Reclaiming the Date
29/06/2018 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaOn Friday 29th June 2012 this serpent had a big day out in town with a friend. Followed it with a visit to the Brookfield Place Dome cafe before slinking back to the Lair on the bus reading to hit the hay after a long but lovely day
But fickle Fate had other plans. Lurking in the serpent owlery was a rather ominous envelope with a hand written address and local postmark dated 6pm 28 June 2012
It turned out to be a very nasty HOWLER
With 20/20 hindsight, it marked a giant fork in the road. The one thing I do regret most of all was that I had a special serpent stash for exactly such occasions but ever so naively believed that you cannot be sacked if you have done nothing wrong. Of course, officially you can't but the map is NOT the territory.
I guess it is all a giant game of Call My Bluff.
Just like Racket Man, the old Toad and her beloved Megatherion Inc had many more lawyers and much deeper pockets than this simple serpent. She got her jollies trying to destroy those who refused to grovel and worship at her altar. As she had the backing of a big bad corporation and her targets were all poor house elves, she knew she could get away with anything without consequences to her
Because a Smith and Wesson trumps 4 Aces.
But if I had raided all those piggy banks, there was sufficient to nuke the home loan and have some change left over for champagne and canapes.
I could have just gone to Cockroach Kevin the pay clerk and told him that as of 1st July I would be no longer available to work Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Without a house to pay off, the higher pay from the TOAD FREE weekends would have been quite sufficient to live on while giving me a whole 5 days a week to look for other paid work as a top up.
Pretty sure they would have claimed that it was all or nothing. No cherry picking the best days but if the ONLY reason for giving up shifts was to escape that bitch's bullying, it could have looked a bit bad for them. Not to mention losing a reliable old timer who worked well with all the staff except the new brown nosed minions
But I did not realize the extent of the old Toad's vindictive streak then and that only the Donald doubles down more than her when challenged.
The nastiness got so relentless that my GP (who had a practice next door and knew just how toxic that place had become) wrote PTSD in my notes. I had thrown in the towel by then because I was so exhausted, burnt out and a stroke just waiting to happen.
Worst of all was that I had started hating them and it was starting to turn me into a monster too
There are just too many anniversaries in this Groundhog Year (well at least the March to December portion of it) but it is reassuring that most of the time now I can recall many events without the automatic rise in blood pressure and cascade of nightmare memories that used to come with the territory. Most of the triggers are slowly losing their power.
Now I still need to attend to the unfinished business of how to deal with malevolent powerful people while still maintaining dignity, integrity and decency but without losing my mind in the process
In the meantime, I get to sit on the sidelines and see how other people do it. There are certainly no volunteers in the USA GOP.
But there is one wonderful role model out there. The Lawyer Michael Avenatti is using brains, snark and guts to put the BEAST 66 back in its box.
But fickle Fate had other plans. Lurking in the serpent owlery was a rather ominous envelope with a hand written address and local postmark dated 6pm 28 June 2012
It turned out to be a very nasty HOWLER
With 20/20 hindsight, it marked a giant fork in the road. The one thing I do regret most of all was that I had a special serpent stash for exactly such occasions but ever so naively believed that you cannot be sacked if you have done nothing wrong. Of course, officially you can't but the map is NOT the territory.
I guess it is all a giant game of Call My Bluff.
Just like Racket Man, the old Toad and her beloved Megatherion Inc had many more lawyers and much deeper pockets than this simple serpent. She got her jollies trying to destroy those who refused to grovel and worship at her altar. As she had the backing of a big bad corporation and her targets were all poor house elves, she knew she could get away with anything without consequences to her
Because a Smith and Wesson trumps 4 Aces.
But if I had raided all those piggy banks, there was sufficient to nuke the home loan and have some change left over for champagne and canapes.
I could have just gone to Cockroach Kevin the pay clerk and told him that as of 1st July I would be no longer available to work Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Without a house to pay off, the higher pay from the TOAD FREE weekends would have been quite sufficient to live on while giving me a whole 5 days a week to look for other paid work as a top up.
Pretty sure they would have claimed that it was all or nothing. No cherry picking the best days but if the ONLY reason for giving up shifts was to escape that bitch's bullying, it could have looked a bit bad for them. Not to mention losing a reliable old timer who worked well with all the staff except the new brown nosed minions
But I did not realize the extent of the old Toad's vindictive streak then and that only the Donald doubles down more than her when challenged.
The nastiness got so relentless that my GP (who had a practice next door and knew just how toxic that place had become) wrote PTSD in my notes. I had thrown in the towel by then because I was so exhausted, burnt out and a stroke just waiting to happen.
Worst of all was that I had started hating them and it was starting to turn me into a monster too
There are just too many anniversaries in this Groundhog Year (well at least the March to December portion of it) but it is reassuring that most of the time now I can recall many events without the automatic rise in blood pressure and cascade of nightmare memories that used to come with the territory. Most of the triggers are slowly losing their power.
Now I still need to attend to the unfinished business of how to deal with malevolent powerful people while still maintaining dignity, integrity and decency but without losing my mind in the process
In the meantime, I get to sit on the sidelines and see how other people do it. There are certainly no volunteers in the USA GOP.
But there is one wonderful role model out there. The Lawyer Michael Avenatti is using brains, snark and guts to put the BEAST 66 back in its box.
