Facing The Giants

We all have giants in our lives, things that hold us down things that cause us to be afraid, to feel anxious and fearful, things we just aren't sure how to deal with.

I haven't said much because I've been waiting for some legal options to be put into place but I want to tell you my story.

On January 11, 2013 I quit my job of four and a half years, packed my stuff and moved home to Atlanta to be with my husband.

It was not one of my better decisions but not every decision is a good one.  My husband had finished a three year stretch eighteen months earlier and couldn't leave the state of Georgia, I was having problems with my kids, I didn't make enough money to visit him, so I got the brilliant idea to move home.

Unfortunately, it was not a good situation for me.  The moment I arrived, my truck was down because hauling a trailer had destroyed the entire brake system, then it snowed.  A week later my father in law passed in my husband's arms and a week after that it snowed again.

My mother in law was not as warm and welcoming as she had been in the past, which only added to the stress of my own situation.

I finally found a job, a couple of miles from the house, working in a factory, bringing home right at $200 a week.

On March 23rd, I came home to my husband being gone in his mother's van.

I missed Alabama.

It broke my heart every night when my grandson would call and say, "Nanny I miss you."  It broke my heart every day when my mother in law fussed about my little dogs.  It broke my heart it just didn't feel like home anymore.

That night I told her I was going home.

I drank all the beer I'd bought for us, played video games and when I woke up the next morning my head hurt so bad I thought it would explode.  I drove straight to the store and bought another beer, knowing that's what it would take to feel better.  I drank the beer, played golf for a while and went back to bed.

I knew he wasn't coming back any time soon.

The decision was made for me to stay at my ex daughter in law's house and she wired me money I just recently paid her back so I could gas my truck up to come home.

As I was going out back to load my truck, I got a call from someone here who asked me what I was doing in Atlanta.  I told her I was about to pack my truck and head back home and she announced, "I've got this job you've been asking me for."

It had to be God!

Three hours later I was in Alabama taking a drug test and filling out paperwork for my new job, which I promptly started the next day.

This job wasn't any job, this job provided a free place to live and a place to live was something I'd needed my entire life.

I was coming back to Alabama to sleep on my ex daughter in law's couch, no job and no prospects.

It had to be God!

In March I've been at that job for five years.

I love that job, I'm good at it, I'm good to my people, I bank more money for the company every year I'm there.

In walks the monster.

When we're little there are monsters under our beds, in our closets, lurking around dark corners.  When we're grown they take the shape of others in authority over us.

As strong a person as I am I have no problem with authority, I have learned to be humble, to bite my tongue and to roll with the punches.  Those who know me will tell you I'm strong as steel and if asked they couldn't produce a picture of my being humble if their lives depended on it.

I have a large personality, I like to have fun, to laugh and I have a lot to say.

No one told me the job came with a monster and I would have to suffer at the hands of that monster from day one.  I was so excited to have a job I'd been asking for for almost two years, the thought never crossed my mind.

The manager I had before that wasn't very nice, chose not to speak to me ninety percent of the time we were together and wasn't nice to the customers that came in the store either, so I'd had a bad manager already.

No amount of previous experience or practice prepared me for what has happened over the last four and a half years.

You give people the benefit of the doubt, you tell yourself they are having a bad day, you do everything in your power to do the job well and please them.

My monster only grew bigger and bigger, the situation never got better for me and nothing I do even to this day is good enough.

I've been yelled at, cussed at, called names, accused of lying and or not being at work and insulted the entire time.  The one person I'm supposed to go to has made it impossible for me to communicate with them and I don't I feel I can trust them to get the job done.  Every email is a back and forth debate, every phone call is hostile and combative.

Every day for five years I've looked around my house, feeling as though I should be packing and looking for another job.

When I began to think I should run out into the boulevard and kill myself I went to see a doctor.

All of this is done through phone calls and emails, never to my face, which is probably how it got out of control and brought me to today.

Years of crying phone calls to my co-worker, years of my tenants and kids seeing me cry, years of being made to feel unwelcome and unappreciated and very small, not to mention powerless.

Everyone who knows me has said, "Why do you let her talk to you that way?"

You can't communicate with someone who is yelling and cussing, calling you names and telling you to shut up.

Everything is my fault, there are no teachable moments.

When you live where you work you'll be surprised what you are willing to go through and tolerate to hold on to those two things.

The simplest of emails can send me over the edge, panic attacks, crying, total melt down as a human being, without my meaning for it to, it has totally messed me up.

As the situation escalated and the calls were more frequent my daughter told me I had to do something, I had to find a way to stand up for myself.

I've been called up on a day when I was at lunch, I never go to lunch. I get a phone call accusing me of not being at work, yelling so loud everyone in the restaurant around me hears it, on a day I had sale and had already made four thousand dollars for the facility, banked a grand total of seventy three hundred dollars that day.  All of this because she wanted to ask me what happened at the doctor with the baby the week before.

Seriously?

Seriously!

She became the monster lurking around the corner.  She became the one person I never wanted to have to go to for anything, didn't matter what it was or if my place needed it.

I began saving emails, and because Alabama is a one party state, recording the phone calls because I didn't think anyone would believe me when I finally got the courage to say anything, if I ever found the courage.

With great fear in my heart I went to HR September 7th, the following Monday it got worse!  October 10th I went to the EEOC and had a full blown panic attack in the office, in front of the investigators, rejecting the call because of where I was.  She called and called, left nasty voice mails and a threatening text message that said we would deal with it Monday.

Monday came and went, nothing happened.  Two Monday's later I'm called to a meeting with the VP and head of HR.  I feel like I'm about to be ambushed and fired so I am fearful.

I recorded the meeting, much to their dismay and no one wanted to talk about the elephant in the room, to address the complaint or the issues I was having because of the situation.

Two weeks later they finally talk to her.  Nearly sixty days has passed since my initial complaint.

They schedule me for another meeting on my day off, something that's part of my complaint, my unpaid wages for all the days I was told I had to answer my phone, to rent units if necessary.  I'm rescheduled for the next day and she is going to be there, my giant, my monster.

Before leaving for the meeting the mail man delivers my right to sue letter from the EEOC.

I arrive to all smiles and how are you's and pull my recorder out a second time, which obviously makes the head of HR very nervous.

I get a pitiful apology and the "I'm sorry if you took it that way," explanation and you always seem so defensive, they begin trying to turn it around on me, like I've done something to deserve it or bring it on myself.  They try addressing my job performance and a report she has let me struggle with for nearly five years.

Did I mention I've never been disciplined or written up and I bank more money every year I work here?

As I'm given opportunity to speak she tries to interrupt so I simply go into how Alabama is a one party state and pull out the blue tooth speaker that is in my pocket book.  I tell them how I was cussed out and told if I didn't like it I could get the hell out and on that day I began recording conversations of how I'm managed and talked to and played a couple of phone calls for them.

No one believed a word I said until that moment in time.

I wish I could say I looked them in their eyes but I didn't.  I saw her cringe and almost have a heart attack, the other two looked as though they were about to crawl under the table and kept my eyes focused on the speaker.

You could have heard a pin drop when I turned the speaker off and put it back in my purse.

All conversation was averted away from how all of this had messed me up, and I confessed how much I like my job and love my people.

Again it returned to a report and where I park my truck.  It all still sounded as though it was being turned back on me, like I've done something wrong, like I'm not doing the job well enough, but we all know they have to do that.

It was like I set a nuclear bomb off in the office.

They ended the meeting as quickly as they could, after much talk about my facility and a stupid report that gets me cussed out every single week.

She's trying to call me leaving out in the parking lot, I watched her drive past me as "You don't own me" played, her ring tone.  For the first time ever it didn't make my blood run cold and the rock was gone from the pit of my stomach.

I didn't take the call, or the one after that, and the voice mail was pathetic and too little too late.

I'm easy, all you ever have to be is nice.

Kindness is the one thing in the world that is free.

I sit here this morning, having faced my giants, knowing I was as big as I am all along, just feeling too small to speak up.

I know there are many others in the world, beat down, afraid to say anything and I hope they consider the encouragement my daughter gave me.  "Mama, maybe no one else has ever said anything."

It was the scariest thing I've ever done and judging from their reactions I feel sure no one else has ever said anything.

I let someone beat me down, abuse me, treat me any kind of way for a job that started to make me feel like I should kill myself over.

Never again.

Not ever!

I am a daughter of the King and you will treat me as such!