Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree of Contrast.
Grrrrr. As I said, I’m not loving my job this week.
I missed some meetings almost a month ago. The week Daddy died. While I was at his funeral.
I’ve worked with these people for a long, long time. I’ve rarely missed their meetings, with the exception of one where I was at a conference in Daytona and had preapproved my absence many months before they changed their meeting time to the week I was gone. There was another meeting that was changed to a week that coincided with another out-of-town conference I couldn’t cancel. They change their schedule a whole lot more than I do and I’ve often planned my absences around their official, “published” schedule. I’ve been flexible and I’ve rescheduled my work many times to accommodate them.
Daddy died during the absolute busiest work week of my year. I needed to be at their meetings that week, but my personal life took priority. My boss notified them that my dad had passed away and that I wouldn’t be back until the next week. Someone else stepped in to take over my job. That doesn’t happen a lot in my career—usually things are still there and piled even higher when I return from a vacation or illness. But this time, because the work could not wait for me to return, they got a quick replacement who was knowledgeable, friendly, and efficient— and who knew how I worked—even if she did end up getting blamed when things went awry.
Since my return from Georgia, these particular people have acted a little cool toward me. My intuition has been telling me that there have been complaints but I’ve had no proof of that. It could have been that they were tired from all the work.
Today one of their engineers sought me out to tell me that he disagreed with their recent complaints (which my boss hadn’t told me about). The complaint? The complaint was that I had not been present to support them the week Daddy died.
He and I agreed that it’s a shame you can’t plan funerals for weekends and Federal holidays, but that’s just the way it is.
Me, I’m not feeling too much like going out of my way to help these people.
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