So I’m not the only one who walked away from yesterday’s meeting with a “Clapping for T-Shirts” feeling.
What I’ve found, and I’ve shared this with fellow defeated people, is that the Big Guy likes to speak favor over the new people. People who haven’t achieved anything here yet. People who may still be in the stages of asking a lot of questions and getting input from those of us who’ve been there. People who, well, don’t quite have the battle wounds to tell our stories in a way that words can’t.
When I was brand-new and having a little trouble getting the “lifers” to give me a break (or chance), our very charismatic company owner called them all into a room and said hey look, this girl is pretty skilled and experienced and I put her in a position of power over you for a reason.
It was up to me to prove him right.
I did.
So maybe that was the motivation behind new folks getting lauded, to garner our respect. Of course, when it was done for me it was for the highly paid set and not the general population. We’ll see if it has the same outcome.
I reached out to my girlfriend yesterday to say it was a “Clapping for T-Shirts” kind of day. And she said, “Do you just picture going up to someone and pretending to high-five them but bitch-slapping them instead?”
Yes, yes I do.
We had some laughs over the Veggie Patch where it all began, how nobody believes the stories we tell about that place and how you really had to be there to witness/comprehend the absurdity of it all. In retrospect, the best thing they ever did was hire us at the same time because we “new girls” bonded and became fast friends for life.
Anyway, as we always say, we know things can be worse because we’ve endured worse.
Now for the bigger problem — I have three weeks’ paid vacation expiring in exactly three months. How and WHEN can I even make a dent in it?