Right, I've been holding it in for a long time, and today things happened at work that pushed me a biiiiit too far.... so I need to rant.
There's this guys at work, we'll call him 'Ed'. Now, Ed's been working with me at a job I've been doing for the past 3 years. Part of my job as a senior staff person at this job, is to train the new people. Ed does not, and has never, taken my telling him what to do well. So at this job, I've been dealing with a lot of issues surrounding Ed and how he does his job.
I'd like to add that I'm not the only one having problems with him. The other ladies at this job, including our on-site supervisor have seen how he acts and have commented on it.
Moving on.
Today at work, the boss lady (one position above my site supervisor) came to me and another girl at the job, well call her Amy, and wanted to talk about Ed, Boss lady, now to be known as Gina, asked us what happened to Ed's lunch on Friday.
**Sidenote, Ed always comes into work after myself and Amy, puts his lunch in the break room, and takes the first lunch. Amy and I do not go into the lunchroom after he drops off his food, or before he has his break.**
Amy and I have no idea, so we ask what she's talking about. It turns out that Ed's lunch went missing, and he somehow got the idea that Amy or myself had thrown it out (see side note). Amy and I come back and say that we had no idea about what happened, he said nothing about it to us. Of course, had we known, we would have made sure he had the chance to get something, either from food we'd share or him going to get something to eat. Gina got quite upset at that point and said she didn't believe Amy and I would have done that. That comment alone got my ire up. However much I may not like Ed, it is one of my jobs to help keep the staff safe. At this job, not eating lunch can hurt you a lot. It can lower you coordination and dull you senses a bit, since the job is a very physical one. The LAST ting I'm going to do for ANYONE on staff is let them go with out a lunch.
Gina goes on to tell us that Ed has told her that Amy and I have been treating him badly (ie. yelling at him, ignoring him, insulting him, ect.). Gina actually threatened to fire us if this 'behavior' of ours continued.
This was the first Amy and I had heard of this, so it came as a huge shock. Well, that and the 'hey, you might get fired thing'. That was a shock too.
**Return of the Sidenote. Amy and I did not behave in the most mature or professional way during the past several months. I will not deny that did call Ed an ass many times. However, it was never directly to his face or in an environment where he could have known. Not that that makes it ok... but whatever**
So while Gina is going on and on about how she's heard all these things from Ed, I'm just sitting there starting to seethe. Amy and I finally get a chance to talk a bit after being bashed with accusations, and we can explain why he might feel that way from our side of things. We started by saying we're sorry for not acting as senior staff members should have acted. Yes, the whole situation could have been handled better. After that, we gave her some information that she might now have known.
Ed, for all the experience he may have in other areas, is a condescending chauvinist. Since he started at the job he has belittled the women staff members, ignored us, and basically made several of us feel as if we weren't worth his time. A few times he's made Amy so mad that she's been physically shaking. For the first few months that he worked there, we tried to bring him 'into the fold' of the people at the job. However, he didn't mesh with the other staff very well, and he didn't respect the experience any of the senior female members of the staff had.
After a few months of feeling like I was trying to have a philosophical discussion with a brick wall when talking to Ed, I (and other staff members) just stopped trying. We stopped correcting him on mistakes because he took everything personally. We stopped trying to interact with him when we had guests at work (we still talked to him as the job required, but nothing special unless we felt like making an effort for the guests enjoyment). For his part, Ed never really made any effort to mesh with the staff. He wandered off a lot, he didn't communicate with us when he needed things, and he kept pissing people off with the way he acted.
After Amy and I explained things on our side a bit, Gina seems to have calmed down. We talked a little longer about some more new staff that would be starting. Things ended on an ok note, but still carried a hint of unpleasentness as we all went back to work.
Gina also said something that put me in the mood for a rant. She said that Ed had not had a good experience working there.
***RANT***
Oh? Fucking really?
How the hell does she think I've felt after almost 4 months of him treating me like crap?
I'm aware of the fact that I'm not good at very much. I suck at math, I'm not qualified for many of the jobs I'd like, but I'm good at the ones that I have. I know how it works, I know the pitfalls and the joys. I know how to read people to come there, and I damn well know how to train people new to the job. I don't have many buttons to push, but someone coming into MY job, having ME train them, and then making me feel like I have NO IDEA what I'm doing pisses me off. I have been hurt at that job, been rained on, snowed on, broken, sunburnt to high heaven, hailed on, yelled at by guests, and all number of things that could make someone hate a job. I never hated it till Ed started working there. He talks down to me. From when I've seen he talks down to women in general. Well, all except Gina. Gina could fire him if he acted that way with her around.
What about the time Ed tried to force another staff member to take a lunch so he could go sooner? Or when he gives out incorrect facts to guests a work and gets all offended when someone tries to correct him later? Or the bit when he started where he asked if the other guy at the job was good with physical stuff after we'd all been working in lifting some heavy things (as if to insinuate that the women at the job couldn't do all the heavy things that the job called for)? Or the fact that he doesn't pay attention at the job and almost gets hurt? Or that he just is out of tune with the job and the staff in general? What about ANY of that makes him think that he knows better then the staff that's been at the job for years?
The ONLY time in past months that ANYONE at the job has yelled at Ed has been when we need him to bring in people for what we do. It's not even a mean yelling! It's just something that's done to signal that it's time to start. Ed isn't the only one that gets that either, EVERYONE on the staff gets the same treatment. I did snip at Ed once when he did something unsafe and it scared the bejeezus out of me because I didn't want him getting hurt. I told him, in the voice my mother uses when the dog does something bad, that he shouldn't ever do said thing again. Again, I may not like Ed, but I'll be damned if anyone at that job is getting hurt while I'm there.
It's not just the women who've been dealing with Ed. Even Bob, one of out other male staff members noticed that Ed was treating the women on staff in a less then nice manner. There is NO way that this situation is the fault of Amy and I if over half of the staff notices it.
Now I'm not totally happy with how I handled my part of the situation, but if someone is pushing my buttons for almost 4 months, I become a rather not nice person. I figured out that the whole time I was mad at Ed, I couldn't talk to him about what he was doing to upset me, so I talked it out with other people who felt the same way that I did. While I was not the only one pissed at Ed, it looks like he became rather upset with Amy and myself (since she and I talk a lot at the job and all). Though why he got more upset at the two of us, since at least 2 of the other staff has the same indifference for him that Amy and I do, I'll never know.
To sum it all up, I have to be nice (or at least as polite as I can be) to someone who treats me poorly. If I don't do so, and he complains, I could lose my job. Thankfully Ed leaves in less then 2 weeks and we're supposed to get some new staff members. Hopefully all the current staff that knows what they're doing can train the new people and we can have a real crew again instead of it feeling like we have a crew... and one guys who comes and follows us all day.
There, rant over. I feel better.
