Cafe Hitch-hike

2024-01-20

As Pluto leaves Capricorn (Part 1)

(Or, Part I: Rest in peace, Boss)

The funeral for my former boss was today, but I could not go. I started to cry once I entered my car and my mind was made up. However, I went to the local coffee shop where I pre-ordered a breakfast wrap and cappuccino that I planned to eat during my 40-minute drive to where it was held.

It’s true that I had a very mixed relationship with this boss and that I did not trust them after a point. They were the head of my division for 15 years and my direct boss for 3 of those. Over time, I understood they had a very complicated relationship with the building, especially being the only person of color at that rank (there had been none until them). They also spent most of their career working under horrendous leadership. The first was a cruel dictator known as Godzilla and then our last deranged grand pubah. The boss then worked under until our current one who’s actually very personable but operates akin to a tropical storm.

Since the boss died, I started realizing or at least perceiving that huge level of dysfunction and very bad treatment throughout the building. I guess after I distanced myself from my dysfunctional family, I only swapped it out for an near-equally dysfunctional occupation. I often felt bad cos of work (most of you who’ve read me over the years could see that, and I’m sorry) and the reasons are becoming more clear to me.

I really felt that the boss and the deranged GP really held me back careerwise in a lot of ways; I felt like I had more disdain more than their support. They did that to many others in the building, not only me. I’ve really had to tell myself not to take that personally considering the way they were towards most people.

I had a complicated relationship with them, and I couldn’t go to the funeral. I was too afraid of how my grief and anger would come out, and I didn’t want to appear to be a mess with the boss’s family and our colleagues present.

And, I guess my mind was overwhelmed by the recent events in the building. I had a fire flare due to more resignations. That meant tasks were shoved on people who already had too much on their hands on top of having to learn how to do them. I had to figure out how to do a workaround to a significant task, and now it has to clear through 2 departments who barely talk to each other.

The second was an issue of employment contracts. I had to follow the breadcrumbs and investigate what went wrong. While they were being drafted last year, Tropical Storm (the nickname of our GP) wanted a lot of changes to them along with a few other important documents; however, TS never got around to giving her final approval on many of the contracts. I thought this was an issue with my division, but as it turned out, other divisions in the building ahad the same problem. At least TS’s office is in the process of getting them finalized because it wasn’t on their radar.

I had to work with Tropical Storm’s office on both issues. TS’s secretary is pretty much trying to keep their nose above water (they’re literally doing the job of 3 people), and the office staff didn’t seem to talk to each other and apparently don’t get the same information from TS. But, luckily we got the contract issues resolved and I made notes for how to handle this when we do it for next year (assuming I’m still doing this).

I then was voluntold with another division head to go to an event in TS’s absence and I didn’t want to go, even when I first heard about it and before being voluntold. The division head and I did a minimal amount of interacting with others (at least the views of the local talent made it interesting and we got free wine). We interacted with each other during the walk to and from th event. Their division had been seriously fucked these past few years but in different ways than mine.

Tropical Storm (the building grand pubah) and the division heads in the building inherited some serious messes, and have to figuratively clean house with little more than old rags, a bottle of ammonia, a few paper bags, and our own elbow grease. Instead, we need a construction crew to gut it, and then rebuild or repair the frames, windows, foundation, plumbing, HVAC, electric, and roof. Better yet, burning and burying the building would be the ideal thing, and then build from scratch.

I guess I feel very overwhelmed right now about work and the last thing I needed was to attend the funeral of a former boss. Here I’ve been describing it as a dumpster fire for a long time, and now that I’ve gotten more (sensitive) information about its functionings, I’m sad to say my spidey senses were correct all along. I wasn’t being hysterical or oversensitive after all, and I think there’s a kind of processing that needs to happen after that. Yeah, processing and deciding how the fuck to approach it all.

downwind | upstream