RandomStringOfWords

Don’t read this unless you really want to know

Rants and Rambles — This is what I do! This is how I “out” my feelings.. This is how I get my feelings and thoughts across, even if my audience is no one.. I do this to make myself feel better..

A lot of times if I have had a bad day, or if I have something that bothers me.. I dump it here.. I spill my guts, so to speak, so I don’t bottle it up inside.. Get it out, get it over with..

Usually the longer it is, the more my feelings were hurt, or the madder I was — this one promises to be a long one.

A recent confrontation with a co-worker, one that has been featured in the past in here, pissed me off to no end. It took me several days to get over it and ultimately I posted about it on the front page of my website. I didn’t make a rant though – I just didn’t know what to say. So ultimately I posted on my front page a couple paragraphs about it, instead of an entire rant — which it’s getting now..

This is what I posted on my blog – this is ALL that was posted at the time and what they ultimately fired me for;

Well I’m pretty much done at the statesman. There were three people that I could turn to and complain at and generally just talk to because they were in the same boat, so to speak. They understood my plight because they were suffering through the same crap. Two of them quit, it got that bad. The third has turned on me.

The one remaining friend (or individual that I thought was a friend) that works at the statesman with me very deeply hurt my feelings yesterday. She left me feeling completely betrayed – and ultimately I have lost all respect for her. It was over something completely minor too. But long story short is, she lied to me about something that she needed not lie about – remember people, a lie of in admission is still a lie.

I’m sure she won’t agree with this and that she feels that she was in the right. The sad thing is, my former comrade in arms / co-conspirator has gone to the other side without as much as a good bye. I’m sure the statesman appreciates her loyalty; I know I would have.

Now when this whole thing went down, I could have easily just gone off on her over it.. but I didn’t.. An immediate confrontation with someone usually goes badly, so why bother having that confrontation in the first place.. It’s always best to give things time to cool off and come back and revisit at a later date when everyone is calm. But ultimately all you can do is to accept the choice that person made, and move on..

So, in lieu of going off on her, I posted that bit above so as to clarify my feelings on the issue. I posted it for myself more than anyone else; virtually no one reads my website. Most of that crap is up there for me, and me alone.

Now however, the person in question was browsing my site, looking for just this sort of thing I suppose, and lo! she found on the front page the paragraphs above. Evidently it pissed her off pretty badly. As even her husband told her not to talk to me; not shocking advice from him really.. He’s never liked me.

I’m getting ahead of myself though. Below is what went on between us, and then later I’ll explain the rest.

Anyone that has eyes can see that my design skills, when it comes to websites, aren’t great. In fact, I think my design skills can be down right bad. I’m trying to learn though. I have been looking at all sorts of designs and ideas from all over the net to get ideas.

The other day, the statesman got a new design from a fellow higher up who did a wonderful job. It’s an excellent design and lends it self perfectly to a large website, with a lot of content. It was colorful, without being too colorful.. It was well designed and clean with just the right amount of space for the content.. etc..

It was a very good design and one that I felt I could learn from. However, it was a design that was more geared towards a large website with a lot of content.. (like, oh I dunno.. a newspaper) I could tell right away that this wasn’t a design I would use for my personal site or any other simply because of its scope. Again, it was design for something massive.

I asked my co-worker for a copy of the psd file because I’d like to take a look at it. She said she’d send it to me. But didn’t.

As a point in fact, I asked 4 or 5 more times for the file, and each time she giggled it off and stated that she had forgotten. I understood that, as we are both busy and it’s easy to forget stuff when you’re inundated with work. Her work schedule is about 3 peoples worth of stuff.. So it’s completely plausible that she forgot.

The final time I asked for it, I stood at her desk and basically said that I wasn’t going away until she sent it, still under the assumption that she had forgotten previously due to her schedule. I was teasing as much as anything else, as I was still working under the assumption that she had forgotten.

At which point she tells me that she doesn’t feel like giving it to me. She stated something to the effect that, this was a statesman project and that it was for the statesman. The site wasn’t released yet and that I didn’t need it so she wasn’t going to give it to me.

I just walked away.. I mumbled something about her lack of trust or respect.

I’m going to interrupt and explain what I thought was her logic at this point:

You see – I’m just a lowly contractor. I am constantly treated thusly at the statesman even though I have worked there longer than many of the employees in my area. ( 6 of the 17 people that work in my area have been here longer than I have, all others came after me.. to include the co-worker in this story.. not that it matters, I’m still on the bottom rung. )

She didn’t want to give me the new design which was fine, and I understood. She had been given the creative by a higher up and was responsible for it. If for some reason the untrustworthy contractor took that design and sold it, or used it, her job could be forfeit. I understood that.

In her defense, previously a design was given to her by another coworker and I used it in an example website that was as much a test as anything else.

{At this point the site is no longer up – it really never was “up”, it was only for learning}

This design was created by a co-worker at the statesman. And I asked if I could use it to create something for testing purposes.. Note.. I ASKED for permission and the creator said that they didn’t care. The TOD site was a test bed for me. I was trying to learn from the CSS stuff that had been taught to me – Much of which I learned from the individual in this story.

You will note it’s just like the classifieds redesign;

http://www.statesman.com/classifieds/

The things that I learned from creating this site, I applied to others, to include the statesman. Since I wasn’t allowed to work on the majority of the classifieds redesign, I had to my own experimenting to fully understand what was going on.

I will restate that for the slow crowd. The TOD website was a learning tool, to help me learn to use the site that is now the classifieds site that I do the majority of my work on. Something I previously didn’t get to do in the same scale.

For the record the TOD site is a dead site. It gets ZERO visitors and is just up for me to TEST with. It has a lot of content, but most of it is crap content that doesn’t relate to the TOD game any more.

Back to the story at hand:

I assumed that she didn’t want to give me the new PSD because she was afraid I would go and open a new website using it. Which to me, was silly, but with the TOD thing in the past I can understand her reluctance.. And that’s why her not giving me the layout didn’t really make me mad at all.. I understood..

However, just to be perfectly clear let me outline why I wouldn’t have, and wont use the new statesman design;

1. I have no website to open, and I certainly don’t have a website that would be able to fill the design the way it needs to be. Again, the design is meant to be used on a large site with a LOT of content.
2. I told her previously when I created the TOD website that I had the permission of the creator and that it was a test bed as much as for anything else.
3. I don’t make it a habit to create sites from other peoples designs. I have a list of contracts that I have worked on in the past, and none of them used someone else’s design.
4. I am trying to harvest my own creative juices. This is why I wanted it, to try to learn what to do.. What is right and what is wrong – just grabbing the design and running with it, would be counter to that purpose.

The issue for me is not that she wouldn’t give me the file to study, but rather that she lied to me.

She sat on the PSD for over a week pretending to forget, when she had ZERO intentions of giving it to me in the first place.

Why not simply have the courage to come out and say the first time, “I’m not going to give it to you because my job could be at stake.” Why play this “oh I forgot *teehee*” game?

But no, this whole thing just proved that she didn’t have the common respect of me to simply say “I can’t”, or “here, but don’t use it”.. etc..

I really can’t fathom why she wouldn’t just ask me what I intended to do with it. I mean did she seriously think I was going to do some sort of corporate espionage and sell it “to the Russians” or something? Or was it all because of the test website I had created with a previous design?

Had she just done the courtesy of asking my intentions, this whole thing would have been avoided.

The flip side being, that had I just not asked for the file the situation would have been avoided, but I didn’t think it was that big of a deal my asking, as I do work here and will eventually be working with that design.

That being said, I let it go. I respected her wish to not let me have the design – as, again it really wasn’t about the design and ultimately she was right in that, I had no “need” for it. I just wanted to look at it, and didn’t think it was a big deal.

I stewed over this for a while though. It really bothered me how little she thought of me – considering how much I thought of her. I very much respected her and the way she handles things and was left completely shell shocked when this whole thing went down.

I didn’t want to confront her about it because I wasn’t really sure what to say – plus I didn’t really want to make the situation any worse, and I certainly didn’t want to over react. I didn’t write a rant or even mention anything to anyone.

I could tell though, that she was mad at me. It seemed like she was avoiding me and that wasn’t good for a work environment. Which boggled the mind as, why would she be mad at me for refusing me the file? I didn’t understand.

It made me realize that I had few friends left at the statesman. That, combined with the work situation itself, made me seriously question my staying power at the statesman. I went so far as to clear out my cube and take all my stuff home. (On a side note; I find it amusing that no one has noticed – still just a lowly contractor.) While I’m better now, I was really upset over the whole thing.

I made the post on my front page in passing. As I said before, as much to myself as to anyone else, as no one really reads my website. I was just airing my feelings and not writing to anyone in particular. Something I do to make myself feel better.

I let a couple days go by and finally I felt the need to discuss it with her, as really we are both mature adults and surely we could work this thing out. While I did believe that any friendship we might have had was hurt by her lying to me and her apparent lack of trust or respect, at least we could make this go away and work together again.

So I approached her. I sat down in my usual spot (former usual spot?) and explained to her my feelings. I told her how I felt about the whole thing and that she had hurt my feelings completely.

I don’t really know what I was expecting from her. I wanted to clear the air between us and wanted to hear her side of the story. I wanted to hear her feelings on the whole thing. She basically affirmed everything that I surmised was her reasoning, but had nothing to say to me regarding the lie. I kind of got the impression that she didn’t care about that.

As to the rest, I could tell she didn’t know what to say, or at least that she didn’t know what to say to me. She clearly had more to say. She was probably doing me the courtesy of not going off on me, or following her husbands instructions and not talking to me.

She told me though that she wasn’t mad at me until she saw the blurb on my home page; which to me is completely unreasonable. I was not rude or inconsiderate. I didn’t put any names in the text, and I wasn’t trying to rally troops to may cause. I just posted my feelings, which I guess I’m not allowed to have. She described it as a “public airing” and that because I did that it would be difficult for us to get along now. Ah, I see.. I’m not allowed to have opinions and feelings. Gotcha.

She told me that she was going to meet with her boss Monday to discuss this thing further. Which I find as odd.. What is she going to discuss? I guess in her eyes the air is un-clearable. I personally think that it’s a bit of an over reaction, but if it’s something she needs to do, I understand.

The long and short of it is, I just wished she would have had the common courtesy to simply say what she felt. Come out and be honest about it.

Instead now she’s going to go tell on me to her boss (my former boss) about all of my past crimes. Most likely in an attempt to get me fired. I can’t imagine what else it could be. That seems very petty and childish to me. It’s a shame we couldn’t have worked this out like adults. She may just need to air her feelings to him and has no intent one way or the other, but it seems unlikely.

As a contractor, I don’t expect to have a job come Monday. That’s fine. If that’s the way it has to be, then so be it.

I have no intention of changing my front page until this is sorted out. I don’t feel I have done anything wrong. This new rant is as a result of this whole issue and I’ll update it with whatever outcome happens.

Without going into details of the issue, her boss via IM told me that ultimately the statesman will do what is right for the statesman. I didn’t tell him anything just that she wants to see him. I’ll let her talk to him first. I’d hate to deny her that since it’s how she feels she needs to deal with this.

If they do decide someone has to go I personally would hope that they side with her simply because she is a full time employee. As a contractor I should be let go in favor of the full time employee. It’s just sad that it has to be that way, and that this has been blown waaaay out of proportion.

While I feel it’s unjust, I don’t begrudge her, her feelings. But I do want to know why she denies me, mine? She has every right to be upset and deal with those feelings however she has to; going to her boss to complain, for example.

I find it amusing though that she said she wasn’t mad until she read my website. That means she had no intent of talking to her boss until she read my post–

What I want to know is; What did she come looking for in the first place, if not the “public airing”?

She knows this is where I write these things, and that I do this for myself.. I feel that it’s completely unjust of her to be mad over my writing what I wrote on my front page. I didn’t write anything bad, and didn’t name any names.

My way of dealing with these things is to write a rant that few, if anyone reads.

I guess my only comment on that is, if you go looking for my rant about you.. don’t be pissed off when you find it.
Addendum:

Welp.. We had our meeting today about this whole thing..

I was given advice as to maybe showing better judgment about posting this sort of thing regarding people I work with.

Even though, this wasn’t posted prior to the incident that called this into question.

And since even the management concedes that I have done nothing wrong, morally, ethically, or legally.. I don’t see why I should change.. You may question my judgment all day long, but just because you don’t agree with my judgment doesn’t mean its wrong.

I’ll write more when I have time.
Final Addendum:

Long story short – I was fired over the whole thing.   Now, having read all this — scroll back to the top and read the 3 paragraphs that were ALL that was written at the time.  THAT is what I got fired for.