today i discovered insidious shenanigans going on at my job, but also discovered the resolve to talk to people in charge about how what they’re doing is affecting people

these weirdly were the same event in which i told my supervisor she was murdering morale by sending emails about every single tiny thing we did wrong when it could be fixed with three keystrokes by whoever caught it and then discovered it is not my supervisor picking at all this shit, but actually the ex-receptionist, who is dedicating her time to picking apart all of my work in an effort to show that she is the one who should be doing it

i commiserated with my cube neighbor tara (you guys will see her as the tag on all my cute animal videos because she is a dear woman who just loves animals) and ex-receptionist was nearby also bitching about how nasty and petty it was of the supervisor to send that email when SHE had been the one to send the alert emails that forced the supervisor to send them out in the first place

this is convoluted, i guess, and trust me when I say the x-files theme played when my supervisor and i realized that ex-receptionist was using this as a way to rile people against the supervisor, but it has further cemented some resolve I’ve had lately to process things that are upsetting me a bit and then just go and figure them out with the person rather than stew about why, or how, or whatever the fuck

When I asked the supervisor what the intent of that email was and told her what message I got from it, we both discovered a shockingly different thing than expected.  She expected me to find the emails helpful because the same thing had been helpful for her.  I expected the emails were intended to punish me into perfection.  I saw a loud screaming message that said, “Even though you opened 12 cases flawlessly that day, you are garbage because you typed 9 instead of 8 and I feel so little about your time and energy that I’m going to make you fix something that would take anyone who found it literal seconds to adjust.”   She saw a ‘Hey, here’s something to keep an eye on, maybe!’ 

She actually apologized for it and was the first person to say that morale was painfully low and that maybe we didn’t need to focus so hard on every single tiny error while things were like this.  

So, in the end, rather than spending all day fuming, we both had things improved for us, and we uncovered further proof that we shouldn’t be trusting the ex-reception woman, haha.   I was really scared to go talk to her, and I got really teary eyed doing it (which I HATE about myself, someone help me figure out how to stop doing this), but I’m hoping this will be a thing I can get better at with practice.  I’m trying so hard to just make things Better especially now that I’ve probably lost my therapist to insurance hell

I was not given the chances to be heard and actually communicate growing up - there were dire consequences for just raising a concern, let alone arguing – so it is something I’ve only in the last few years found to be as freeing as it is.  Now I’m getting so eager to communicate to fix things that I’m going after people as frightening to me as supervisors, I guess.  

I’m grateful for those of you I’ve known in the last five years or so who haven’t blown up on me or run from me or shut me out or run me into the ground when I expressed something or did something that didn’t land with you.  Those of you I can actually trust with saying how I actually feel.  You’re making me better and doing a far better job at helping me person than my family ever did, haha

Sincerity increases with punctuation.  I intended this post to be like a sentence and a half.  As per usual, I am full of more words and feelings than anticipated.