Speaking of lunacy...

The company that I love so much did a really awful thing this past week and I'm still trying to figure out what, if anything, I want to do about it. How I feel about things. How much of my general happiness and morale are affected by it.

I'm not young and miraculously able to afford principles. I need the job, we're approaching retirement age and trying to save some money. In addition it's still a year until I qualify for medicare, and I need the insurance.

So to explain what happened, I have to backtrack a bit. About a year ago, our 'inclusion specialist' quit. That worked great for me, I couldn't stand her. She was HUGE on reward systems.  She believed that one could not run an effective program without stickers and trinkets and large, extravagant praise, sprinkled around like psychic confetti. She was unbearably smug about her psychology degree. Actually, she was smug in every way I can think of.

Of course a piece of paper qualifies a person to work with children. Much more valuable than practical experience, so she was insistent on the whole 'here is how you handle kids' thing. Insistent to the point of condescension in my direction. Instead of telling her to fuck off, I just avoided dealing with her at every opportunity. You may call me a wimp if you wish to.

She came out to my site about two months after I started working for this company.  

Mid-April, I think. 

My sidekick was taking a couple vacation days. There were no lowly people to take her place, so Wendy came out to be my 2nd.

She didn't do too badly.
I guess.

But when the kids lined up to go outside, chattering and bouncing up and down and crashing into each other and generally behaving like children, she called them to order.

"Time to be quiet!" she said.
Not quietly.

The noise and activity got to a bearable level, and the front of the line started moving toward the door. When about half the kids moved, there was a stall in the middle of the line. Daniel was talking to Hank and hadn't noticed the line moving.

If I'd been in charge of the line (I wasn't, I was getting our walkie talkies on the same frequency and making sure they were on) I would have said, "Hey!  Daniel! The train's leaving without you!" Probably would have followed up with a train whistle noise and everyone would laugh and he'd get going.

That isn't what happened. Wendy said, very gruffly and abruptly, "Daniel! Go to the end of the line!"

Daniel didn't protest. His shoulders drooped and head down, he shuffled to the end of the line.

Now what the hell was accomplished by that?

Ugh. I could tell you a bunch of stories about 'Wendy' but this is already way too long. That magnificent ADHD brain of mine is firing little bursts of light and noise in all directions tonight. Must be because my headache is (finally after five days) getting better.

So she left. Her big fat salary was available for redistribution.

And the company promoted Anna, who was the VP of operations, or VPOP in the acronymic version. (Spell check says no to acronymic, but I'm betting you know what I meant by it. So do I. So it's a word now.)

I don't remember what her new title became. The next person in line got bumped up a step, too. He's great at his job. I have a lot of respect for him. He's the whole package, great at dealing with day to day stuff with kids but knows all the admin stuff, too.

Three site directors were then promoted to multi-site coordinators. (before you ask, I made it very clear from the beginning that I am not the least bit interested in larger responsibilities and/or any kind of promotion. I'm happy where I am. Giddy.)

So the way it's supposed to work is that I call Lisa, my MSC, she contacts whoever above her for further information or clarity if she doesn't have the answer.

But we like Anna, the former VPOP and now I can't remember the new title.
I mean all of us like her.

She knows every single thing there is to know about operations, where to find the information we need in any situation, protocol for licensing issues, budgetary concerns, any number of things. She's kind and friendly and will drop everything to help someone with issues. Always returns calls and messages immediately, and follows up.

She was filling in at my site a few weeks ago (still don't have my assistant back) when one of my smalls had a nosebleed.

I say nosebleed, but she was spewing blood like an oscillating sprinkler.

I'd really prefer to never see anything like that again.

Anna didn't wait. She jumped up, grabbed tissues and started mopping up while I contacted the child's mother. Oh, and  while I grabbed the garbage can because the child was SPITTING BLOOD ON THE FLOOR because there was so much of it coming out.

Anna cleaned up everything, had the trash bagged and labeled for the custodian and had cleaned the spot from one of our carpets within 5 minutes of the start of the event.

She was also very helpful with getting some accommodation for my own kid. When I expressed concern that she was sitting outside in full sun after she'd walked a mile from the bus stop and was waiting for her site director to show up and it was 100 fucking degrees, Anna talked with school personnel and made sure Lyssa could come inside upon arrival and sit in the foyer.

In short, I'm a big Anna fan.

Anna was fired on Wednesday afternoon with no warning.

Officially 'downsized' but having been through that myself, I know it means the same damn thing as fired. You are suddenly without a job and the income and possible benefits you get from having that job. Boom.

We all got an email about 'budget concerns' and 'continued recovery from the pandemic' and blah blah blah.

I am morally certain that's exactly why the decision was made, as I don't believe she's capable of a large amount of wrongdoing. She is truly amazing.

So now we're all reeling. No one was given an opportunity to say goodbye, all the MSCs and other office staff were blindsided, they had NO idea it was going to happen.

My MSC, Lisa, was so gobsmacked by it that she was unable to work on Thursday. She was quite emotional when we met via Zoom on Friday and isn't sure she wants to continue working for the company.

I understand that. If it weren't for the aforementioned almost retirement age/medical insurance thing, I might consider moving on, too. I still may.

You don't save your business by cutting off your right arm. Things will not be the same, the staff who worked under Anna (pretty much everyone) will be off balance and unable to function at peak capacity, things will be forgotten or done incorrectly and I seriously have worries now that the company won't make it. That's how important she was.

:::sigh:::

I'm not sure what I want to do or what I'm thinking right now.
Lost quite a bit of sleep over it, actually.

Yeah, the company has been supportive of me.
Appreciative.

They now are using my site as an example of what they'd like other sites to look like. My ways of dealing with kids as something they'd like other directors to observe and learn from. They reimburse me for things I buy, we have a bunch of new things for many sites because of my innovations.

We have dramatic play boxes... mad scientist, restaurant, costumes/dress up. Construction specialty boxes. We're working on a Rube Goldberg machine box to go out to sites. These are all things they never had before. We have put out 5 o' clock boxes to some of the sites, which is an ongoing thing. Stuff for the kids to do when most of the program has been put away at the end of the day and there are only a few kids left. Another one of those things I brought with me.

All of these ideas were enthusiastically pitched by Anna after she saw how things run at my location. Yes, there are other people, including the owner of the company, who have seen those things and signed off on them, but Anna was the one who advocated for those ideas. The one who's been just utterly amazing in every way.

So I can't imagine how she's feeling. She devoted nearly a decade to the company and they just... summarily tossed her out.

I can tell you I'm not feeling so happy about it.