Moral High Ground

It’s odd.

From the moment I first heard about it until whenever on Sunday I wrote my last entry, I used very little brain power thinking about the fact that the organization I was working for fired a 35-weeks pregnant woman on what appeared to be complete bullshit charges. I felt bad for her and I thought it was fucked up, but I never really got beyond "I need to find another job and get out of that place." I’ve had that thought many times before, and most of the times I do have that thought, it doesn’t go anywhere. I just put up with it until the next thing came along.

I think while going through the process of writing about, it forced me to consider each detail — even the details I left out for. It was really eating me up inside. How can I work for these people? I told Lilith that I was thinking about quitting, and she basically said, "You’ve been talking about quitting since you started there."

So I quit yesterday. I put in my notice and said I was leaving immediately. Because, as Mark McKinney’s character says at the 2:45 of this sketch, "Hey, I’m a temp. I can quit at lunch."

My supervisor didn’t let me go easily. She asked if this had anything to do with what had happened on Friday. I answered, "Not completely. It’s kind of the last thing on a list of things." She got very quiet and said, "You know, we’ve been having problems with, that person, for over a year. It’s documented." That doesn’t explain why, if she was such a horrible worker, they waited until now to get rid of her. Or why they didn’t just lay her off when they were doing layoffs. And it speaks nothing of the story behind why she was written up in the first place.

I should note that this is actually a non-pr, ofit organization. It was pointed out to me that someone didn’t screw over a very pregnant woman to maximize profit, they did it out of necessity to stay afloat. While there’s some truth to that, I think that if you need to screw over a very pregnant lady in order for your organization to survive, you probably don’t even deserve to survive. Why not screw over someone else? Maybe someone who is not very pregnant?

I explained that this wasn’t the only instance. I’ve seen things that have happened to other people. Anyway, Supervisor made the point that there’s a lot of negativity in the organization and they’re trying to get rid of it. She also said that I tend to associate with these negative people and maybe that’s been souring my thoughts on the place. She asked for me to reconsider. Asked for me to give them a couple of weeks to think it over, maybe a week, or a few days. Finally I got her down to me leaving, thinking it over and calling her the next day.

She was obviously manipulating me, and it almost worked. I’m not good at making persuasive arguments in the moment. I needed some time to digest what she was saying. I will admit, some of what she was saying was true. I do tend to associate with the more negative people. And I don’t know the whole story of why everyone was fired or why they quit. I needed to go home, think this over and talk to a few people.

But then I figured "No, she’s full of shit."

I called her this morning, as promised, to let her know that I hadn’t changed my mind. I thanked her for giving me time to think it over, but that I wasn’t coming back. I figured she’d try to fight me on this, but she didn’t. She seemed as unaffected by it as if I had called her to tell her that I would be a half-hour late.

This morning, I got a Facebook message from someone who works in another office. I recognized her name, but I had never met her, nor had I had any previous contact with her. The message basically said, "Hi, we don’t know each other, but I respect you a lot for what you did."

I feel really good about that. I wasn’t doing this to gain the respect of others, but I have to say it’s kind of nice to get a message like that from a complete stranger.

I just feel very fortunate that my situation allows this. So many times, I’ve been in a situation at a job where I couldn’t bear to be there anymore, but I didn’t really have any choice. So I feel like I was also doing this for all of those past times when I couldn’t just get up and leave a company to protest their bullshit.

I mean, what would have been nice was if I could ride that job until I could leave to be a stay-at-home dad, but that "dad" part is proving itself to be a bit of a challenge. So now I’m just a stay-at-home dude. And the angels of unproductivity are obviously against me because on my first day of unemployment, I discovered that Netflix just made last year’s seasons of 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation available instantly. How am I expected to get anything done now?