Thursday, August 28, 2008

Yet another crazy week

The good news is that I have hired a new person to take Jerk's place. More good news is that I told Jerk to take a hike. The bad news is that he took the opportunity to wipe his hard drive clean, uninstalled programs and even erased his e-mail identity. But does he still get paid his two weeks: Oh, yes he does.

Since we backup our e-mail on the server nightly, I was able to retrieve his e-mail. Here are some choice snippets:

From jerk to his former boss:
"So long as they can pay me enough, I’d take it in a flash. It’s gotten pretty unbearable over here. XXXXX has reverted back to her old ways, I don’t even speak to her anymore. Should I leave, I may go in and talk to XXXXX, in defense of the unlucky bastid who replaces me."

From jerk again to another colleague within my office:
"The point is, she's trying not to hire someone who is better than her."

He also called me insecure and untalented and that the publication is a "shit storm."

It's pretty interesting that someone who worked for me for less two months (and three weeks of those two months were the vacation time) had these strong opinions about me. I let him take a ton of time off, he came in late, left early and basically got to do whatever he wanted, and he still hated me. And his former boss barely even knows me — very strange.

I know none of this stuff relates to fashion or being petite but here is the one thing that does about this whole mess. When I heard Jerk deleting stuff on his computer, I asked him to stop and leave, but he refused to listen. So I went to the VP of my company and asked him for back up. The VP told me to take a deep breath, calm down and to give Jerk some more time to finish up. Well, by the time he finished up proprietary company information was gone. Was I brushed aside because I am a woman? Possibly, but something else came up in that exchange that was quite interesting. The VP said he had forgotten how young Jerk was because he is so tall and you think he is older than he is.

So a tall person equals older? That equates to giving a substantial raise that wasn't deserved? And because I am shorter that meant I didn't deserve the same amount of money when I was in that role? Isn't that discrimination?

That aside here are the facts: this kid and his former boss lost the company more than $1 million. They were the team on a newly launched publication that never got off the ground. It folded and that is why I inherited him. Its interesting that this kid and his former boss don't seem to find fault in their contributions to this loss. I've been running a fairly successful (we are still in publication) book for five years now.

A co-worker of mine from another department sent me this e-mail:
"All I can say is, XXXXX is going to have some seriously bad employment karma
at some point in his life."

One can only hope.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Petite girl...

I miss reading about your adventures.

Where are you? Are you stuck under something heavy??

Anonymous said...

Come back...petite girl. Some of us out here miss you terribly. I have a feeling that you are more petite than you have ever been?

Truth be told...so am I.

I will be watching....for more comments in the days, weeks and months to come.

Sleepless in Dubai

Anonymous said...

just came across your blog and i can totally relate! don't feel bad, i'm only 4ft11 and my boss (female) is 6ft2. AND she is not afraid to wear heels either. she's only 2 years older than me but because she's so tall i always feel like everyone thinks she's so much older than me and that they dont take me seriously. all the men respect her but seem to treat me more like a little girl. do you know what i mean??