I figured it out... I AM part of the team!!!

They refer to us collectively as 'TEAM!!'
I have the official jersey.
I go to all the team meetings.
I get to 'rah rah' with everyone else.
They even pretend like they want my opinion. But you know what??
I'm the WATERBOY!!!!!!
The person who gets clapped on the shoulder, pointed out occasionally.. (If you have problems with your timekeeper, call Susan, she seems to be doing great with her clock hours!!!) everyone smiles at me when I walk in to big meetings, I get emails that say things like 'thank you for working so hard on this!'

And then when I have ideas to improve the team, things to contribute, the experience of more than 10 years to say, 'Um, guys? This may not be the best way to go about it'.... I get something like, "Thank you so much for your input! We will take that into consideration!!!"

Yep. The fuckin' waterboy.

It took me awhile to get it.
I'm not accustomed to looking at the world from the screwed up perspective of a narcissist. A person who is so mentally ill that if I didn't dislike her so much, I might have some pity for.

I can't deny some compassion... I am not perfect myself, and some of the personality traits I dislike seeing in other people are ones that I own.

However, I can admit it. I've worked on things over the years, got a little help from friends and family and have been able to apologize to the people who have been hurt when my dark side gets the best of me.

I will never be 'fine'.
But I don't know anyone who can say they are just fine, either. Do you?
We all just do the best we can.

So, being a little messed up myself, I can understand why it's difficult to perform like a rational human being at all times.
So I don't blame Fluffy for being imperfect.
We're all there.
I know she can't help some of it.

But. Being a little messed up myself I know that some of her complete inability to treat people with the respect they deserve isn't inability at all... it's willful.

She treats some people like shit because she isn't a nice person underneath that helpless, wide-eyed, tiny bit of Texas accent, hand-wringing exterior.
She's actually sort of unkind all the way through, she knows it.
She.
Doesn't.
Fucking.
Care.

And that does piss me off.

I have constantly been flummoxed by her inability to see. I'm incredibly frustrated by my own inability to MAKE her see.
Me, the one who's articulate and able to express myself quite well (most of the time) and particularly when I have had a great deal of time to consider what I want to say and how I want to say it.

I kept trying to make her see. And this week, I've finally realized that we're not even looking at the same picture.

When things are going to shit (and during the past year, that's exactly where they've been work-wise) I ponder. A lot. An inordinate amount of time worrying over a JOB. I lose sleep. I rant. I clench my jaw. I have to stick my tongue in between my back teeth when I go to sleep at night to remind me to relax the jaw a bit. Otherwise, I will wake up with sore jaw muscles.

But I'm unable to just let it go. I can't half-ass my work. I love my kids. I love what I do. To me, it is not a job. It's a calling. It is something worthy of putting my heart into. Worth the hours I spend working unpaid, looking up crafty things and information and things to do with my kids. Going to Goodwill and spending my own money on things. Spending 10 bucks on something that will keep children occupied for several days or even off and on during the school year is not an expense, it's an investment. I am proud and happy that I do this job so well. I have loved it from the beginning. And Fluffy, that wide-eyed, hopeless, helpless flounder of a person, has turned it to shit for me. I'm angry. I don't like her. I am no longer getting the joy I once had. And it's not my attitude... it's her, fucking things up everywhere she goes.

It's not like I haven't tried to fix things, either. Repeatedly.
I talked to Fluffy personally in January. I had noticed things that were definite cause for concern, and naively thought if I told her about them, she would take action. She didn't do a single fucking thing.

Her nasty, mean and ugly friend, the one who was using her position as a site director to emotionally and verbally abuse children, was absolved of all personal responsibility. She was left in charge of helpless little people. She made them cry. Walked away. Showed no compassion. Addressed school staff concerns with a hand held up in their faces and, "I'm DONE talking to you."

What the fuck??????? We are guests in the schools. One would think being a decent guest, one who does not metaphorically (or actually, hell, I don't know) shit on the floor or abuse the children would be sort of a priority.
See, I thought that what was in the best interest of children was Fluffy's number one priority.

It's not.

Fluffy is her own number one priority, and you either join the Fluffy train and get in line to kiss her ass, or you're 'not being a team player'.

Even though, of course, she addresses us all as "TEAM!!" in her cavalcade of emails with so much useless information packed around teeny little bits of things we actually need to know that it's just one more goddamn frustration.

So...

Because I am able to communicate effectively in writing and I had 8 hours or so on my hands (seriously...eight fucking hours) I wrote a HUGE missive to the Big Fish back in March, was it? I wanted him to know what had been going on. Silly me, I thought that because I've been with this company 12 years and have proven over and over that I'm personally invested in my kids and my job that he would listen. We spent two hours talking. And although he did listen to the parts he was interested in, he didn't manage to put the whole picture together. It's just not that important to him. I'm a widget. A widget with 12 years of experience.
Ah well.
12 years of widgeting looks good on a resume.

And I know he shared that email with her.
I talked to Fluffy again in April. After meeting with the big fish. After she knew that more than one of us had gone over her head with that bogus fucking summer application.

She wanted to 'make things better', she said, making that hand-flappy helpless little gesture she does.

Nope. Nothing was done. At all.

So what I did by meeting with the big fish and sending him that lengthy missive, written on my own time, was to give that bitch more ammunition.

She knows what pisses me off, so she does more of it. I alternate between wanting to kick her in the fucking cankles and slap her face and wanting to grab her by the shoulders, shake her, and scream in that stubborn, vapid face, "WHAT IN THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU??"

Of course neither course of action is productive.
And so far, I've refrained.
Sometimes it's difficult.

None of this is new. I am just writing it all down to give myself some perspective and to prove to me that I'm not the crazy one. At least not about this.

When I end up having to find another job to preserve my sanity, it will be helpful to me to have this and other stuff in writing to refer to.

Yesterday, Matt came over for awhile. He's going to be 29 years old on Wednesday, but I still want him to text me when he gets home. I'm nutty that way, too. He didn't text for a LONG time. More than twice the amount of time it should take him to get home. So I texted him.

And he texted that he was sitting still in traffic because there was an accident.

"Describe the car!" I demanded.
"Um, okay. Why?"
"Because it might be Fluffy!!"

The waterboy always worries about the team captain.