the day it all changed

"Gossip is when you make light of someones personal life as a way of being hateful, not complimentary"

Perspective.  This too shall pass.  When i am in the middle of something that i feel is tragic or overwhelming i try to think of a time in my past that made me feel overwhelmed.  It is always seems to remind me that life is everchanging and that rough spots don't last forever (thankfully). 

It is very easy to judge people harshly, but then i am able to remind myself that it wasn't too long ago that i was judged wrongly and how that made me feel.

I had spent over a decade eating, living, and breathing a company.  It was normal for me to wake in the middle of the night stressing out how to reach and exceed a metric.  I was consumed with how to make me team be better (on paper), how to get their buy in and motivate them.  It worked, I was number 1 in almost every metric that this company measured.  The DM called me and would talk through certain situations with me, I was called upon to lead conference calls.  I totally got off on it, I felt important (and we all know how important this is to my low self esteem). 

Then one day, it all changed.  There was a stocker who was accused of stealing sodas.  He then told a story of being harassed by a guy that he called "big poppa"?  The department manager had nude photos of a cashier.  They all had talked of making a porno.  A person that was going to be promoted to dept manager was having a sexual relationship with a cashier of the same sex (supposedly in the breakroom).  They all said they NEVER acted this way around me.  I fired my entire management staff, borrowed an assistant from another store.  This was the start of the holiday season from hell.  I had to borrow managers from other stores and practically work open to close seven days a week.  I lived in fear of losing my job daily.  Finally the week before christmas i was given a final write up.  I was thankful to have my job and thought the situation was finally over.  I was still working like crazy, but was trying to live and learn.  Review time came, i was given a needs improvement.  Okay, i thought, now it is all behind me.  Human Resources came in and interviewed all of the people that were there that day.  I could have changed the schedule and coached people to say what i thought would be appropriate, but really had nothing to hide.  I then sat down with HR and was told "you created the situation, you must live through it".  Then, she finally got to the real point of why she was here, she wanted to talk to me about my attendance and how "sometimes, you are late in the morning".  While my boss, sat on the desk acting as if this was the biggest tragedy he had heard of in his career. 

I went home and i cried.  I started the process of letting go of yet another bad relationship in my life.