What blindsided you today?
 

Really, less of a blindside to me than to the blindsidees.

The other top two Poobahs in my department have been released from duty.

I can't say much, as always...but that was a HUGE shocker in staff meeting this morning.

They've been given an option to stay in a lesser role. I hope one of them does, my supervisor, who has invaluable knowledge but, like me, was always in a position of reacting instead of innovating. And also had to toe the line in the Old Regime.

I think all day I'm going to be going "wow" because it's going to take some time to sink in.

And with the restructure I do wonder if there might be some opportunities that would benefit ME and use my unique (in this office) skill set.

I'm not celebrating this one. I am glad the change is happening and I know change is hard...but this one isn't a celebratory situation. The last one was.

Wow. They are really shaking things up there.

Guests reading this makes me nervous. I think it's someone following my posts to see if I say something I shouldn't, like everyone knows exactly who I am. ;)

Well, living in Wyoming and working on the railroad...these things happen. ;)

[Michael]I think it was the left defensive end[/Vick]

Does anyone have anything to cheer me up?

I just witnessed a group who all of a sudden consider themselves some sort of omniscient inner circle all pull into said circle to talk loudly about some issues in order to be heard and let it be known that any open positions should be reserved especially for them.

So you get rid of the evil, and more nastiness steps up to power struggle.

This is why I hate the rat race. Why I wrote what I want in the what I want thread.

What I want to say to a certain few is 'be careful who you trust.' When I offer to keep confidences and to keep your best interests at heart...I actually mean it.

But throw me under the bus if you get a chance. Otherwise you may never rise to the level of your incompetence.

:mecry:

I want to go home for the day. I'm sad for the whole fucking planet. Yes things needed to change but I didn't expect such a quick 180 from certain folks and I certainly didn't expect that I would become even less.

Maybe I'm too empathetic. Maybe I care too much. But I do dammit and I have just lost respect for a handful of people I cared about very much.

Will this godforsakenshitcrap of a world EVER stop disappointing?

Hopefully, the folks who got rid of the evilness recognize the new evilness, and won't put them in a position of authority. :D

Yeah. Have you met humans?

*laughs*

:o

This blindsiding that occurred, did they use science?

Yes. Science fiction. :)

So, it was Doubly?

when a vacuum is created - well, you know: nature abhors a vacuum. Of course the evil Others will be offering themselves up. Of course they will! Hey, I worked in health care. ONLY the SuperEvil moved up the ladder. Nasty business.

Concentrate on your 'want' thread dream. Concentrate on it every day, in detail.

You just might get it. :flower:

Love you, monkey.

Thanks. I feel better now. I'm a bit melodramatic (NAH, you say, not YOU!) :) but usually for a reason...in this case total shock, and empathy. It's all forward from here and I think it will all work out for the better. ;)

...

could go in the wtf thread--CERTAINLY qualifies as a wtf in my lifetime....
I have been asked to do a solemn service for some friends, a request never made of me before. it will require some special work on my part, and I believe I will say yes to their request.

more soon.

What blindsided me? I just found out my cousin got arrested for stalking someone she had an affair with after he broke it off. WTF?! She was apparently pulling a pretty good Glenn Close with this guy and his family too. No boiled bunnies, but contact with the kids online.

I do know she lost her job as a result. I don't know if she's gonna serve time for it. I don't know if her marriage will survive this. It's not in her character at all. Completely blindsided me. WTF?!

I know people make mistakes, and love, hormones, and emotions can make you do crazy stuff. That's the only explanation I can come up with.

That SUCKS Glatt !!!

There's the downside to the current ease of tracking/contact/communication via the 'net. Unsophisticated users (most people) don't realize their activity is an open book to investigators. So when hurt and hormones get intense enough to blind common sense it's easier than it used to be to cross boundaries and get into trouble.

Sounds like this is huge for her, her marriage, her family - real devastation. Not to mention his marriage and family. I'm sorry. Lots of picking up of pieces that will stretch well into the future. Sorry, Glatt. :(

Yikes, sorry to hear this glatt.

sometimes people go a little insane, esp. when it comes to Very Good Sex and throw some Chemistry into the mix and you've got Glenn Close.

Hope she comes out of this better, wiser and NOT in jail. Jail does sucketh.

Possibly worth a medical checkup as well. There are all manner of things that can cause sudden personality change/aberrant behaviour.

I've made a conscious decision to not judge her. I can't know what she was going through, but I can imagine how if you are sharing an intensely close relationship with someone for some time and then they cut that off, you are going to still feel entitled to some attention from them. People make mistakes. I hope she gets her act together and moves forward in a productive way.

weird thing is that this all happened a few months ago, but I had no idea it was going on because she's a few states away. My parents were in China for the last several weeks, and when they got back, they got the scoop and relayed it to me. It's weird because I've been interacting with this cousin on FB during this time, and she's been perfectly normal. She had a vague post the other day about appreciating friends and family during a difficult time, and that was apparently when she had some hearing. Shows how oblivious I was, I guess.

Good call.

I'm with Dana and Trilby, if this was unprecedented out-of-the-blue behavior for her, it's worth a medical checkup. I know of one situation where a woman who suddenly began acting bizarrely in promiscuous terms had an organic reason found on workup. Not common, and certainly not wishing anything like that for your cousin, but worth a checkup if she's willing.

I'm not sure how I would bring up the subject. Maybe mentioning it to her mom would be best. Let the mom talk with her.

When does "No mean No"?

Entitled? Entitled to one's feelings, sure, I agree. Entitled to some attention? Attention is given, not taken. It's mine to give or not and there's no entitlement involved.

I agree. I'm not excusing the behavior. Just trying to understand where it comes from.

I think it comes from having something, and then losing it, but still feeling like it should belong to you, even when it doesn't, and never really did. It's a faulty thought process, but I think that's the path it takes.

flat tire

ready go!

done

Not 'entitled' but FEELING entitled.

bigga difference. Feelings aren't facts. Even tw knows that.

Definitely avoid the "Your dog is dead." approach. Best to ease into it with a "You know how Rover loves to chase cars? Well the other day..."

I honestly think a lot of folks are decompensating. After years of living in denial in a completely insane world where duplicity seems to be the norm from the news media to politicians to advertising to wacky economic policies that allowed things like the housing bubble and CDOs, and the encouragement of creating massive personal debt by using the buying of crap we don't need to impress people we don't like to anesthetize ourselves from just how divorced from reality we've become, I think people are just flailing in a sea of despond and desperately clinging to whatever they think will keep them afloat.

Either that, or she might have some sort of hormone gland thing going on.
(Disclaimer: I am not a doctor though I did play doctor as a child)

I think Foot is right. A few years back there was book published called when "Society becomes an Addict." It's thesis was pretty much what Foot posted. We've got tons of shiny objects, but nothing of real substance. People fill that hollow space inside with alcohol, designer drugs, the biggest HD TV, the latest gadgets, or an extra marital affair. When our drug of choice suddenly vanishes, we have a tendency to go into serious withdrawals, and we'll do anything to get just one more "hit."

I agree wholeheartedly. The question is why? Why have we become this way? Was it the Industrial revolution-that thing that took a man or a woman's pride of work away? Made people into cogs and forced people to fit the machine rather than the other way 'round? Ergonomics? Gimme a break! Is it mass production or something more, something else? There are waaaaay too many people on this planet and most of them suck.

eta: when I told someone I worked 7pm to 7am two days in a row, one off and then one on again he said, "That's inhumane," and when he said it, I knew it was true. It was the first time that ever occurred to me-that we could have humane jobs, humane economies! What a revelation! Kinda changed my life b/c I was like, "Yeah...you know, you're right. that IS fucking crazy." and I quit.

I wish someone would try to answer my above post

there are some really smrt people here-WHY do you think people are doing all the nasty things they are doing lately? WHAT is going on?

Or having I been watching too much of the H2 channel?

:alien:

OK, try this on...

I don't believe "people" are any different now than they were 50, 100, 150 years ago.
They want a living, a family, reasonable health, etc.

I suspect the person's POV depends on when they became an adult,
and started seeing their world from an adult perspective,
and started comparing that world with the smaller "family" world they came from.
Of course, moving from agricultural to industrial changed how they lived.

My adult world came into view with the Korean War. My family was among the millions
who moved off the farm and into Michigan to work in the automotive industry.
That was a good move for them.
Good pay, good working hours, creating a product they were proud of,
medicine was improving health, infectious diseases were decreasing,
... the outlook was good and people were optimistic and "happier"

To point to a single event that changed all that is either extremely difficult or to the point of being trivial.

For example, I could point to Ronald Reagan (who everyone worships now as a great President),
as the beginning of the down-turn in all that happiness and optimism.

His attitude towards welfare (welfare queens driving pink Cadillacs) made people dislike and distrust the poor;
whereas before just being poor was not a bad thing.
It was just something to prod people to want to work hard to change.

His attitude towards unions made people hate the union movement.
Communism was the epithet that "socialism" is used by politicians today.
But the 8-hour work-day, a safe work place, a good wage, medical benefits,
and sick time off work without being fired, vacation time with family,
retirement pensions, a minimum wage, equal pay for equal work, child labor laws...
all of these came from the union movement.

But look at people's attitude towards the unions now...

Right to Work states, politicians demonizing the workers,
telling people they are lucky to have a job, fighting cost of living increases,
stagnant minimum wage, or working for $1/hr + tips.

What sort of attitude would you expect from a nation of people who
are in a menial service jobs, for minimum wage, being told when they must work
and with no recourse to disagree with their employee except to quit.

If you are having to work "7pm to 7am two days in a row, one off and then one on again",
then I would point you back to Ronald Reagan and his attitude towards unions,
and his first killing of a union, the Air Traffic Controllers.

And Reagan he did it with a smile and movie star personality,
and a "There you go again"

But for me, Reagan was one major pivot point that was not for the better.

Thanks, Lamplighter, for that informative post.

yeah, I hated Ronnie, too. Anybody who cozies up to Ms. Thatcher is no friend of mine!

(get it? 'mine'?)

seriously, though; yeah, he DID demonize the poor and Nancy was a total...Nancy. Hated her even more than him, "Just say NO," my ass, woman!

Least helpful first laydee ever.

*shakes head*
There you go again...

That right there was more damning of the shallowness of the American public that Ronny himself.

??? Which that right "there you go again" ?

I can only watch about 2 seconds of that.

It would've been a Mega-meme© if it had been a few years later.

My cousin killed himself last week (not the one who got stabbed in the neck by a crazy coworker, and not the other one who got cancer at 37, a different cousin...) He and I weren't very close, but I totally didn't see it coming. The cousin who is close to him (his half-brother, aka cancer-cousin) very much did see it coming, and did everything he could to prevent it, but with the backstory he has now revealed to me I agree that there really wasn't anything more he could have done.

But as I was hearing the news from cancer-cousin, and listening to him describe everything that was going on that the rest of the family didn't know about, the thought came to me clear as day that, "That's going to be my brother someday." My brother is very, very much like suicide-cousin. Minor depression, moderate drinking problem, but full-blown, lifelong expectations of what the world owes him. Ultimately this cousin killed himself because the universe never lived up to his ego, and this is 100% the path my brother's heading down.

Welp, dude's 33 and everyone's tried to help him and he listens to no one. We'll see, I guess. Still sucks pretty hardcore for cancer-cousin, though. He knows he shouldn't feel guilty but one always does.

So now that you have had this moment of clarity into the future, you need to figure out what you need to do to satisfy yourself that you have helped your brother as much as you can.

Man, that sucks.

One the Auntiesdigr passed earlier this week. She had developed cancer and wouldn't let her family tell anyone, and they didn't. They called us when she went into the hospital, when her kidneys started failing. She died about a week later.

Fuck cancer.

Condolences to the Clodfobble & digr families.

What classic said.

Sorry clobble

Families are a pain in the ass. They come with obligations and societal expectations because they're blood, even if they suck.

Thanks, everyone.

I think this is a really keen insight. It's trickier if the "what ifs" are already in the past, though. Like, could I have done something differently when he was in high school? My dad's rationalization for everything is that it's my mom's fault, and to a large degree both she and I agree with him. She gave him a complete and total safety net, lots of encouragement but no forcing, and she's been acknowledging over the last few years that maybe this wasn't the best idea, that he was never going to figure his shit out and find himself and all that crap people say. Then again, suicide-cousin did have a lot of expectations put on him, and his fundamental personality still won in the end, so who knows. The longer I live the more I put the percentage on nature over nurture.

I know what you mean, and often find myself thinking along those lines as well. But I don't like it. I like to think that we have more control than that.

Having control doesn't mean you're doing the right thing for that person.