Axed
"You know, once you’ve been accused of being a crazy-ass axe murderer, everything else is a breeze.”
- Merujo to a colleague, February 15, 2006
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Brian Messitt, formerly of London, England:
On March 14, 2005, Mr. Messitt met his death in a most unusual way: he was attacked by a paranoid schizophrenic wielding an axe. I did not know Mr. Messitt. I was a few thousand miles away when he met his dreadful end. And little could he, or his assailant, have known that his death was to change my life rather dramatically.
On a pleasant late winter morning, in the quiet, tony London neighborhood of Belsize Park (home to a pile of young celebrities), Joseph Sheehan, a 37-year-old mentally unstable waiter, set upon Mr. Messitt and and nearly decapitated him with an axe. Horrified passers-by begged Sheehan to stop, but he kept raining blows upon the head of the 67-year-old Messitt until he was dead.
Under any circumstances, murder is a shocking thing. But in the civilized setting of Belsize Park, as women walked children to school, it was astoundingly awful, pointless, and bizarre. And with an axe, no less!
Here in the United States, the Drudge Report picked up the story, linking to an article on the ThisIsLondon.com website. Here, as a matter of fact is a link to that very article: go ye forth and read it, and then, come on back...
Pretty awful, wasn't it?
Back in 1986-87, I attended the London School of Economics and Political Science. I was a junior in college, and my focus was Soviet politics, the history of political thought, and Soviet & Eastern European law. (Oooh, check out the big brain on Merujo!) It was a very, very good year.
I am a modest Anglophile, as is, I think it would be fair to say, my friend, the Sasquatch. We both studied abroad in the UK in the 80s. We both tend to dig British music, TV, culture, you name it.
We also both have what I think is a fairly natural "appreciation" for the macabre and bizarre around us. When a story shows up online about someone being killed with an axe on a peaceful London street, one of us is definitely going to call the other one and relay the news.
And so, sometime around 11 a.m. on Monday, March 14, 2005, I called the Sasquatch at his office a few blocks away and told him there was a story on Drudge he had to hear.
This was not an uncommon occurrence. People in my office (Job X) were forever sharing bits and bobs of news that we'd discovered online. In this case, however, I didn't bother sending it to people in the office. Things had been very ugly for me there for months and months by then.
I'd been working as a contractor at Job X - an office in a federal agency - for six years at this point. It was not a happy relationship. I did the same work as the federal employees, but without benefits or a future. I was always told that there simply wasn't the funding to hire another federal employee. They just didn't have the money or the head count! When a good federal position was finally opened, the old Director announced at a staff meeting that I would be "too busy" to apply for the job. (Which was a big surprise to me.)
The position went to one of the then-deputy director's best friends. This was not a big surprise to me. It was, in fact, pretty much par for the course at Job X.
By that point, I'd spent years working in a painful partnership with a prima donna young thing who felt I was just too awful to work with. It was painfully clear to me that this woman hated me from the get-go. She seemed disgusted at our first meeting, where she gave me a head to toe appraisal, and her nose wrinkled as if she’d just smelled the contents of a burned out freezer harboring an aging side of beef. Sympathetic coworkers came to me later and shared that she’d told them she just couldn’t stand having to work with someone as uncultured, uncouth, unattractive, and poorly dressed as I was. It pained her to share the stage with me. Working with her was more like high school than high school ever was. Here I was, in my late 30s, feeling shamed by a near total stranger because I wasn’t pretty enough for the prom. Ugh.
Most of the time, I would just grind my teeth and just try to get through the days with her, but sometimes, there would be a moment of real humiliation or inappropriate behavior I was unwilling to let pass. But, each time I approached management about my treatment at her hands, I was told that I was misunderstanding Miss Prima Donna. Oh, Merujo! But Miss Prima Donna is the best! She was, I was told repeatedly, simply a delightful person who just wanted everything to be perfect, and she just found it challenging to work with someone who wasn't striving for her level of perfection! (Did I mention, Miss Prima Donna was a good friend of the director?) I finally gave up trying to be friendly and collegial when my mother died, and she didn't say a single kind word for almost a year.
Of course, I'd been dissed by her before on the parent front - when we first met, I thought it was cool that she and I were both late-life children of WWII pilots. However, she slammed my mom when she said, "Well, my father was a real pilot in the war..." Wow - I had no idea my mom was a "fake" pilot! First rule of Fight Club: do not diss Merujo's mom.
When Miss Prima Donna finally left her position to go forth and make babies (hooray!), I was saddled with a new partner. And things just got worse.
The new partner had been at Job X before. He had a bad reputation, particularly among female and gay coworkers, for comments he made. He also had a bad rep for not finishing his work. When he was shipped out to Iraq for a year's tour of duty, he left behind paperwork unfiled, dumped on a bookshelf, that nearly cost several organizations a considerable sum of federal funding. In a better-run office, he likely would have been relieved of his position for incompetence and the hostile comments.
But we didn't work in a better-run office. We worked at Job X.
When New Partner returned to town, I was given no choice but to work with him. Everyone else was partnered up, although the Director said that she was looking into switching partners around. That never happened. The federal employees all balked at having to work with him. So, I was stuck. Besides, I was expendable - as a contractor in a federal workplace, I had few rights and no benefits. My contract was scheduled to end on March 18, 2005, and I had been looking for a new job for, quite literally, years. There were a lot of things that made me uncomfortable at Job X - nepotism and cronyism being right up at the top - plus the fact that I'd started off in 1999 with the Old Director slipping in front of me by saying that contractors were all "moneygrubbing scum." I remember her slapping her hand over her mouth when she remembered I was a contractor. Once, when I asked the Old Director if I could please have an evaluation like the federal employees got, she responded by saying, "We give you a new contract each year - isn't that evaluation enough?"
Keep in mind, Old Director is the same woman who once decided to bestow "bonuses" on the office contractors on the same day that all the federal employees at Job X received monetary awards. She brought us into her office and handed us cheap handicrafts - given to her by visiting low-income delegations - saying that those items were our “bonuses.”
Omigod.
My fine “bonus”? A 5x7 picture of an Uzbek girl, made with burlap, macaroni, and yarn.
I swear to god.
Burlap, macaroni, and yarn. Does that give you a good picture of just how valued my skills were?
My time at Job X was craptacular - years of being emotionally drained, depressed, and just damn miserable. I prayed each time I sent out a resume or filled out an application. Washington Cube, in a comment to an earlier post, said it very well: "Anyone who has ever worked in a poisonous office space where those behaviors are allowed knows how debilitating it can be to even show up for work each day. The terrible thing is how often the bad behavior is not addressed, and it is worse, of course, when those people are in power." Amen, sister. A-freakin-men.
I felt diminished in that job. Tremendously underappreciated. And, as a contractor, I was always an outsider. I cannot do justice to it here, and I won't try. Either you've been in one of these situations and understand, or you simply don't. And that's okay. I'll just say this, by the end, I could barely drag myself in to face the day. I was sick all the time. I had doctor's appointment after doctor's appointment.
And being stuck with the New Partner made everything worse.
During his time in Iraq, New Partner’s issues with women had escalated. He told me that, during his tour of duty, some female subordinates had lodged fairly serious grievances against him, and he was fighting them tooth and nail. Having seen and heard his feelings about women the previous year, before his deployment, I was not surprised that there had been complaints. He did not know how to work appropriately with female coworkers. There was no respect at all and no attempt to hide his distain for women.
Probably because of my weight, New Partner did not seem to recognize me as female - that was clear from the start. He was into "skinny, tall, blonde, dysfunctional hotties” as he called them, and it really creeped me out that he’d ask me about the “hotties” he saw coming through the office. It was classless. Dirty. Made me want to bathe in Purell after each of his sudden visits to my office. I expressed my discomfort to management, but no one did a thing, other than roll eyes. Oh yes, they agreed, New Partner was lame. He was grotesque and inappropriate. But nothing ever happened.
This was a bad start.
New Partner dropped by fairly often to make odd statements to me, most of them incredibly denigrating or hostile to women. I found it increasingly more and more difficult to remain civil and work with a man who so clearly despised women. The one that really unsettled me was this gem: “You know, Merujo, most women deserve to be beaten. Now, I wouldn’t beat them myself, of course. I’d hire teams of female wrestlers to do it. But really, most women just need to be beaten.”
I made another complaint to management. Again, eyes were rolled. Nothing happened.
At last came the final straw that snapped this camel’s back. I was sitting in my office with a Senior Staffer (also a woman) when New Partner strolled in and made this pronouncement: “Hey, Coworker X’s wife just came through. She wasn’t fat and ugly. She was pretty hot. I was expecting her to be fat and ugly.”
What? What?!?
I stopped him and said, “I think you might want to rethink that statement. Did you notice whose office you’re in? Fat and ugly do not necessarily go together, buddy.”
He blinked. At first he didn’t seem to realize just how pissed I was. Who the hell, in their right mind, walks into the office of a profoundly fat woman and makes a craptacular statement like that?
“Oh, of course, of course! Hahaha…” He fled for his cubby down the hall.
I’d hit my limit.
I told Senior Staffer just how pissed off I was. She agreed: it was wrong. Just dead wrong. She was outraged. She was shocked. She completely agreed that I needed to make an official complaint to New Director.
Which I did.
And that’s when the whole house of cards came tumbling down.
New Director was unhappy, you could tell. She appeared annoyed that I’d made a complaint. Of course, she appeared annoyed whenever I approached her with an issue that required her to be managerial - like my complaints about my treatment at the hands of Miss Prima Donna. However, this time, she had no choice but to act on my official written complaint, complete with dates and times of other hostile comments and contact information for witnesses to yet more crap from his mouth and mind. I imagine she saw this pattern of uncontrolled hostile behavior in the office as making her look bad as a manager (which, in my mind, it did).
New Director told me he would be spoken to. It would be dealt with.
He was spoken to.
But, my friends, the situation of me working with New Partner wasn’t dealt with.
New Director told me, she had no choice: I would have to continue to partner with him. She had no other options, you see.
That, dear readers, was utter crap. She had three other teams in the office, and she easily could have switched him to work with any of those teams, preferably one with another male coworker.
But they were all federal employees, you see. Not expendable contractors. And none of them wanted to be saddled with him.
She had no choice, she said. But I wouldn’t have this problem with him any more.
Marvelous. How reassuring! I was trapped working with a man who knew I had complained about his comments. A man who had made my workplace a very, very hostile environment. And, as a contractor, I had no leg to stand on.
Perhaps the worst part of it all, Senior Staffer, showing the fortitude of a defrosted Eggo waffle, backed down on her support of me and told New Partner that he just needed to "know his audience” in making comments like his.
Know his audience? What kind of crap response was that?!? In the federal workplace, should there really be an audience for sexist, violent, and bigoted comments about women? I don't think so, kids.
Know his audience, my ass.
Over the next few weeks, I was made to feel like the bad guy. I was the villain who had smacked down a decorated veteran and made the director pull her weight with a disciplinary problem. Most people in the office stopped speaking to me. I was a troublemaker. I had no sense of humor. I wasn’t being flexible.
How do I describe my last few months on this job? Miserable. Rotten. Disheartening. I felt utterly punished for having made a complaint. I worked with my door shut most of the time to avoid all but necessary contact with the New Partner.
I had made it clear several times that I would not be seeking to extend my contract, although the director pretended to not hear. I was unpopular. I was unhappy. I wanted out of that place. New Director and her crony-friend had open door conversations about me - some, I overheard myself and others fell on the ears of my friends. “Hey, man, did you hear that? They just cannot wait for you to be gone…”
Yeah, I heard it. Over and over again. (Just like I had to hear the near-daily screaming matches that New Director had with her husband over the phone.) Let me make this clear: I was far from the ideal employee by this point. I was not exactly going the extra mile. I had been screwed over for a good job, my requests for help were ignored, I was feeling physically ill much of the time, utterly depressed, and I was fairly disgusted by it all. But I put as good a face on it as I could behind my closed office door. I would take a deep breath and haul out my best, most cheerful phone voice to cold call clients and grantees. My grantees, some of whom had become friends over the years, had no idea how bad things were. But the other contractors knew. They would stop by the office to see if I was doing okay. (Several of them had stopped bidding on jobs with Job X after seeing how things were going for me.)
The funny thing is, here is the entire transcript of my last evaluation with New Director: “Everything is fine.” That was it. She barely looked up from her keyboard to issue those words.
“Everything is fine.”
Ha bloody ha.
Even when I was dealing with a mentally unstable boss at a previous job, I’d never been this unhappy. Hell, I was happier being held at gunpoint by those Chechen mafia dudes at Customs in Moscow, frankly. But still, I really loved the core mission of the work at Job X. It was a very good concept, with tremendously worthy objectives and solid goals. But, as far as I could see, it was all rotting from the inside. And, like a dead fish, it was rotting from the head. How can you stay focused and enthused about work in a tiny office when you have no faith in or respect for the leadership? I felt management was fostering disrespect, embracing nepotism, destroying morale, and generally undermining the program mission.
I got my work done, but I did not want to be there. It really was taking a toll on me, and I could not stay healthy. I seemed to be in a perpetual cycle of blood tests and new ailments, and I just wanted to sleep all the time - it was easier than facing the ugliness in the office. I thought I had ulcers. I spent a lot of time crying and just being grim. I actually found myself some mornings, sitting in my car in the parking garage, not wanting to go upstairs. I’d be late because I just didn’t want to be there. Some days, I'd literally be too nauseated to go into the office. And then, with no sick days, it was just money straight out of my pocket. I know that some people in management thought I was a bullshit artist, just claiming to be ill. No such luck, kids. The stress was making me a zombie.
At one point, Budget Guy, who seemed unable to keep anything I said to himself, asked me how I was doing. “Fine,” I replied, not even bothering with a fake smile. “It’ll be much better when my contract is over in March. I look forward to it.” Budget Guy raised an eyebrow. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to him. I’d made no bones about my lack of interest in applying for a new contract. I felt like garbage every time I walked in the door there. I was nearly invisible and barely participatory in anything outside my central duties.
But later that day, I found myself called into the conference room for a meeting with New Director and Budget Guy. It appeared, unable to contain himself, he'd made immediate tracks to New Director to deliver the hardly shocking news that I would be leaving, come March.
“I understand,” New Director started, “that you are not happy here.”
Oh good lord. She had to be kidding, right?
“No. Of course, I’m not happy here, " I answered. "I work with my door shut. I’ve been made to feel like a villain for complaining about New Partner. What do you think?”
Now, just wait for it, kids. This is a classic line from Miss Management. Remember all those lousy, creepy things New Partner liked to say about women? Here’s the wrap-up from New Director:
“He wasn’t making those comments about you, you know."
Holy crap. So, if a guy in a federal office says most women deserve to be beaten, I should only be offended if he specifically says I should be beaten? I should only be offended if he makes slights about me and not other fat women?
WTF, folks?
I finally fell apart. I just started crying. Six years of working this program. Six years of putting up with the garbage. And my complaint about a hostile workplace is dismissed out of hand because this cow thinks I shouldn’t have been offended? Part of me wanted to ask her, a new mother, if he’d suggested that most female babies be drowned, how she would have felt. But I didn’t. I just said, “My last day is March 18th. I will make sure all my files are in order before I go.”
After that, Budget Guy paid me periodic visits to wheedle information from me about my files. I got the impression he thought I was going to leave everything in chaos or otherwise sabotage things. That’s never been my game. My goal was to leave in such a way that no one could say a bad thing about how I left my programs. They could think I was a weasel or a wimp, but they wouldn’t be able to condemn my work.
Finally, I reached my last two weeks. I went through each file in my office, culling junk and making detailed notes for my replacement. I unplugged, defrosted and dried out my mini-fridge, and Budget Guy walked past several times to observe, finally stopping - after having a discussion with New Director - to verify that I wasn't going to leave a wet mess in the office. The conversation was so pathetic, I considered offering it up to you here, just so you could see how bizarrely petty management had gotten about my very presence in the office.
But it's just not worth it.
Dammit.
In retrospect, I almost wish I had left some damp, stinky carpet for the next resident. Actually, considering what was to follow, I kinda wish I’d left my refrigerator full of moldering food for them all.
For things, you see, were about to go to Hell in a big, giant handbasket...
And that handbasket was about to be presented to me in the unfortunate and bloody demise of Mr. Brian Messitt on March 14, 2005...
So, there I was that morning, taking a break from filing and culling and preparing to leave the job. I hit the Drudge Report, and - wham!
Holy crap - check out this news story!! Some guy went nuts and killed someone else in London this morning - with an axe! WTF?!? I have to call the Sasquatch. He won’t believe this one!
So I called the Sasquatch, and I read him the article over the phone. Pretty astounding and awful stuff. Young, neatly dressed guy just whacks away at someone else’s head while horrified bystanders scream and run. When the police picked up Mr. Sheehan, covered in Mr. Messitt's blood, they asked him why he did it. His cold, calm response? “It’s complicated. It’s private.”
Pretty twisted, huh?
The Sasquatch and I marveled at how bizarre the world was, and then, we ended our phone call, returning to the humdrum and the mundane. I saw Budget Guy briefly outside my door. “Oh, hello,” I said. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I was just sorting files, dumping old junk, and making sure that whoever inherited my workload would do so with complete confidence that everything was in order.
Little did I know that someone had hovered outside my office door throughout my entire phone call to the Sasquatch. Not that it should have mattered. I was reading, verbatim, a news account, and clearly so from the style in which the story was written. No way it could be mistaken for anything else.
Life went on. I continued to file, collate, delete, watching the clock tick down on my last week at Job X.
Monday went on, uneventfully.
Tuesday went on, uneventfully.
Wednesday morning went on…. not quite so uneventfully…
Just before 10 a.m. on Wednesday, I was in my office, door closed as usual, eating a bagel and flipping through a huge, awful grant file, thinking that I will have to leave extensive notes behind. Suddenly, there was a knock at my door, and before I could even respond to say "Come in," the door whipped open and New Director and Senior Staffer strode into my office and closed the door.
They had to discuss something serious with me.
I have been overhead discussing an axe murder in my office.
Oh, yeah, I answer. Wasn’t that weird, huh? Helluva thing.
New Director continues. I was heard saying the murder was “Complicated and private.”
Yeah - that’s what this guy said when he was picked up by the police!
I blinked. Wait a second. Where was this going?
And then it was revealed. A complaint had been registered. I made someone "uncomfortable."
Me reading this news story was translated into me making threats against my colleagues. Clearly, I was planning an axe murder in the office.
WHAT?
"This is a joke, right?" That was the first response I could bring up because the very idea of it is so ridiculous. They could think I was an ass for not playing along with their office antics, they could decide I was a wretched worker, but an axe murderer?
I can’t even pick up a bagel knife without injuring myself. As if I was going to haul off and kill someone with an axe! I’m morbidly obese - I don’t have any space under my jacket to hide an axe, nor could I run fast enough to catch someone - or run away. I mean, c’mon, now! This is moronic!
But it wasn’t a joke. I was a threat.
A dangerous, potential axe-murdering threat.
I told New Director I could print up the article for her. And, in fact, I did. That didn’t matter, she said. A complaint had been registered, and New Director was acting on it. It had been decided that I was to leave the office immediately.
But, I protested, still thinking I had a chance in Hell to save myself, I had a witness! I could have the Sasquatch call her. He could clear it up immediately.
That didn’t matter. She wanted me gone. I could finish up my contract from home, but she wanted me out of there right then.
I was a dangerous threat.
This was humiliating and bizarre and ridiculous, and I told her so. I had worked there six years. I had been connected to that program, with love and appreciation, for nearly a dozen years. I am outspoken, yes. A pain in the ass? Sure. But violent? Homicidally violent?
My god, who could seriously think that of me?
I looked at Senior Staffer, who would not look me in the eye. Wasn’t she - theoretically my friend - going to come to my defense? She looked down and mumbled something to the effect of “she has no choice.”
Oh hell, yes, she had a choice! New Director could have told this vindictive employee who made the false claim that he was full of it - much like she’d done to me, when she denigrated my feelings about my sexist coworker. (Ha - she could have told him "But Merujo wasn't planning to kill you specifically!" just like she said about New Partner's sexist bullshit not being specific to me!) She could have come to me and said, “Hey, what gives - can you clear up this silliness?” For years, I’d come to her with concerns about my prima donna partner, about an admin assistant who stole from people’s desks, but she didn’t care. She took no action. But, I was a thorn in her side, and, here, in this appalling idiocy, she had an opportunity to not only get rid of me, but to humiliate me at the same time. She was, quite clearly, feeling empowered by this situation. It was the most managerial she'd ever looked.
Frankly, it was pathetic.
New Director was going on vacation on Thursday night, and I realized that this crap accusation gave her a good opportunity to ditch me before she left on vacation. She could go on leave knowing I wasn't still in the office, and she wouldn't have to do an exit interview with me. (Where I'd planned on being very, very honest with her.)
And I said that to her. "Congrats! You get rid of me before you leave on vacation! That must make you very happy!"
And she had no response. I told her I refused to leave my files in total chaos. And I told her I would leave by noon. She told me to speak to no one.
Bullshit.
If some idiot accuses me of being a wanna-be axe-wielding nutjob, I’m gonna defend myself, sister. There was no way she was getting the first shot at my friends and coworkers, telling them that I was planning to injure or kill them. No fucking way.
“How could you think this of me? How could you possibly take this seriously? How could you?!?”
She did not answer me.
I was sobbing at this point. Sobbing and wounded and angry. I started gathering my personal effects together. My hands were shaking with such force, I could barely pick things up off my desk - I remember knocking a big box off my credenza, my hands were rattling so hard. Indignantly, angrily, I told her I wanted someone to observe me collecting my belongings so there would be no question that I wasn’t stealing from them.
Senior Staffer answered by saying that no one thought I was a thief.
Oh, I thought, so you’re willing to believe I’m a potential murderer, but not a thief. Wonderful!
They left me to gather my effects, as I wept.
I went down the hall and told a dear friend what had happened. He looked utterly shocked. So did the others whom I told. I beat New Director to the punch. Creep.
Then, I went back to my office and called the Sasquatch. I fell completely apart at this point. And let me tell you, folks, that man is a total rock at moments like this - super calm and in control. He could barely understand me, I was so upset. I was crying my guts out.
Eventually, he calmed me down, hung up, and immediately called New Director. He told her the god’s honest truth - that I had read him a newspaper account of a murder. She was silent. He said to her, “You don’t really care, do you? You just want her gone.” She thanked him for calling and hung up on him.
Creep.
She completely ignored him and the copy of the article I gave her.
Foul creep.
By noon I was gone. As I left, humbled and bleary-eyed, New Director came out of her office.
“Do you need any help?”
OMIGOD. Give me a break! What gall to even speak to me!
I refrained from saying what I really wanted to say.
“No.” I hope she heard my utter contempt in that one syllable.
Senior Staffer escorted me to my car. And she said this bizarre thing to me:
“This isn't a reflection on your personal character. Just on your professional one.”
...........
I'll let you ponder that for a minute...
...........
Never in my life did I think any job would end with me being labeled a “threat.” Never in my life did I think anyone would think me capable of murder. And yet, it had happened.
I don’t remember getting home. I sobbed the whole way. I called a couple of my siblings. I realized halfway home I was in shock - shaky, pale, and unable to focus. I pulled over on Connecticut Avenue and tried to get myself together.
I slept the rest of the day, curled up on the sofa with A&E on in the background. I woke up the next morning feeling like death. I opened one eye and saw, much to my distress, a TV screen full of people waving axes and cleavers.
It was an ad for “Kung Fu Hustle.”
I closed my eyes again, and heard - I swear to god: “We now return to the biography of Lizzie Borden.”
Oh jeezus save me!
Now, it’s almost funny, but then it just pained me. For months, I was actually sickened if anyone mentioned axes. Honest. People would ask me what happened, and it tore me up all over again with each new telling. I’d find myself in my car suddenly crying, thinking how I wanted to go to everyone I ever worked with and say, “I’m not a bad person. I’m not a dangerous person. Please believe me!”
There’s a charming capper to that day. New Director still needed a final report from me. I would be allowed to finish out my contract from home. That way, they couldn’t say that they had shorted me on my contract. But my report was already done except for minor editing. Plus, they’d cut me off from my office e-mail and voicemail when they threw me out. So, I couldn’t do anything other than spell check the report and send it out with a note from my personal e-mail address that, as of that moment, I was no longer contracted to them. I would not accept pay for hours I had not worked - no way were they going to be able to say I just put my feet up and stole several hours of taxpayer money.
No freaking way.
It took me weeks and weeks to get my name cleared. I couldn’t job hunt during that time. I had no idea where these morons had filed this false complaint against me. Did Homeland Security now have a record of me as a potential threat to a federal workplace? Would I be on a no-fly list somewhere? What would happen when references called to check on me? Would I ever be able to travel again? These aren’t paranoid thoughts, particularly in DC, post 9/11.
I sent repeated messages to my old office, trying to get them to tell me what the situation was. New Director never responded. I gave her deadlines and told her my attorney needed to know what had been filed and where.
Nada. Zilch. Zip.
I sent messages to her boss, the helmet-haired Washington Bird Lady who sat in isolation, smoking cigarette after cigarette in her federal office, several blocks away from where my humiliation took place. (I always waited for the day when one of her verboten-in-a-federal-workplace smokes would set her Aqua Net on fire.) I firmly informed the Bird Lady that I needed this information sent to me or my attorney would be in touch with her. (I heard it really ticked that woman off to get my e-mail. Good. Hope she recognized the handiwork of her uncontrolled subordinates!) Finally, a bureaucrat from the contracting office sent me an e-mail saying he would review the situation. I gave him deadlines. I reminded him that I was unemployed - and since I’d been self-employed, that meant no unemployment benefits for me. I was living on credit, and I was scared.
The contract-crat missed the deadlines, too. He was legendary during my time at Job X for not responding to voicemail and e-mail. I sent him messages indicating that he would be hearing from my attorney if he didn’t respond. I finally got him on the phone, and, let’s just say I was less than civil about his lack of response. I offered to call his boss if he was too busy to deal with me.
Suddenly, I had a response.
No apology. No decency. No recognition that these idiots has impugned my character and damaged my reputation.
Just an acknowledgement of a poor management decision and this fabulous phrase: “…subsequent conversations among the interested parties have made it clear that your verbal statements were taken out of context.”
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Laughable. My “verbal statements” were the verbatim words from a news report. Hell, we had a guy in the office who forwarded news accounts to us each time someone died in a horrible fire/car accident/airliner crash, and he wasn’t ever removed from the office for being a dangerous threat.
Asses.
I developed terrible insomnia, unable to sleep most nights until 3 or 4 in the morning. I fell into a very deep depression that would flip between feelings of despair and anger and a wish for some really biblical retribution to kick them all in the butt - plagues of frogs and all that stuff. I was lost, and I wasn’t sure if I would be found again. I had support from friends and family, but I say this with all sincerity - the Sasquatch saved my life last year. He had faith in me when I had none left, and he stayed by my side when I think most people would have walked away, not knowing what to do.
He is my friend, and his friendship is worth more than diamonds. And I hope he knows that.
I started blogging in earnest to keep myself going, just to stay sane. Some readers were supportive, others - who had no real idea what had happened - told me to just die or shut up. But I kept writing and I kept searching. And one season of unemployment and distress turned into a fearful two, and finally a desperate three. I was one week away from moving, in shame and poverty, to my sister’s farm in Illinois when my fortunes turned.
In the end, there is good that comes from all of this. I have an amazing job in a place where I’ve dreamed of working since I was a little kid. I am nearly every single day, even if it’s just a silly bit here or there. I’m doing radio commentary for an NPR station, and I’m working on a book.
I was humbled last year, but - and I apologize if this sounds clichéd - I am a stronger person for it. I survived.
After reading this, you might think, well, she’s kind of a wuss. But I tell you this, until someone in a position of authority accuses you of being dangerous - a potential murderer - you cannot understand how much it affects you. How much you want to be able to tell the world that you are not some crazy killer, that you are being persecuted. No matter what I know in my heart to be true, I will always remember what it felt like to be branded a dangerous threat and be kicked out of a job I’d held for more than half a decade.
These people who played their parts in this event likely have no idea how much damage they did to me. My mental and physical health declined. My confidence was wrecked, and my finances were destroyed. And, even though I have a wonderful new job, I will still likely face bankruptcy this spring.
And yet, I can only pity these individuals. Long after my health returns and my finances have stabilized again, they will have to live with themselves. And, if there isn’t an accounting in this lifetime (which there should, god and the Inspector General willing), I hope there is in the afterlife. I’d like to see them explain themselves. They screwed with my life, and yet, they still thrive.
Shortly before I was kicked out, another long-time (and much-loathed) contractor left the office for a new job. A large poster was put up, where federal staffers - including senior members of staff - took guesses on when he would be back "grovelling" (their word) for his old job.
I wonder how long it took them to hang up something similarly disrespectful and indecent about me.
They should be ashamed of themselves.
But, because they are allowed to operate with very little supervision from Actual Grown-ups, they are emboldened rather than ashamed. And that’s just another embarrassment for this country’s government.
I survived.
I have a new life.
But somewhere back in my mind, even when I laugh about axes, there is part of me that carries the residual fear. I wish I could do a little Vulcan mindmeld on these jerks and let them feel the pain and fear I experienced. I imagine they'd melt into puddles, because I don't think they're that strong, frankly.
But I am.
One. Tough. Chick.
Hey, Job X: you tried your best to drag me down. But babycakes, I'm still here.
And tomorrow is, indeed, another day.
