A Golden Rule

So it’s a new year (yay!) but I still work the same ole job with the same ole work drama (boo-but grateful). I sit in my cube wondering how people can work for the same company for 30 plus years because I don’t think I have the endurance or the patience to make it that long. We are sending these people off with cakes and retirement balloons-but really we should be erecting statues honoring the fact that these people haven’t inflicted bodily harm in all their years of working!

Sorry folks this is going to be another work inspired post! Lucky you…

So yeah one of the areas that I need to work on is patience. I feel like I just need to grow there because not everyone has an Amaretto state of mind and I need to really accept and understand that. Oh but why do people drive you to cuss them out and/or kill them just for the stupid things they say or do?* At one point I was going to state the it’s older white people who drive one (specifically me) to brink but really in 2010 I am going to let my negro dialect go…and just say all people can pluck the last nerve.

So let me share how I have already been plucked and we are only 12 days into the new year! Last week my immediate supervisor was going to use the word “Irregardless” in correspondence to someone outside of our department to which I told him not to use it because that wasn’t a word. Well don’t you know that this man looked up irregardless in Webster’s dictionary and called me later in the day to tell me that it was in fact a word and I could look it up online. Then he went on to tell me that there are other “ir” words like “irregular”. Sigh. Are you serious?! I wasn’t disputing the existence of “ir” words but irregardless wasn’t a word that I thought was recognized. Never attempt to tell an older white man (oops I wasn’t suppose to be making this about race). So never attempt to tell this particular man he was wrong because he will fight to the death to prove himself correct! Nevermind that within Webster’s own definition of the word they state to use “regardless” instead. He didn’t see or acknowledge that part of the definition, just like Columbus didn’t see the communities of Native Americans on the land that he just discovered.

I grew in patience that day because he’s still living and breathing, I still have my job and as you can see I did as instructed and looked up the definition of irregardless online!

But then today a coworker tried to tell me that they weren’t using their government issued travel card to obtain cash advances. Did this coworker not understand that part of my job requires that I look at their statements so I can see everything that they are and are not doing? Their response was that they accidentally used their government card, because they thought it was their own. Sigh. When will people get original?! I guess because I am young and black then my birthday must have been January 11th 2010. But again, I guess this person didn’t know that I can see each time they used their card for personal hotel stays or for when they took cash advances for $200 from their neighborhood Wawa dating back to September. But really you want me to believe that this was a one time error? I know that times are hard, but don’t be insulting to my intelligence. You have been caught stealing and it’s because of me that your manager doesn’t know about it. I feel like someone should be licking my boots...or giving me a gift card to Target or something!

Sigh…and I wonder if someone would be as lenient with me as I was with them. I doubt it.

Despite the two notable bumps in the road to Amaretto Jenkins being and becoming a better person (because trust me their have been other incidents in this year) I’m still going to try to live by doing unto others as I would have them do unto me. Even when I don’t feel like people deserve my kindness, I know someone has felt the same way about me.

See You In Seven

*Because I am not a bitter or crazy black woman I don't actually think about doing these things to others. And if I do it's all internal discourse...because unlike some black professional women-my coworkers love me!