So people want to know why I killed my former blog, The Kilted Liberal, especially since it finally seemed to be taking off and getting a real rythmn to it. Here it goes.
About two and half weeks ago I got called into my boss' office. Time for my performance review. I was not nervous, if anything I was looking forward to talking with him about my job and upcoming and ongoing projects. The background to this is that my boss is a conservative Christian. He's told me that he believes in the end times and I know he struggles to reconcile his scientific understanding of evolution with a literal interpretation of the Bible. My boss is also a registered Republican and very active in his party. He's a smart guy, he's very fair and for every fault he has, he also has a positive. Overall I like him, I respect him, I love learning from him and I think he is a good man.
So I go in for my performance review and he hands me a stack of papers about a half inch thick and says, "What's this?"
It was a stack of pages printed from my blog. Someone had helpfully highlighted the parts they felt were most incriminating. Specifically they had singled out every post mentioning the following:
Now, let's be fair here: those last two are fair game I'd guess, even though I never mentioned where I worked or specifically what I do. And there was one post that essentially said I hate this fucking place. And I have no excuse for posting during work hours except boredom. My saving grace is that there were only six instances of it and all six were one or two line posts, i.e. I saw some thing interesting and posted a link.
But aside from about eight pages, the entire rest of it was Wicca, politics, drinking and sex. Some of the entries had been copied and pasted rather than printed out directly. This allowed my enemy to show only what she wanted to show.
I'm a lucky guy. My boss leaned over the desk and said: I don't give a shit what you believe, or who you vote for. In fact, I don't even want to know. I just want you to work hard while you are here. I trust you and I depend on you. Don't ever, ever post about work again (yeah, I know, I'm doing a shitty job living up to that already) and never post during work hours.
And then in front of me he tore the papers to shreds and dumped them in the trash. I got a 3% raise instead of the 5% I expected. I wasn't going to bitch about that just then.
See why I respect my boss?
When I left his office there was a coworker kind of standing across the way. She was pretending to talk to some guys in their office but she was staring at me. I know she knew about my blog. See, I was dumb enough to tell her about the old one and I guess she followed me to the new one.
I kept my face expressionless and went to my desk and began to clean the papers on top of it. This was not deliberate; I was simply remaining calm. Then I saw she was smiling. She thought I was cleaning my desk out and she was enjoying it. On my desk is a decorative black marble ball about four inches in diameter; it weighs about six or seven pounds. I really wanted to pick it up and smash her fucking brains out with it. Instead I sat down and got back to work.
The expression on her face when she realized I was not going anywhere was priceless. I do wish I had a camera for it.
For some reason, ever since then she has been very nervous about being in a room with me. I'm not sure why; I'm always perfectly polite. Maybe she thinks I'm just as nasty and vicious of a person as her.
So why did she do this? I'm not really sure. We disagree about politics and she is somewhat religious, but I don't think that is it. What seems to have set her off is one of my posts on women. I related a specific circumstance which was not about her, but I think that she thought it was about her. That's my best guess, but I really don't know.
What am I going to do about it?
Keep blogging. But this time, I am going to try to remain anonymous. That sucks. I really enjoyed sharing pictures of my baby girl with you guys. But her name is distinctive and the biggest value I got out of blogging was an ability to be very honest with my feelings. I'm thinking of starting a separate blog which will be very public, attached to my name and career, but that will be very bland and as a matter of self preservation, dishonest. I kind of need to do that; I'm about to be published in a major publication in my profession. But I won't talk about that here.
Pretty fucking sad, eh?
Maybe I'll just have to start my own company so that I don't have to worry about keeping others happy so I stay employed.
Lots of prayer, meditation and 12 step action needed on this one...
Photo is of the Rocky Mountains from just behind Denver in Golden Gate State Park. On the far right is Estes Park and Longs Peak. In the middle is Mount Evans. Both Evans and Longs are over 14,000 feet high and I hope to climb them both before I die. The photo is of my home, I just don't live there yet.
3 comments:
Oy, it's just what I guessed. Your coworker's behavior is absolutely unacceptable. I'm really glad your boss is a mensch. I say keep killing them with kindness - people like your coworker will hate it. On the other hand, everytime you hear her complaining about something that's gone wrong in her life, you can say (under your breath but audibly), "just you wait, my pretty," and run your hands together and caress the dark orb on your desk.
unbelievable! So glad that your boss is the person he is, that is refreshing to see. The coworker however, well Inanna said it best.
One suggestion is to refer to your daughter by a nickname specifically for this blog. I do this with my daughter having specifically assigned a nickname whenever I refer to her on the internet. I only share photos of her under lock and key but then that's my choice as she's 6yrs old now.
Good luck with the new space, the coworker and reclaiming in some form what you've lost. Perhaps in time you'll find that shedding your blog was necessary for more positive reasons. Thanks for sending me the link.
Steph
Forgive me, but your co-worker is a total cunt. I have never understood why people do things like this. Why?
Funny thing is that I recently had my performance evaluation recently and my manager's behaviour was pretty cunty too.
I ended up resigning a few days later because life is too short to put up with shit like that.
Dude, you have to find a way to be self-employed... that's your path...I hope you find your way to it...
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