Day 9/30- Someone Who Has Made You Feel Like Dirt October 23, 2010

Hello all.  Today’s 30 days topic is the opposite of yesterday’s:  someone who has made your life a living hell or treated you like dirt.  Despite the point of this whole 30 Days thing, which is truth, I don’t think it’s productive to write about someone who has done that, so I’ll write to them.

Dear Co-Workers Frick and Frack,

You are masters.  Masters of the art of cruelty.  You’ve got it down to an art form.  Congratulations.  Treating someone like they are invisible and/or do not exist is one of the cleverest forms of torture ever devised, and both of you have chosen to do that to me in the past, so I commend you on your supreme hatefulness. 

Frick:  you have no idea how deeply it hurts when you walk in and address only the boss and pretend I’m not standing there three feet away from him.  When I have to walk past you to get something and you stand there and don’t move out of my way, like I’m not there and you own the world.  I understand why you’re doing it.  You think I betrayed your confidence.  But you were doing something sneaky and underhanded and backstabbing, and you put me in the middle and I had no choice but to share what I knew because other people needed to know.  That’s my explanation.  Don’t believe it or accept it? That’s fine, but we’re both adults.  (To say we’re mature adults may be taking things too far.) In theory, we should be able to be civil to each other in a business setting.  I don’t think it’s too much for me to ask, for you to not make me feel like something wormy and disgusting on the bottom of your shoe by pretending I don’t exist when you are there.  I realized today that I do that right back to you, but only because I’ve tried to make the effort in the past and you ignored it completely.  Sometimes I want to forgive you, but I don’t know what makes you think you are so special and spectacular and high and mighty.  You’re a climber and a user, and I don’t trust you and I don’t respect you and I don’t know how you can sleep at night. 

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Frack, that month when you were treating me like I was both deadly and invisible was the worst month I’ve ever endured on that job.  You acted as if I had the plague.  When I walked into your line of sight, you backed up.  When I stood near your end of the counter you moved to the opposite end.  When I put down something like a stapler, you’d go find a different one instead of using the one I just put down.  When I was standing between you and the door, you’d go all the way around the room just to avoid coming within two feet of me. When you had something to say and all of us were standing around, you’d specifically address the other girls as if I were not there, purposely excluding me, offering them things like drinks and snacks, and not me.  The only time you spoke to me was if a customer was standing right there and it directly involved their transaction.  You refused to answer when I asked you a question, pretending I hadn’t spoken.  The coldness and hate radiating from you was palpable. You asked other people questions they knew nothing about, when I had just finished answering that very question. You talked trash about me every time I left the room.  And yet you bragged about church, and how you were “cleaning up your game” and you had a “mansion waiting for” you in heaven.  All the while you were doing everything you possibly could to make another person feel pain. 

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I know why you did all that.  I mean, I did bite your head off.  I told you if you snapped at me again, you and I were going to have it out.  After you bit my head off first.  You know what?  That was a little extreme.  You even told people I threatened your life.  And when I couldn’t take it anymore and I decided I was going to have to make the step if it was ever going to improve, I apologized.  I apologized for everything, and you never said a word and you never apologized to me.  Just started acting normal the next Monday.  I guess it doesn’t matter, because it appears to me and everyone else who works with you, that you’re… kinda nuts.  Anyway.  Just wanted you to know that your little plan worked.  You successfully made me feel like dirt every single day for over a month until I backed down and apologized for something you started.  You must feel very gratified, but it doesn’t make you any less crazy.  PS- Obama is not the anti-christ. 

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Until next time,

D.

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