Coworkers or what? July 5, 2012

  

I had a good excuse not to show up at the main office; I chose not to use it.

I refuse to surrender public spaces just because I’ve ceased being one of the select few picked to access more private ones.

I have the feeling of war being waged one I hadn’t wanted to wage in the first place but could not afford to lose.

This was only partly personal; rumblings outside the paper spoke of a cabala of wanna-be power brokers in one of the northern towns, rumors claiming they had an “in” they might be able to exploit.

I kept thinking of the somewhat mysterious “RR” who had become an important source for a number of our stories about what went on there. What I found out about him did not bring me comfort.

Inside our organization, I saw a similar power play, moving pieces in corner office politics I had no part of yet somehow had gotten dragged into, our boss out of maternity (in the guise of some concerned resident) sending cryptic email and other messages criticizing the performance of her temporary replacement as if to make sure she still had a place to roost when her maternity leave expired.

Everybody has turf to protect on all three floors while the real power emanated from two primary sources, the male and female owners, each ruling over everything like a king and queen.

Not conscious of this before, I came to realize you needed to be close to one or the other to have any status – and with the female owner out due to her own illnesses, this meant the male owner ruled largely without challenge.

The closer you get to him, the more potential power you have.

Since I don’t like him, and don’t trust him, this leaves me with only my own bare knuckles and a determination to keep my grip on what I have, even if I have is worth very little.

Our former temporary boss – necessary for that brief moment when our regular boss was out – has even less power than I do, and perhaps why he clings to his personal relationship with her as one of the few benefits of being here. When in charge of meetings, he spent a great deal of time praising her past work and her work ethic. During his time filling in for the regular boss, he had gone from acting ruthlessly towards her to becoming an unabashed fan, calling her “one of the two best writers on the paper.” Yet, I could not get out of my mind, our talk in the park and how careful he needed to be to make sure she did not know the two of us had met or talked about her. For someone with nothing to be ashamed of, he seemed to have something to hide.

She looked great at the meeting. After four or five days in the sun over the long 4th of July weekend, she had a deep tan and no longer had the dour look of previous weeks. She even felt benevolent enough to pause and ask how I had screwed up my leg, indicating she had not read by blog over the last weeks where I had detailed by fall in the parking lot of a local supermarket and the harrowing rush to one of the local hospitals by ambulance.

I got a bit of this cabala stuff when I interviewed the up-and-coming political opponent to the mayor of the northern town, who claimed there had been political firings. I took this second part to her since it was her town. She called the mayor and then told me those people were leaving the city’s employ on their own, not being fired. I offered to turn my interview over to her. She refused with just a bit of hostility.

I modified my column to reflect her mayor’s version and sent her a copy of the corrected text, along with a footnote once again apologizing for having hurt her in any way.

She responded. “We’re co-workers. Forget it.”

 

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