Journaling

I do a lot of Journaling. There was a point where I would journal once in a while and print it out and put it into a notebook. But I wasn't doing much. There were 3 days of journaling in March 1994 that never got put into a notebook. On the first of the days I only wrote a little. I was working for the most abusive boss I ever met, and a second boss who was almost as bad. And the situation was getting worse than it had been during the previous 3 years because of a co-worker who wanted my job. I raised my voice to more than a whisper that day for one sentence, but got control over my voice immediately.

The second of those three days was the hot spot. I got called into HR to be written up. Twice on the same day for two different things. One of them the one sentence of louder than normal speech. Neither of them reasonable for a HR visit. And the paperwork was done wrong on both sets of paperwork. One had been signed off by a manager who no longer worked for the company. The other had not been signed off on by anyone. And company policy had not been followed in either case.

This kind of thing was weird. I was a legal secretary at that company. And I knew lawyers, including one who had written, and signed a memo to me warning me that something ugly was coming up. And he was the person who signed off on the first set of papers. There was no question that I had cause to sue them if I wanted to.

On the third day I went back to HR on my own, and basically asked for help. And what was even weirder, I got the help I needed to get out of that abusive situation, and to get into Unemployment benefits. I needed the benefits because we were in a recession in the state I was living in at that time. I think, looking back, that the head of the HR department had pretty much had enough. Since I wanted out, he got me out. It took me three months to locate the best job I had ever had in a long working life.

I've always thought that the co-worker who sparked the event that sent me down to HR got what she wanted. She got my job. Hope she enjoyed it, but somehow I doubt it because I kept seeing ads for what had to have been my job multiple times over the next couple of years. Neither of the lawyers I worked for had ever been able to keep a secretary for more than a few months before I came along.

It was interesting to see those 8 sheets of paper again after all of these years. I was so angry, and then so at peace all in less than 2 weeks. I am so glad that the kind of thing I was dealing with then, is long gone now.