Ire.
So Charolette just called me from the sanctity of F/OM’s vacant office. She asked if I’d heard the news … that our mental health clinic was just funded by a major foundation. Apparently, HRP was dancing in the hallway. Had I heard the news? What, did she expect HRP to actually let me know something related to my department? Did she actually think that we communicate like normal colleagues around here? That my superior would let me know about a major funding coup because I might have had something to do with it?!?!
I know EXACTLY who funded us, because I WROTE THE FUCKING PROPOSAL!!!!! I lost close to two weeks of my life (including four nights of sleep) to get that motherfucker in the phenomenal shape that it was in. I’d had a huge argument with HRP about that very proposal, because I’d killed myself to have the writing 99 percent finished within one week (which was good ’cause I thought I had longer because HRP told me I had longer and I did my research and found out I only had two weeks). Anyway, during our famous argument, she said I should’ve worked at a slower pace and not driven myself and my department crazy, and I said that I believed my information was correct about the fast-approaching deadline, and thus, I was glad to have gotten the bulk of the work done as quickly as I had. So HRP snarls, “Whatever gets you to sleep at night.”
Hah.
At any rate, the foundation funded $90K of my $200K request. Do you know how I know? Because Programme Directeur just came to talk to me (about something unrelated) and congratulated me on getting the funding. Said I’d better put it on my resume. LOL. At least somebody cared enough to tell me, but it wasn’t exactly as soon as the call came in, you can bank on it. And at least I found out today, not tomorrow or next week.
And I am SO GLAD that this proposal was funded, particularly because at the leadership retreat I missed, HRP went off on a tangent about how the department didn’t earn its salary. Now, between this and another large grant, I was responsible for $350K coming in to the agency. So I didn’t earn my salary? Fuck that shit … I earned my salary more than eight times over, between two grants. Just imagine when/if my other proposals become funded … I am worth more to that agency than any of them are willing to admit. And it’s a damn shame that they let people like me walk away because they don’t give two shits about keeping us. No, they keep the useless ones and make the rest of us feel like shit when we struggle to carry the dead weight. Well, my load has been lifted … I am no longer responsible for the financial future of a place that kicks you when you’re down and beats the shit out of you when you’re not as down as you usually are!!!