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They Thought They Had Me ( II )
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The corporate video department had an adapter so you could put a S-VHS cassette into a Betacam machine, or perhaps it was vice-versa. Anyhow, we only had one adapter for everyone to use so it had to stay in this one room on top of the shelves. One day the adapter went missing, and since it was usually in my little dubbing zone they asked me about it. I hadn't seen it.
A couple of days earlier we had been doing a mass-mailing of videotapes and had stuffed probably 200 or 300 envelopes in a short period of time. My immediate boss guy said, "I think when we were stuffing those envelopes you..." Grabbed the adapter in haste and stuffed it in an envelope? At 22 or 23 I hadn't yet learned that my life would be spent fighting off others' attempts to scapegoat me, so I joined in on doubting myself. "Gee...ya think? Could I have? Gosh..."
After I once again went into a small fizz trying to find the missing adapter, in walked this girl Marcy with it. I let out a huge breath of relief and she said, "What? Was somebody looking for this?" EVERYBODY is looking for that, that's why it's supposed to stay in this room and not move!
So it WASN'T my fault at ALL! I stopped ever doubting myself in any situation after that. They thought they had me! |
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Posted by Art | 9:02 PM EST |
2 comments
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This really didn’t bother me at first. It seemed like every week for a couple of months I was getting a good two hours away from the phones to sit in a training room and hear the latest corporate horseshit on fairness, sexual harassment (I’m against all forms of it unless it’s directed at me), Deming’s 14 Points for Management (that they preached but never followed), and so on.
Remember that all the while I was trying and trying to get promoted and had applied for six or seven jobs (and got shot down on every one) by this point.
So then they posted a Saturday training session. 8am until 4:30pm. I went and sat through it, collected my overtime and wasted my Saturday.
Then the next week, they scheduled another Saturday training session. I announced that I was unavailable. I didn’t tell them why (it was none of their business), but it was college football season and UGA was playing. I wasn’t missing that!
The following Monday I got an e-mail asking me to come in early and train from 8am to 12, then do my usual 1:30 to 10pm shift for a couple of days. I responded that I had a small child at home and I was not in a position to consider such a request, but that every Monday thru Friday I had set aside 1:30-10pm for Shithole Company and its business and I was sure that if what they were wanting me to know was important enough, they would find a way to accommodate this.
I got another e-mail back telling me that doing this during my shift hours was an inconvenience, that it would strain the work force, screw with their hold times, etc.
And I wrote back: “That sounds like a management problem. As I am not a manager, I cannot help you with this issue.”
I was never asked to come to training again the remaining six or eight months I worked there.
We get little trainings all the time, too, and constant e-mails on some modification to whatever we're doing that no one has time to read. I'm amazed how phone droning seems to be such a fragile art and craft. Who knew it required 5,000 e-mails and multiple traning sessions and involved micro-critiques?