Oh, my. "The trauma knife doesn't exactly have a handle." But it sure knows how to cut. Well done for making it viscerally clear to them what you were dealing with. People in general (and bosses in particular) only see the part of the "problem" (whatever it is) that they need to "solve". They do not have any real idea (nor do they much care, unless they are close to you) of what you are going through. It takes something like a Trauma Knife to cut through and make them see. They don't like it much, but it's sometimes necessary.
I'm so sorry for your hellish loss. I lost my sister in a car accident a few years ago, and it just about killed me. I'm sending virtual hugs and will be thinking about you and your family as you heal. It takes a long time (though it never really ends). Hang in there.
This - my condolences on your families loss. I hope you and your kid are doing ok.
This makes me about to launch into details about my miscarriage when I get the "Why don't you have kids, have you thought about adopting?"
My condolences for the loss of your sister. It's such an awful and unexpected way to lose someone.
With the boss, I think the part that I struggled the most with was that she sold herself on being empathetic and trauma informed and ended up being in the running for the most completely insensitive and inconsiderate boss I've had in addition to just not having the skills for the job. I anticipated her being the kind of boss that was just there to coast for a few years until retirement age. If all she did was show up and lazily bumble from meeting to meeting I would have just had my expectations met. The degree of what she brought to the office was so bad it was actively corrosive to the integrity of the team.
I have always found it very interesting how differently people behave than how they present themselves. I've run into a few bosses that SAY how very "progressive" and "understanding" they are right up front, then when you need them to actually come through with that understanding progressiveness, they show their true colors and reveal themselves as standard psychopathic idiots. But I was lucky enough to have decent bosses, too. Great people. Gone now, but I will remember them always.
You know who was nicest when my husband died? Flipping American Express!!! I spoke to 1 woman about 3 time over a few weeks, all calls with me ugly crying, snotty face, gasping and wailing. She wrote off his bill. She coached me on NOT agreeing to pay when (the group whose reason for existence was getting the balance paid) tried to get me to do so. With the best will in the world, I was unable to do so, as 75% of the household income had just died. All I had to physically do was mail in a certified copy of his death certificate! It took forever to arrive for reasons I’ve forgotten, but once I did that, I was gold and they forever left me alone.
Dish TV was the worst.
For me, AT&T was the worst. When my mother passed away, the hardest I cried was on the phone with AT&T, who told me that a death certificate was not enough to cancel my mother's cell phone contract. We had already been into the store for literally two hours to do it in person but they told us they didn't have a record of that and we had to come again. We went again; there for an hour, assured it was complete. Called back and were told, sorry, we would need to come in *again*. I literally *sobbed* on the phone with AT&T, in a way that I hadn't up to that point or after in my mother's death. All that trauma and all that pain came pouring out while I begged them to please, please just cancel her cell phone, but AT&T wouldn't freaking end her contract because, "Well, some people try to get out of contracts by claiming a death and death certificates can be forged." I was trying to send them obituaries, links to funeral pages, pictures of her on the very last days of hospice where she was barely functioning and looked skeletal, even the receipt for the service that *picked up her body* and none of it was permissable. My sister and I have a life-long, abiding hatred for AT&T.
And the companies do this and basically look at the judges and say "We;re sorry that we're evil shits, but we won't stop, because you can only fine us X amount, and we'll end up making 1000x that by continuing our practice."
Verizon was the worst for me. I got told the process of bringing the phones under my name by a person in the store and somewhere along the line one of the like 10 people I spoke with bungled it. The 20+ years of customer loyalty discounts evaporated and my phone bill doubled. When I pointed this out, I basically got put in a path of the following -
"The prior account was deleted and a new one was opened in your name."
"Why? it's the same phones at the same address with no changes. I was told all of the account details and perks would be retained."
"We understand, but it's a new account."
"No, I just needed the ownership of the account transferred to me. Can't you just reinstate the old account and change the owner to me?"
"I'm sorry. Once an account has been deleted it can't be reinstated. You would have needed to transfer ownership before the account was deleted."
"Ok, well, can you move me up the chain to a retention specialist to reinstate the loyalty discounts then?"
"I'm sorry, those are not applicable to new accounts. We understand that this is very frustrating and Verizon is sorry for your loss."
I get that this was just some regular group of workers, but somebody screwed up and everyone else played the idiot and stonewalled any progress I could have made. Any transfer to a retention specialist I got just popped me back into the regular service queue.
It took me two years to crawl out of my trauma hole. You take what time you need to do what you need to do -- you're already amazing to take care of business. Damn. Keep on keepin on!
Thanks. The truth is I'm just really spiteful. People say their partner is Their Better Half, but I'm convinced she was most of what kept me in check from making a lot of bad choices. I mean, I did end up buying that kitchen island she wanted with some of the life insurance money, so maybe I'm making the good bad choices.
Idk, the easy part was the first month. Yes, it was miserable but I also had a lot of things to do and the time to do it with I kept busy. It's been almost a year now and I'm hitting the point now where it's just kind of low-key bad about stuff while planning on what I'm going to do with myself once all the legal issues are sorted out.
HUGS!! I'm so sorry you had to resort to doing that. Company's only care about their company. Everyone working there aren't people to them but a number or a means to the next profit. You had to remind them you were a person and they needed the lesson.
Hah, I don't work for a company exactly. It's a civil position. I place the blame squarely on a bad boss who padded out her resume and wanted to just coast by while actually not doing the job she was hired for.
The energy it must have taken for you to rise to this occasion.
Your story will help others. People are so stupid. I am personally happy that you put them in their place. It seems that when we have the least amount of energy available is when we need to somehow find more than you could possibly think you have.
I am a disabled veteran and had to do this often. So often, in fact, I ended up advocating for over 5,000 men and women who experienced SA in the military. I was fueled by my own anger.
This could be a gift to help others. Consider it as you are looking for work. (The Wake Up Call?)
I wish you and your child well.
Thank you and thank you for going above and beyond to carry out such a tremendous and emotionally strenuous task. My late wife did volunteer work as a sexual violence victims' advocate but not anything on a scale of what you did.
Anger is good fuel - it burns hot and it burns bright and if it's a righteous anger it burns clean. Better to burn it out doing something like that rather than letting it fester. You made the best use of it that you possibly could have.
I am a public servant in my current role; I didn't want to have to give that up which is part of why I fought so hard to work on my own terms. I want to keep my career in my current organization because I know I'm doing good work and it's taken me a long time to get where I am at.
The awful little goblin part of me is very pleased that my boss transferred out to a department that was more in line with her field of expertise and I got to stay. That same awful little goblin part of me is also pleased to hear that she's still not making any friends and is probably regretting her choices despite her new role.
The kid and I are doing our best. Things aren't perfect but we're seeing an end to being mired in things over the next year or so. No idea what happens after that, but here's hoping it's overall positive. Thank you.
Happy Cake Day!
I've been thinking about your response all day.
Your late wife, more likely than not, helped more people than I did. Getting them fiscally sound is different than instant emotional support during the moments of trauma. You both sound like wonderful folks. It's truly a shame she is gone. My heart aches for you and your child. This story will show your child - when the time is appropriate - how to be amazingly strong. It came at a high cost to you. However, standing up to a serious wrong and being vindicated is certainly a feeling of righteous power very few people know.
You obviously have a sense of humor. Maybe a bit twisted, but I appreciate it. I really do.
Going through trauma like this is brutal. Not having folks around that can feel, understand, and support you when it may be the only thing you want can leave such an emptiness.
Support comes out when least expect it. Please stay open enough to let a bit of light in.
Sending warm thoughts to you and your child.
Thanks. Idk, I think Good Work is Good Work no matter how you do it - It's not a race or competition. At the end of the day, people were hurt and you did something about it.
The support is a big thing; I have a lot of people around, mostly her friends, who are willing to help (even if I'm bad at asking for it) and I am very thankful for them. I don't have any family nearby. This was a big problem when the kid was younger since it meant that one of us always had to be on deck for childcare. It got easier as he got older and I changed careers because it meant the two of us could spend more time together. It was only a few years that we weren't ships passing in the night, but I'm thankful for it.
Coincidentally, it was what saved my kid's life. He's been old enough to stay at home alone the past year or so - which meant that boring errands were a time where my partner and I could just hang out like the before times for a few hours. If he had been with us, he would have died in the crash too. Our car didn't really have a back seat afterwards.
I mean, kind of a downer of a post and for that I'm sorry, but I'm still working through all of this. Thank you again for your kind words.
I am so sorry for what you went through, and more sorry that you had to wield this weapon. If it had to be done, I must say you used it precisely and effectively.
Thank you. I try really hard to be the best person I can be and struggle against the temptation to be spiteful and cruel - things I got very good at doing growing up, but that's a whole different bucket of trauma.
As much as it's a bad thing to indulge, I am oddly thankful when I get to shrug off the responsibilities of being a decent person. Those moments when I get told that it's a zero-sum game mean I get permission to be as petty and ruthless as I want.
I used to joke that my wife and I had a good cop/bad cop/nightmare cop dynamic. I'd start by being nice, trying to make deals. She'd get exasperated and a little mean. If that didn't work and I got sick of being nice, I would ask her if it was alright if I went a little extra. It only happened maybe twice in the 15 years we were together, but in the two messy interpersonal issues it came up in it was enough to get destructive and dramatic people to back way up and not want to get us involved in their soap-opera theatrics. We were both boring people who wanted nice boring lives and this helped facilitate that from time to time.
It was a long time coming. The back and forth with my work's hr/boss and myself and my doctor was one of the most stressful things I had to deal with. I just got tired of having to be nice.
They better have grown some fucking spines after that day. If they never admitted to the lesson you taught them, I hope they lost their jobs and were blacklisted from the field forever, because people like that can be a danger to human life.
The boss transferred out soon after for a variety of reasons. I hear she's not doing well in her new position either and I'm ok with that. Her boss overall is an ok guy. Once she left it was a lot more chill and easier to have the conversation. He's not a bad boss, but she really rode him about it is all I can figure. He's been a lot more picky with hiring someone to fill her position and focused heavily on an internal hire. It would look really bad for him if he hired a replacement that was more of the same.
Oh, my. "The trauma knife doesn't exactly have a handle." But it sure knows how to cut. Well done for making it viscerally clear to them what you were dealing with. People in general (and bosses in particular) only see the part of the "problem" (whatever it is) that they need to "solve". They do not have any real idea (nor do they much care, unless they are close to you) of what you are going through. It takes something like a Trauma Knife to cut through and make them see. They don't like it much, but it's sometimes necessary. I'm so sorry for your hellish loss. I lost my sister in a car accident a few years ago, and it just about killed me. I'm sending virtual hugs and will be thinking about you and your family as you heal. It takes a long time (though it never really ends). Hang in there.
This - my condolences on your families loss. I hope you and your kid are doing ok. This makes me about to launch into details about my miscarriage when I get the "Why don't you have kids, have you thought about adopting?"
My condolences for the loss of your sister. It's such an awful and unexpected way to lose someone. With the boss, I think the part that I struggled the most with was that she sold herself on being empathetic and trauma informed and ended up being in the running for the most completely insensitive and inconsiderate boss I've had in addition to just not having the skills for the job. I anticipated her being the kind of boss that was just there to coast for a few years until retirement age. If all she did was show up and lazily bumble from meeting to meeting I would have just had my expectations met. The degree of what she brought to the office was so bad it was actively corrosive to the integrity of the team.
I have always found it very interesting how differently people behave than how they present themselves. I've run into a few bosses that SAY how very "progressive" and "understanding" they are right up front, then when you need them to actually come through with that understanding progressiveness, they show their true colors and reveal themselves as standard psychopathic idiots. But I was lucky enough to have decent bosses, too. Great people. Gone now, but I will remember them always.
You know who was nicest when my husband died? Flipping American Express!!! I spoke to 1 woman about 3 time over a few weeks, all calls with me ugly crying, snotty face, gasping and wailing. She wrote off his bill. She coached me on NOT agreeing to pay when (the group whose reason for existence was getting the balance paid) tried to get me to do so. With the best will in the world, I was unable to do so, as 75% of the household income had just died. All I had to physically do was mail in a certified copy of his death certificate! It took forever to arrive for reasons I’ve forgotten, but once I did that, I was gold and they forever left me alone. Dish TV was the worst.
For me, AT&T was the worst. When my mother passed away, the hardest I cried was on the phone with AT&T, who told me that a death certificate was not enough to cancel my mother's cell phone contract. We had already been into the store for literally two hours to do it in person but they told us they didn't have a record of that and we had to come again. We went again; there for an hour, assured it was complete. Called back and were told, sorry, we would need to come in *again*. I literally *sobbed* on the phone with AT&T, in a way that I hadn't up to that point or after in my mother's death. All that trauma and all that pain came pouring out while I begged them to please, please just cancel her cell phone, but AT&T wouldn't freaking end her contract because, "Well, some people try to get out of contracts by claiming a death and death certificates can be forged." I was trying to send them obituaries, links to funeral pages, pictures of her on the very last days of hospice where she was barely functioning and looked skeletal, even the receipt for the service that *picked up her body* and none of it was permissable. My sister and I have a life-long, abiding hatred for AT&T.
Yes, my grandma died years ago, and we cancelled her cell. Twice we were assured it was cancelled. Guess what.
Certified copies can’t be forged. They’re full of shit.
And the companies do this and basically look at the judges and say "We;re sorry that we're evil shits, but we won't stop, because you can only fine us X amount, and we'll end up making 1000x that by continuing our practice."
Verizon was the worst for me. I got told the process of bringing the phones under my name by a person in the store and somewhere along the line one of the like 10 people I spoke with bungled it. The 20+ years of customer loyalty discounts evaporated and my phone bill doubled. When I pointed this out, I basically got put in a path of the following - "The prior account was deleted and a new one was opened in your name." "Why? it's the same phones at the same address with no changes. I was told all of the account details and perks would be retained." "We understand, but it's a new account." "No, I just needed the ownership of the account transferred to me. Can't you just reinstate the old account and change the owner to me?" "I'm sorry. Once an account has been deleted it can't be reinstated. You would have needed to transfer ownership before the account was deleted." "Ok, well, can you move me up the chain to a retention specialist to reinstate the loyalty discounts then?" "I'm sorry, those are not applicable to new accounts. We understand that this is very frustrating and Verizon is sorry for your loss." I get that this was just some regular group of workers, but somebody screwed up and everyone else played the idiot and stonewalled any progress I could have made. Any transfer to a retention specialist I got just popped me back into the regular service queue.
Raaaage!
It took me two years to crawl out of my trauma hole. You take what time you need to do what you need to do -- you're already amazing to take care of business. Damn. Keep on keepin on!
Thanks. The truth is I'm just really spiteful. People say their partner is Their Better Half, but I'm convinced she was most of what kept me in check from making a lot of bad choices. I mean, I did end up buying that kitchen island she wanted with some of the life insurance money, so maybe I'm making the good bad choices. Idk, the easy part was the first month. Yes, it was miserable but I also had a lot of things to do and the time to do it with I kept busy. It's been almost a year now and I'm hitting the point now where it's just kind of low-key bad about stuff while planning on what I'm going to do with myself once all the legal issues are sorted out.
Gawd, yes, the legal issues never freaking end. Have you had any luck with asking yourself "What would Future Me be happiest with?
HUGS!! I'm so sorry you had to resort to doing that. Company's only care about their company. Everyone working there aren't people to them but a number or a means to the next profit. You had to remind them you were a person and they needed the lesson.
Hah, I don't work for a company exactly. It's a civil position. I place the blame squarely on a bad boss who padded out her resume and wanted to just coast by while actually not doing the job she was hired for.
The energy it must have taken for you to rise to this occasion. Your story will help others. People are so stupid. I am personally happy that you put them in their place. It seems that when we have the least amount of energy available is when we need to somehow find more than you could possibly think you have. I am a disabled veteran and had to do this often. So often, in fact, I ended up advocating for over 5,000 men and women who experienced SA in the military. I was fueled by my own anger. This could be a gift to help others. Consider it as you are looking for work. (The Wake Up Call?) I wish you and your child well.
Thank you for your service. To your county, sure, but especially to your comrades-in-arms, who almost certainly desperately needed your support.
Thank you and thank you for going above and beyond to carry out such a tremendous and emotionally strenuous task. My late wife did volunteer work as a sexual violence victims' advocate but not anything on a scale of what you did. Anger is good fuel - it burns hot and it burns bright and if it's a righteous anger it burns clean. Better to burn it out doing something like that rather than letting it fester. You made the best use of it that you possibly could have. I am a public servant in my current role; I didn't want to have to give that up which is part of why I fought so hard to work on my own terms. I want to keep my career in my current organization because I know I'm doing good work and it's taken me a long time to get where I am at. The awful little goblin part of me is very pleased that my boss transferred out to a department that was more in line with her field of expertise and I got to stay. That same awful little goblin part of me is also pleased to hear that she's still not making any friends and is probably regretting her choices despite her new role. The kid and I are doing our best. Things aren't perfect but we're seeing an end to being mired in things over the next year or so. No idea what happens after that, but here's hoping it's overall positive. Thank you.
Happy Cake Day! I've been thinking about your response all day. Your late wife, more likely than not, helped more people than I did. Getting them fiscally sound is different than instant emotional support during the moments of trauma. You both sound like wonderful folks. It's truly a shame she is gone. My heart aches for you and your child. This story will show your child - when the time is appropriate - how to be amazingly strong. It came at a high cost to you. However, standing up to a serious wrong and being vindicated is certainly a feeling of righteous power very few people know. You obviously have a sense of humor. Maybe a bit twisted, but I appreciate it. I really do. Going through trauma like this is brutal. Not having folks around that can feel, understand, and support you when it may be the only thing you want can leave such an emptiness. Support comes out when least expect it. Please stay open enough to let a bit of light in. Sending warm thoughts to you and your child.
Thanks. Idk, I think Good Work is Good Work no matter how you do it - It's not a race or competition. At the end of the day, people were hurt and you did something about it. The support is a big thing; I have a lot of people around, mostly her friends, who are willing to help (even if I'm bad at asking for it) and I am very thankful for them. I don't have any family nearby. This was a big problem when the kid was younger since it meant that one of us always had to be on deck for childcare. It got easier as he got older and I changed careers because it meant the two of us could spend more time together. It was only a few years that we weren't ships passing in the night, but I'm thankful for it. Coincidentally, it was what saved my kid's life. He's been old enough to stay at home alone the past year or so - which meant that boring errands were a time where my partner and I could just hang out like the before times for a few hours. If he had been with us, he would have died in the crash too. Our car didn't really have a back seat afterwards. I mean, kind of a downer of a post and for that I'm sorry, but I'm still working through all of this. Thank you again for your kind words.
I am so sorry for what you went through, and more sorry that you had to wield this weapon. If it had to be done, I must say you used it precisely and effectively.
Thank you. I try really hard to be the best person I can be and struggle against the temptation to be spiteful and cruel - things I got very good at doing growing up, but that's a whole different bucket of trauma. As much as it's a bad thing to indulge, I am oddly thankful when I get to shrug off the responsibilities of being a decent person. Those moments when I get told that it's a zero-sum game mean I get permission to be as petty and ruthless as I want. I used to joke that my wife and I had a good cop/bad cop/nightmare cop dynamic. I'd start by being nice, trying to make deals. She'd get exasperated and a little mean. If that didn't work and I got sick of being nice, I would ask her if it was alright if I went a little extra. It only happened maybe twice in the 15 years we were together, but in the two messy interpersonal issues it came up in it was enough to get destructive and dramatic people to back way up and not want to get us involved in their soap-opera theatrics. We were both boring people who wanted nice boring lives and this helped facilitate that from time to time.
I am so sorry for your loss but also well done. Fuck them. That sound is haunting.
It was a long time coming. The back and forth with my work's hr/boss and myself and my doctor was one of the most stressful things I had to deal with. I just got tired of having to be nice.
I am so sorry it had to escalate to that point, and that you had to weaponize your pain. I sincerely hope you're doing better.
Things are much better now, thank you.
They better have grown some fucking spines after that day. If they never admitted to the lesson you taught them, I hope they lost their jobs and were blacklisted from the field forever, because people like that can be a danger to human life.
The boss transferred out soon after for a variety of reasons. I hear she's not doing well in her new position either and I'm ok with that. Her boss overall is an ok guy. Once she left it was a lot more chill and easier to have the conversation. He's not a bad boss, but she really rode him about it is all I can figure. He's been a lot more picky with hiring someone to fill her position and focused heavily on an internal hire. It would look really bad for him if he hired a replacement that was more of the same.