You Can't Make This Shit Up, I'm Cross Stitching that to my Wall of Shame

I enjoyed spoiling myself so much on my fiftieth birthday, I decided to do it again on my fifty first.  Just me and the whole day to myself. I had a manicure, pedicure, massage and I visited the physhic. I drew the Five of Cups Card that supported that I am one to look at the glass half full, remaining positive in my life challenges. 

He stated there were many changes going on with the company I worked for and they were all positive changes.  Yes, he was on target there.  The old senior management was retiring and young blood was replacing them.

He told me to be patient, the company would be very successful and that they preferred to force people to leave verse firing them.  I had seen this happening already, in my own office a year earlier.  He stated there would be more work for me, but that I could handle it.  More work, same pay, story of my life, but I was fine with that.  Jobs were hard to come by and I was content where I was.

The  next thing he said though, alerted me.  I work in a branch office of a large company and my office is small.  "Watch others, they will twist your words and be prepared for backstabbing, but do not participate in it."  Well, that didn't sound too promising, but I made a note of it as I never know when these things might happen.  It can be happening, going to happen or be years from happening.

He told me once again I was pushing opportunities for relationships on the back burner and I needed to stop.  "You are too nice and you fear getting hurt again."  Was he reading my mind?  "I want you to go buy the book, "Why Men Marry Bitches."  He proceeded to tell me the man he had been speaking of for a couple of years now, would be going through a divorce soon and I needed to be prepared to move on when I met him.  

Yeah, yeah, yeah, why men marry bitches?  I bought the book.  I am every thing but a bitch.  How do you change your personality to attract men?  This was going on the back burner, love me for who I am or I have no interest.

In mid June my boss called.  The offices on the East Coast needed temporary help and asked if I'd pitch in.  Sure, what was I going to say?  My boss, he is not the best communicator and to him, every thing is top secret.  I believe he just doesn't understand the big picture, so to not inform you is more from him not knowing what is going on than it being a secret.

Starting July 1, for three weeks, I needed to pitch hit.  One adjuster was on vacation, one was retiring and one was on sick leave.  As a manager, I would think you would tell your staff member who was on first, so that when they started fielding phone calls, you could inform the injured worker that the adjuster they had been working with had retired or was on vacation and would return on a certain date.  Nope, I didn't have a clue who was on first, second, third or up to bat.

I came in the first day after Fourth of July and my email and phones were exploding with calls from the East Coast.  I was not expecting an avalanche to fall on me.  Workers Compensation basics are the same in all states, the differences can vary, but are important when adjusting a claim.  For instance, how many days must you be disable before you  are eligible for benefits?  Some states it is seven days, some three, some are consecutive, some are not.  How long do you have to be off, before the waiting period is paid, again, varies from state to state.  I was handling four states that I was not familiar with the jurisdictions at all.

My boss was on vacation.  The manager for the East Coast, was on vacation as well.  My contact in the Home Office that could assist me, you got it, on vacation.  What is a girl to do?  In some of these states I needed to be licensed and I wasn't, so calling the state to ask a simple question like how long is the waiting period would trigger a normal person to ask, "If you have a license, why don't you know this?"

I did what any normal person would do, I reached out to a woman who I had worked with previously one other time that I had helped out the East Coast offices.  I had exchanged emails, spoken to her on the phone and there was no ill will between us.  I called and left a message.  No response.  I wrote an email, "I just got a butt load of claims dumped on me and I am not sure what the waiting period is in Delaware?  Is it three consecutive days or three random days?  The check is due and I need some help as every one is on vacation."  Simple, to the point.

She never called nor responded to my email.  Maybe she was on vacation as well.  I did what I could do  and hoped for the best. Within two weeks, my boss flew in to Indianapolis from Kansas.  He wanted to meet me off site.  This is not normal practice, so I asked why.  We need to talk.  Great, can I know the subject so I can be prepared?  Nope.

I figured if it was going to get nasty, might as well do it in a place that I couldn't hear what he was saying so I wouldn't get so pissed off, so I told him to meet me at Buffalo Three for lunch.  A loud sports bar.

I was recovering from a terrible bout with poison ivy and had been to the doctor that morning.  He knew every year I came in  contact with this and it is what it is.  I showed him the brochure the doctor gave me and told him I was going to have the leaves tattooed on to my arm so I could compare them to the leaves I seemed to be battling in my yard.

He took the brochure and was studying it. Red flag.  He didn't want to be there.  He had walked in with a large file folder and he was stalling.

"I don't know what you are here about, but since you insisted we meet off site, I am guessing it isn't going to be pleasant, so what ever you have to say, let's get this over with."

I was not expecting this.  He produced the email I sent and stated the employee I had sent this to was offended by the use of my word, "butt load." Wow.  I looked at him and said, "Thank God I wasn't looking her in the eye, because I would have said, shit load."  This had to be a mistake. Butt load, offensive?

He pulled out the policies on writing professionally when dealing with any and all parties and he produced a memo stating I had used offensive language.  The psychic's words came to mind, "Others will twist your words

He said it was uprofessional to not only use the word, but that I had written to a person from a sister company and it made our company look inept to the outside world.  Yeah, make note to self about that, I might be able to draw from that later on.

I informed him that  I had not been given any information about my assignment and I had worked with this woman before.  He offered nothing.  He left and flew back to Kansas City.  A good use of expense money was used in this trip to Indy.

I went back to the office and was fit to be tied, but I did what I could do with what I had been given.  That is all he said, don't use the word butt load.

The end of the three weeks were upon us and I was looking forward to returning these files back to those who were returning from vacation and sick leave.  They had hired a replacement for the retiree, but she had fallen and broken her ankle and was not able to start work for six weeks, so my assignment was to continue.

Not a problem.  I assumed I would be handling one case load verses three.  Again, I asked the names of the returning staff so I could redirect calls to them and again, nothing was provided.

I contacted this woman several times, once I apologized for my inappropriate use of words.  No response was received.  Odd, she was a  manager and she wouldn't respond, but again, I received a call from some one higher than me and was told to "handle this" without any more information given.

Six weeks into this temporary assignment and someone, who apparently had a manager, who was informed and informed his staff, called.  During our conversation I told her about the lack of response from the manager on the East Coast and was there some one else that I could reach out to.

Imagine how surprised I was to learn that I was to have no contact with this woman at all. Imagine how surprised I was to learn the company that had been handling these claims was a sister company that we had pulled the contract from and were bringing these claims in house with the new hire handling all of these claims.  Yes, there were people returning from vacation and sick leave, but they no longer were under contract to do this work.  Six weeks passed and I am told I am to have no contact with these people as there is ill will between their company  and ours over the handling of the claims.  And here I am calling them asking for help, when someone above me has told them they were not performing to standard and the work was being taken away. I guess I'd be sensitive too if some one said butt load to me.  No, I wouldn't but, it was an excuse to comprehend the behavior.  It wasn't like I called some one a M.F (Maternal Fornicator) for not reaching out to help me do their work. I was thinking this was a very big piece to the puzzle had I known it six weeks ago!

But this was typical of my manager. "There are things going on over your head that you don't have to worry about, that's what they pay me for."  My head? Was about four inches higher off the ground than his and his was usually in the dark, stuck up some orifice that resembles a part of my offensive language.

I can have a difficult time working for someone who does not communicate or is intimidated by me.  He was both. Karma is a bitch and I have learned that with patience, you can drive that bus with a smile as wide as the universe, you just have to be patient.

Slightly simmering from his visit several weeks later, I received a phone call from an attorney on the East Coast looking for authorization to proceed to trial.  Understand I am not familiar with the who who's in that part of the region and he started to explain to me his predicament.

His secretary called "a man" to find out who the replacement adjuster was and  how to go about getting the needed authority to proceed with settlement or trial.  She was informed that this person was the "middle man" and knew nothing about what was going on.  He was asked if the attorney could anticipate a return phone call once the adjuster was determined as this was an urgent matter at the time.  I took me a second or two, this man worked as our outside counsel, he was one of us, not the plaintiff attorney, so why would he not expect a call from the company who hired him?

I am going to have the response cross stitched on to cloth and framed as it was priceless. "No, you can't expect a call back from the adjuster."  The attorney was snickering as he told me this tale, it had been weeks since he had this conversation so he had time to settle down his blood pressure.

"Cindy, I have never had a client tell me I could not expect a phone call back from them. I called (the manager that I had used the offensive language) and told her, you can't make this shit up!"  Another classic bound cross stitch wall hanging! And, should I be offended that he used the word shit?  It does come from the butt and when loaded, it is a butt load, but I just snickered, I was much bigger than shit.  

I asked him if he could find out the name of the person who informed him of this so  I could correct them and let them know I was the person they needed to direct those calls to.  He said his secretary had it and he'd call me back. We discussed the reason he called and as I hung up, I dialed  my manager to inform him of this predicament as apparently we needed to advise this "middle man" that we do return phone calls.

As I was on the phone to address this and other issues, the familiar ding, "you've got mail" sound was heard.  I was seconds from broaching this subject when I opened the email from this attorney who represented us and there before my eyes, karma was spelled in two words.  The "middle man" was my boss.

Wow! Guess I can cut this conversation short.  I had to put this in prospective. He told a person out side of the company that he was just the  middle man and no, he, our attorney could not expect a return phone call from us, who in turn, called a woman who worked for our sister company to tell her, "you can't make this shit up," she being the one that he would have had the conversation with, had things not turned out the way they had. This scenerio was not different than what he had flown in to Indianapolis to discuss with me.

My whole mood changed.  I knew the physic said no back biting in response to back biting, but he had threatened my employment if one more email was issued that he found offensive.  In Indiana, they can fire you if they don't like how your shoes are tied with no warning. The company had always been fair to me, especially when I was hired and Bill was dying, but I didn't report to this man then.

My long, lean fingers wasted no time typing a novel to the senior vice president who apparently had been confronted by the woman and directed my manager to address it with me.  Needless to say, it was a classic email, should be framed right next to the cross stitch selections I spoke of earlier.

Not long after that I received a phone call and was questioned intensively over the matter.  The attorney received one as well. It didn't matter to me whether it was addressed or not with him.  The principle was the same and if you are going to send some one in to my bubble to tell me I was unprofessional, that person had better have a clean slate himself.

It wasn't long after that when I received a call from my manager. He let me know in his own way, he had been spoken to.  If he thought this was going to put me in a corner and rattle me, he didn't know me that well.

It was the first of many times that I went over his head and each time warranted.  He told me the following year at my review that I was not going to get a pay raise.  That didn't surprise me, this was a tit for tat relationship we had.  What surprised me was he told me I was at the top of my pay scale. He could have just left it as that, no raise.  The maximum raise you can even get is two percent and you have to walk on water and part the seas to be eligible for that, but he had to justify perhaps to himself why he was doing this.

I had no idea what my pay scale was, so I contacted Human Resources.  It took over six weeks to get a response to several inquiries, but again, imagine my surprise when I discovered I was in the lower two percent of my pay scale and not maxed out.  Sharpened up the fingers and let them rip across the keys.

The reason? We had just had a manager's meeting that we had been informed by the new senior management that we were all a team and there was a new open door policy, no secrets, no lies, if you wanted to know some thing about the reorganization, step up and ask.  No lies? Apparently one of the team members missed class that day as he had flat out lied to me about the reason of no pay increase and to make matters worse? I hadn't asked for a reason.

The same inquiries were made, the same follow up was adhered to, the phone rang one day and it was my boss.  Tanya and I were having a meeting when he called and I was a little light hearted when I picked up the phone.

"Sounds like you are on a beach there having a drink and way too much fun."

"Nope, just doing my job, what can I do for you?"

"Yes, I imagine you can't afford a vacation let alone a cabana boy to serve you drinks on the beach......"  Guess some one had spoken to him again and he was letting me know.  If you are going to be disrespectful to the people who report to you, you should know, respect will not be returned.

I am thrilled to announce the physic told me years ago I'd get a new boss who was my equal and believed in team work.  It has been one month since that announcement was made and in those thirty days, I have been provided more information about what is going on than I had received in the six years I reported to the other.  Life can bless you when you least expect it and it can come in the smallest packages.

Memories of Vacations Linger with Us years later

Cliff Divers

The second port was Mazatlan.  We signed up to take a city bus tour that would last four hours. It was a mix of touring, history and shopping.  One of the stops was to see the cliff divers.  There is no way I would chance diving in to those waters like they do.

I don't think this is an area that I would want to spend more than a day in.  It is known for shrimping,  produce,the  largest poinsettia farms supplying many countries and of interest, it is where all cars are shipped to have every thing changed to Spanish and then sent all over Mexico and South America.  Who would have known?

We had to shop, it was one of the stops.  I saw this ring that I just fell in love with and the shop owner was anxious to sell it to me.  I kept telling him I was broke as I had just bought diamond earrings for myself.  He, of course, thought I needed to spoil myself.  I was quick to point out, I had just done that and now I was broke!  He kept dropping the price and although it was tempting, I didn't have any money to spend on more jewelry.  I had to buy my spoons from each port that I started to collect years ago when I began this adventure of traveling.  He went so far as to find me in another store to tell me he'd drop the price more.  Sorry buddy, look at the ears!  He followed me on the bus and dropped the price more.  I just couldn't.  Tanya was so surprised that I didn't buy it, I had the cash, but we were three days in to this trip and I needed to buy spoons!

There was a woman who had a baby strapped on her back with three little children waiting for the tour bus to stop.  She was selling dolls that appeared to be voo-doo like.  Every time the bus stopped in the down town area, she was waiting out side of the door.  We couldn't figure out how she got from spot A to B before the bus.  It wasn't like we were taking the long route to get there.  But she was desperate to sell her dolls.  I wanted to take her aside and explain that if the people on the bus didn't buy her dolls at point A, B and C, chances were they were not going to buy them at points D, E and F.  But you can't fault her, she had all these kids in tow to feed!

Thanksgiving was finally here.  We were in Puerto Vallarta.  Now there is some where I could spend a week.  It is a small village as the mountain range borders most of the city.  Again, we took the city history tour to discover that Liz Taylor and Richard Burton were the biggest scandal this city had to offer in their history.  The man who narrated the tour, Alberto, was very informative but every sentence started out with, "Let me tell you some thing."  We have collected catch phrases from all our vacations.

In Hawaii, we had met this little girl who was maybe five, dressed cute as a button with a big flower on her hat and sunglasses.  She sat in the back of the van with Tanya and I and her parents were in the front.  Tanya was sitting next to her and started a conversation, she was quite the conversationalist. I started to join the conversation and she was quick to put me in my place.

"I can only have a conversation with one of you and I am talking to her."

"Excuse me, but I thought you'd like to talk to the Queen." Tanya started to tell her that I was the Queen. Her response was priceless, delivered like a pro.

"Why does that not surprise me?"  We could not stop laughing and it became our catch phrase from Hawaii.

That evening, we decided we would go down to the formal seating for dinner and have our Thanksgiving feast. Tanya had been down the night before, but I chose to eat in the cafeteria.  The table sat eight and the night before there was another couple who sat with her. But that night, they had reservations at one of the premium restaurants.  We sat with another couple who had been assigned this table. There names were Joan and Richard from Sacramento.  I did not want to have to be social, it is why I had avoided the formal dining area all week, but, they sat right down next to me.  I was sandwiched between them and Tanya.

It was Joan's birthday and they had been on the horse expedition all day.  They had met on E-Harmony and they shared their whole dating history with us. Do you understand now why I didn't want to go?  I can't just sit there once they start their stories, I have to act interested which leads to more conversation. Tanya?  Didn't say a word, she wasn't sitting next to them, I was.  There were only four of us at the table so it wasn't like I could divert my attention to my napkin on the floor to avoid all conversations.

All during dinner I kept staring at Richard.  If he was facing you head on, his nose was pointing west.  I couldn't figure it out. Had it been broken?  Had it always been that way?  I mean really, it is the first thing you noticed.  It wasn't slightly bent, it was oddly bent to the side!

When we got back to the room, I asked Tanya what she thought had happened to his nose.  Can you believe she didn't notice?  Didn't notice! I asked her how she could sit there for two hours and not notice his nose was sideways?  Again, I notice details like this.
  
The next evening she wanted to go back to the formal dining room.  I had about all the socializing I could stand, so I went to the cafeteria. She met up with me later and couldn't stop laughing.  They were at the dinner table again that night and she said she could not take her eyes off his nose and couldn't believe she didn't notice it the night before.

I was sitting in a secluded area of the cafeteria when she came looking for me.  Every evening during the dinner hour, a little man wheeled a cart around the room chanting, "Green Tea."  It sounded more like Gring Tee. Tanya enjoyed her green tea and he enjoyed serving her.  Every once in a while in the office now, I'll take a make shift cart I have there, micro wave a cup of water and wheel it over to her desk doing my best imitation of the oriental man chanting, "Gring Tee."  We laugh at our memories we have shared on our adventures.

The final day we were on board, as the ship made its way back to LA, we had the best weather of the whole trip. Eighty degrees and not a cloud in the sky. Wouldn't you just know it, the vacation was over and we were headed back home.