A while back, my big bro told me a story about one of his first post-college job interviews. He got the interview from a kindly relative looking to help out a fresh-faced young’un. The guy who interviewed him was a total dick and made it clear he thought his time was being wasted. He not only didn’t help my brother, he was pretty demoralizing. (At least, I think that’s how the story goes.)

Years later, through a series of jobs and climbing up corporate ladders and gaining experience and whatnot, the bro in question ended up on the opposite of the desk from the self-same prick who had dissed him in his youth. This time, in the power seat, brother got to let the guy know his services were no longer needed at the corporate offices. Sweet, if delayed, karma.

I got a bit of a taste of that kind of nectar my own bad self yesterday. I had coffee with one of the folks I knew I would miss when I left my last job. She was in my town, visiting another refugee from that employer, and we met up at one of my favorite cafes and chatted into the late afternoon.

Now, if you leave your job kind of sudden like in a ruckus, it’s natural to be curious about the aftermath. But, given the ruckus, I could never know what folks thought or what was left behind of me and my work. C’est la vie and la guerre and all that.

Turns out, there are a few folks who still give me credit for my mad admin and management skilz. A few folks who remember that I was neither malicious nor insane or whatever the gossip mill might have spit out given my circumstances. Best of all, this woman who I considered a friend back then and a friend now, has even cited me to a new wave of management as her first mentor who taught her some of the management skills she now possesses and is using to climb the ladder from which I got shaken off four years ago. (Of course, as a bright, thoughtful person, her success is probably a lot more organic and internal than she gives herself credit. Still and all, it’s nice to be remembered.)

Here’s the great part that makes me feel like karma does will out and every dog has her day while every scumbag gets a comeuppance — Apparently, on the day she had received my Christmas card in the mail, she had actually been talking about me and our past working together. She’s having a bit of trouble with the very same person who it appears knifed my younger and less wise back firmly between the shoulder blades a while back. My visage on our card was a reminder, she said, of who to trust (or not, as the case may be).

She’s truly an optimistic, kind-hearted person, and, thus, is at risk from trusting mother-fucking assholes, like my special friend from years ago. Except, she’s persevered now and come out from hiding, as it were, so that the mother-fucker in question can no longer claim her work for the MF’s own.

(Ironically, I think I laid the groundwork for her current career by crashing and burning in weblogging style. I gather she picked up a lot of the pieces I had dropped when I left, inadvertently shining light on the emperor who had no clothes. I’m pretty sure it was the nude emperor who stabbed me. Now she’s at least a grade higher than the perpetrator in the corporation, who has been stripped of much of the kingdom and had shit stopped (like buying home computers on the government’s dime). She has succeeded where I failed in a job that might have been mine in had things not happened as they did. I have no doubt the asshole will be gone in six months or less.)

I’m still angry and hurt by what happened to me. Not in an active way, since my life is quite lovely and all’s well that ends well. But, I really do think what happened was a malicious attack. Really, I do. One that has meant I can’t ever truly trust coworkers as I once did. One that had me doubting my own abilities and workplace relationships for years.

From my point of view, reporting this ‘blog to HR and implying I was threatening served no one well and served no purpose. If I were truly sick and a threat or stressed or otherwise in need of intervention, so many positive things could have been done, including sitting down and talking with me. Given that I wasn’t crazed, my reputation, my private life, my work history were all potentially damaged. Without a lawyer, I’m not sure I would even have been able to get the job I have today. Actually, I know I wouldn’t have.

Worse, if I gave a rat’s ass for my old employer, they ended up losing money and time, paying me off and sorting through the work I never properly prepared to transition to new staff. A loss all around, if you think about it.

I guess hearing about the place I spent so many hours toiling gave me a sense of vindication. Knowing that the asshole who fucked me and fucked the company hasn’t prevailed seems fair. Getting credit for mentoring, for some of the systems I had started to put in place, makes it all seem a bit less in vain. Knowing that a good woman, who I had enjoyed knowing when we worked together (actually through two different companies), has been promoted is promising. It all gives me hope.

And, in my current job, in the year end/year beginning review I’m due to finish and hand back to the boss, I think I’ll have a bit more perspective. My boss has lauded my team spirit, my leadership skills and my stewardship, in the words of the HR forms. Above everything, she’s mentioned my judgment and ability to communicate.

Given my past history, it’s been difficult for me to remember that these are skills with which I’ve been credited before. I had forgotten that I had been a contributor to my last job. That I had made friends and that some people admired my work. For fuck’s sake, one reason my lawyer pushed back for me, apart from the fees I was paying him, was what he saw when he demanded my old work files. According to him, you just didn’t see very often in a labor dispute such a stellar record of reviews and promotions.

So 2007 is on the brink of dying, and my head is back in July 2004. But, I’m feeling good about that year and it’s death, too. One quote that still rings true for me in summing up the situation, and the reality I hope my friend remembers when she is back in Boston if she’s right about who my accuser was, is this one:

I could have lived with getting fired. I probably wouldn’t have fought back if I was dismissed for a conflict in how my interests and the workplace’s had fallen out of alignment. Ho hum, to no longer find yourself as a productive drone in the hive.

But, that was not what happened. It was more, it was worse and it was personal. I was associated with violence and the potential to be dangerous. That is a fucking sick thing to do to someone.

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