Work upset me today. Most of the day was fine, but coming out of the All Hands
We have a guy working in the office that I worked with years and years ago. He underwent great personal tragedy - the death of a child - and my heart truly went out to him. Shortly after that, he changed jobs, and I lost track of him, as you do. A couple of years ago, he started working where I do now. I was glad to see him, and amazed at how he seemed to have maintained who he was and came back from what I know was a life-altering experience.
All was well until he unexpectedly had a melt down on me a couple of months ago. He became very aggressive, to the point that we got into it. I talked to his supervisor afterwards and things seemed to calm down. He was pretty much himself again, but I was leery.
Last month he made a mistake in using a service that my company uses from time to time. I process the bill for that service, and asked him about it, knowing that my boss would have questions when he saw the bill. My boss asked me to go back to the service provider to see if they would issue a credit for the mistaken transactions. They agreed, providing that this guy take a training seminar. Now he knew what the mistake was, and knew not to do it again, but they wouldn't issue the credit unless he took the class.
I went to him and explained this, and he immediately got smart with me. I wasn't thrilled, but that wasn't a huge issue. He then came to my desk to make fun of his contact at the service provider (again, didn't appreciate it, but not a huge deal). He also informed me that his supervisor had told him to put off taking the training class until the end of the quarter (at the end of May). I explained to him that my boss would be looking for this credit on the next bill, and that it wouldn't be issued until he took the class, but he again re-iterated that he had been told to put it off. Now what he should have done was discuss this with his supervisor. Procuring this credit had been a direct request from my boss, who is a VP, and over all of us; also, had he just gone ahead and done it, it would have taken about 20-30 minutes and that would have been the end of it.
Because he didn't offer this though, I went to his boss (a man I have known for years) an explained the situation. I asked that he be allowed to go ahead and do the training, to which his boss immediately agreed. The issue was that he had walked up behind us while I was talking to his boss, who then walked off. This guy immediately was in my face, demanding to know what was said, and asking repeatedly "He DID tell you that HE TOLD me to wait to do it, right??" I was a bit flummoxed, because that hadn't been the focus of the conversation, and I hadn't even asked his boss who had said what. But he hounded me all the way back to my desk about it, getting really aggressive and inappropriate. I finally just told him that I wasn't interested in the situation, just the results. I needed him to do the training, period. If the obstacle to him doing it had been his boss's instructions, then that impediment had been removed.
He stood over me when I got back to my desk, going on and on. He trashed his boss as a liar, and said that he could never pin him down on anything, and then proceeded to raise his voice and go into an entirely inappropriate rant. I finally just looked up at him and said "You need to leave my desk. Now. Walk away." After pausing for a minute, he did. I called his boss and talked to him about what had happened. He told me that I was not the first person who had an issue like this with the guy, and assured me that it was being handled, but that he was not at liberty to tell me more. That was fine with me.
A woman who sits near me, though, knew something was wrong. When I gave her a brief synopsis of what had happened, she reported that she has had her own run-in with him (of which I was aware), and that unsubstantiated hot n' juicy gossip was that he was on probation (at work) because of other issues. She could care less - she can't stand him. But I felt bad.
It bothered me badly enough that I took it home with me, and I don't usually take work home with me (although I have done so twice this week). I hate what this man had to go through. I feel so bad for him. There is probably no one there who would like for him to do well as much as I do, but at the same time, I'm not going to be attacked in the workplace. He was completely out of line today. The whole situation just makes me sad. I felt terrible about the whole thing.
When I got home, I had plenty to keep me busy though, and I usually feel better when I get in the kitchen.
I only had fixin's for four hoagies this week, but I had five lunches to prepare. As anticipated, Eve had sent me home with left-overs Tuesday night, but they needed to be made into something. I stopped on the way home and got some pasta. When I got to the house I whipped up a bechamel. I can do that free-hand, this one turned out beautiful - the perfect thickness, lush and velvety smooth. When I eased the crab and shrimp into it, it was almost as if it had been waiting to go in there. It integrated beautifully and made a gorgeous sauce. I put four lunches in the fridge for next week (or sometime) and one in for Friday.
I had left-over pizza from Monday for supper, and then cleaned up the kitchen. I had an hour or so to relax, and just futzed around on the computer until time for bed. It was good to close an upsetting day with a feeling of accomplishment.
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