because LBM knew more about the PC situation than they did. I think there had always been a little bit of doubt before because, although LBM believed me on the surface, he had to have faith in me. He had no idea, really, if Hilda�s complaints were valid, because he is away in his office, somewhat removed from all that is going on.

*sigh*

Anyone know what the lotto numbers are gonna be tomorrow?

~~~

1. What does it say in the signature line of your emails?

Well, my personal email provides a link to Dennis Kucinich�s campaign web page. My work email has my job information and also the same Martin Luther King Jr. quote as is posted over there to the right.

2. Did you have a senior quote in your high school yearbook? What was it? If you haven't graduated yet, what would you like your quote to be?

It said: �Walk Tall, or Baby Don�t Walk at All.� It�s a Springsteen quote.

3. If you had vanity plates on your car, what would they read? If you already have them, what do they say?

Yeah...Like I�m gonna put my license plate number on the web, for all to see...I did always want to have plates that said FECK U because while off-color langueage is not allowed...well, "feck" is only "fuck" in Scotland, right?

4. Have you received any gifts with messages engraved upon them? What did the inscription say?

Aside from softball trophies, I can�t think of any. I have received a number of books with notes written in them, if that counts. I love those! One that comes to mind is a book of Yeats� work with a note form an old friend that says something like: �To Karen, who has her own tales to tell.�

5. What would you like your epitaph to be?

What I�d like it to read and what it will probably actually read are two very different things�

~~~

Gore Delivers Scathing Attack on Bush/Cheney Environmental, Energy Actions

In a no-holds-barred address yesterday in New York city, former vice president Al Gore delivered a scorching critique of the environmental and energy policies of the Bush-Cheney administration, asserting that "it seems at times as if the Bush-Cheney Administration is wholly owned by the coal, oil, utility and mining companies."

Noting a recent review of contributions to the Bush presidential campaign from utility industry executives, lawyers and lobbyists, Gore said that 15 of them were Bush Pioneers, individuals who have raised at least $100,000 for the Bush campaign. "While President Bush likes to project an image of strength and courage, the truth is that in the presence of his large financial contributors he is a moral coward," seldom saying no to them "no matter what the public interest might mandate."

Focusing heavily on the issue of global warming, Gore said "The problem is that our world is now confronting a five-alarm fire that calls for bold moral and political leadership from the United States of America." Rather than spending "enormous sums of money on an unimaginative and retread effort to make a tiny portion of the moon habitable for a handful of people," he continued, the U.S. "can strengthen our economy with a new generation of advanced technologies, create millions of good new jobs, and inspire the world with a bold and moral vision of humankind's future."

Citing a "massive and well-organized campaign of disinformation lavishly funded by polluters," Gore said many people still do not believe global warming is a problem. "Wealthy right-wing ideologues have joined with the most cynical and irresponsible companies in the oil, coal and mining industries to contribute large sums of money to finance pseudo-scientific front groups" to confuse the public about global warming, he added.

Moving beyond global warming, Gore said the problem is the same "when it comes to protecting the American people from pollution. The Bush administration chooses special interests over the public interest." Rather than address the problem of mercury pollution generated by coal-fired power plants, for example, Gore said the Bush administration "has gutted the protections of the Clean Air Act, revoking an earlier determination by the EPA that mercury emissions from power plants should be treated as hazardous air pollutants."

Further, he continued, "The Superfund has gone from $3.8 billion to a shortfall of $175 million," leaving "a toxic mess for our children." This is because "the tax these polluters used to pay to support the Superfund has been eliminated, so that you, me, and other taxpayers are left holding the bill."

As for enforcement of environmental protection laws, Gore asserted that "For three years in a row, the Bush Administration has sought to slash enforcement personnel levels at EPA. Offices were told to back off cases..." Gore said the problem extends even to America's national parks: "Just ask the coalition of more than 100 retired career park service employees who wrote a letter saying that their mission to protect the parks' natural resources has been changed to focus on commercial and special-interest use of parks."

"These are not small shifts in policy," said Gore, "they are radical changes that reverse a century of American policy designed to protect our natural resources."

NOTE: This report is drawn from the prepared text of the Gore speech. A transcript of the entire speech will be available today, Friday, January 16th, on BushGreenwatch.org.

~~~

Word of the Day for Friday January 16, 2004

yen YEN, noun:

A strong desire or inclination; a longing.

intransitive verb:

To have a strong desire or inclination; to long.

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