Fuck You, You’re Helping

NOTE: This is likely going to Part 1 of at least two total entries.  I apologize for any typos.  I did not proofread this. 

Today was emotionally draining.  It didn’t need to be.  It just was.  I don’t even know where to start. 

For the majority of the day, I was stuck in a training class that the lead trainer decided, at the last minute, was going to be a virtual meeting, rather than one that was supposed to be in-person.  I was ready to make that drive, but no such travel would be required.  As far as the actual training, the material was bland and hardly interesting.  Everyone’s camera had to be on if we wanted to get credit for being “there”.  I needed the training hours, so my camera was definitely on. 

Intermittently throughout the day, she and I would sneak in phone conversations and exchange on-going text messages, as we do most days, when she’s not being evasive and avoidant.  Everything was going well between us, until the concept of helping others came up.  Before I delve in that day-long tiff in further detail, let me provide the following anecdote, which I’m hoping will illustrate why I reacted the way I did to her. 

Dad, my only surviving parent, had taught me at a young age that when helping people, I should do so if I believe that they are appreciative of my efforts and are otherwise worthy of receiving that help.  The moment I get that inkling that they are not appreciative and/or are possibly using me for their own selfish benefit, I ought to stop what I’m doing and move on to something else. 

Being that I was mathematically inclined at a relatively young age, it was a recurring thing for me to help my sister with her math homework when we were in grade school.  Helping her was always a 50-50 endeavor for me.  Sometimes I didn’t mind.  On other occasions, I just didn’t feel like it.  Usually, as a favor to Dad, I’d help her.  Being that I am two years older than she is, her math homework was never a challenge for me, so it didn’t bother me to help her unless there was something else, something better, I wanted to do. 

There was one time when I had helped her and we were done with her math homework.  There were some challenges along the way, but for the most part, it was relatively painless.  Dad knew that we were done and he was listening intently.  He, off in the distance, was waiting to hear her say, “Thank you”.  She didn’t thank me and he knew.  He confronted her as to the merits of other people helping her, even when they might not want to, and drove home the point that she needed to be thankful whenever someone helps her or does anything for her.  A “Thank You” goes a long way.

Not long after he spoke with my sister, Dad went into his spiel with me, as I noted earlier, about helping others.  Many years later, now as an adult, I never forgot Dad’s lesson.

Without going into all the painful and excruciating detail as to what is going on at work, I’ll try to keep this brief.  She and one of her direct coworkers had been inundated with work for a few months now, though the last weeks had been especially rough.  To say that they were figuratively drowning would be an understatement.  Suffice it to say that they are and have been busy of late.  Yesterday, management announced that she and that coworker would be receiving help from the rest of the office, potentially myself included.  What this means is that now the rest of the office, again myself included, would receive the work that would have normally gone to her and her coworker, had those two not be a busy as they ended up being.

Now, for the most part, I and the majority of my coworkers are busy with our own stuff.  In some way, we’re busy and just treading water ourselves.  Why do I do all the overtime that I do?  Because I’m busy and yes, I like the money.  Still, the last thing that we want to do is have to take on work that theoretically, should have gone to those two.  So, the current situation in the office will be addressed through what I like to describe as “forced helping”.  If management says it, we have to do it.  That’s just the way it is.  I get it.  So be it.  It is what it is.  Whatever. 

As she and I are talking about this (and as I’m perceiving her tone and words), she comes out as being very entitled and arrogant with how she is talking about the help that the rest of the office will be providing her and the other one.  She essentially said that she didn’t care that other people were being made to help her and her coworker because they had been drowning for so long.  She had been miserable for such a long time and now, it was time for others to join in on that misery.  She was of the impression that for the longest time, she and her coworker were being treated unfairly and now, it was time for the rest of us to get involved.  I’m paraphrasing, mind you, but that was my takeaway.

I became livid within seconds of hearing this. 

I told her that I did not appreciate her arrogant and entitled tone.  I truly didn’t care for it and I made it a point to tell her this too.

Truth be told, her first mistake is/was holding this mentality that work in that office and throughout the department is ever going to be distributed equally and evenly.  I learned many years ago that this is one of those things that we should never hope for or depend on.  Some weeks or months, I might be ridiculously busy.  Other weeks and months, you might be just as busy as I was.  Hell, we could be amazingly busy at the exact same time.  There’s an ebb and flow for everyone and the workload is not guaranteed to be equitable for everyone at the same time.  It just isn’t. 

In briefly reverting to Dad again, he spent just under 25 years working as a mail carrier.  He would tell me stories about his workdays (and the crazy amounts of overtime that HE used to do) and how he hated to hear his fellow carriers bitch about how much mail they had on their routes on any given day.  Dad knew this very concept, the one I mentioned in the last paragraph.  Some days, his truck was filled to the brim with mail.  Other days, his truck would be noticeably lighter than it was the day before.  Dad never complained.  He did the work that was asked of him on any given day and he handled business, regardless of how much mail his coworkers were delivering.  Whether he had a full truck or a half-filled truck, the mail had to be delivered in rain, sleet, or snow.  Dad and I both know that work equity is seldom a thing and is never anything that we rely on or ever expect.  All we can do is do our job to the best of our ability and keep things moving.

So, yes, work life is not fair.  It isn’t.  It likely never will be and one need not hold their breath waiting for things to be fair. 

As for her arrogant and entitled tone, I didn’t like it.  As much as I joke about misery liking company, this is one situation where I thought that she needed to be much more appreciative than she was being.  Her mentality, as I saw it, was basically…

“Fuck everyone else.  We need help.  This wasn’t my decision, so people shouldn’t be mad at me”.

I don’t know who she was blaming her for any of this, but I wasn’t.  What I blamed for her for was her shitty attitude and for seemingly wanting us to join her and her coworker on that miserable boat on which they had been floating for months.     

As all this is transpiring, naturally, I think back to Dad and his teachings on helping others.  From where I was standing, there was absolutely ZERO appreciation for the help they would be getting.  With no appreciation to speak of, I had no reason to anticipate any manner of “Thank You” or anything resembling gratitude either. 

As it pertains to me, she completely glossed over all the help I had given her through these last few months.  Almost like I had never done a damn thing.

Sure, she gives Ernie (a veritable moron, mind you) and Vanessa their “props” for the work that THEY do, but for whatever the reason, Visionary is not included in that group.  I immediately recognize that I’m mysteriously left out of that group and I don’t forget it.                         

Normally, I wouldn’t care to be left out like that and have my help otherwise completely ignored and disregarded, but because it comes from her and her apparent faulty memory, indeed, I am going to take some measure of offense to it.

We go back and forth and an argument ensues.